Writing Help 129 | - Freelance Writer
Apr 05, 2013 | #1
Terms You Need for Writing about the Novel
Because characters are such an important part of the novel, without which it would simply cease to be, much critical attention has been paid to how we come to know characters through the course of a work or over several works in which they appear. Just as actual people are not immutably mired in a stagnant world and forced to continually think and behave in precisely the same ways, neither are fictional characters forced to suffer like this. Characters develop just as our understanding of them develops, and the process through which this achieved is known as characterization.
There are many ways we can learn about a given character, each of which has a different level of authority and reliability. The result is that, over the course of a novel, we are given many small pieces of information about important characters, and it is through the intermingling of these small pieces that we are able to form an impression about the character as a whole. This is similar to the way we come to form impressions about actual people, once the obvious differences in duration and relative simplicity are taken into account.
The most obvious way we have of learning about a fictional character is through the direct comment or description of the narrator. If the narrator tells us that Bob has brown hair, we can (usually) rest assured that Bob has brown hair. If the narrator is an anonymous, omniscient being who is outside the story, her pronouncements on characters can be taken as correct. The closer the narrator is to the action of the story, the less authoritative her assertions are. So, a narrator who is also the protagonist of a novel can be relied upon to give an impression of herself which is more flattering than the impression others might give. Taken to an extreme, as it is in some notable novels like Conrad's Lord Jim and Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, the narrator can have such an obvious agenda, mental illness, or simple proclivity for lying that their statements about others almost serve to prove the opposite of what they claim; when this is the case, the narrating agent is known as an unreliable narrator, and nothing this person says can be taken as true without careful examination.
The narrator who is close to the action functions similarly to the second way we have of gleaning information on a given character, which is through the comments of other (non-narrating) characters. As in real life, these characters have motivations and perspectives which will cause them to treat and describe others in more and less fair manners. Generally, the less personal interest a character has in another, the more unbiased their descriptions will be. However, little interest might also indicate little acquaintance, meaning that the character's qualifications to judge the other are limited.
The last of the basic ways we have of learning about a given character comes through the character herself, both in what she says about herself (and what she says in general of course: we learn a lot about people through all the comments they make) and in how she behaves. In comparison to actual people again, characters reveal themselves both accidentally and intentionally in their words and actions, and we sometimes have to watch closely to discern the natural self of the character from the artificial self portrayed to the public. It is important to remember that it is not through one source, but through many, that we get to know both real people and fictional characters, and that we must weigh all of our sources carefully against each other before coming to conclusions. As a general rule, we will believe the words of the narrator and/or the first characters we hear speaking about another, but as the novel progresses, this original information and our preliminary conclusions must be constantly reconsidered. This often results in our having a completely different opinion of a character by the end of a novel, not because he or she has changed significantly, but because we have come to a more complete understanding of their personalities and motivations.
Characterization
Because characters are such an important part of the novel, without which it would simply cease to be, much critical attention has been paid to how we come to know characters through the course of a work or over several works in which they appear. Just as actual people are not immutably mired in a stagnant world and forced to continually think and behave in precisely the same ways, neither are fictional characters forced to suffer like this. Characters develop just as our understanding of them develops, and the process through which this achieved is known as characterization.
There are many ways we can learn about a given character, each of which has a different level of authority and reliability. The result is that, over the course of a novel, we are given many small pieces of information about important characters, and it is through the intermingling of these small pieces that we are able to form an impression about the character as a whole. This is similar to the way we come to form impressions about actual people, once the obvious differences in duration and relative simplicity are taken into account.The most obvious way we have of learning about a fictional character is through the direct comment or description of the narrator. If the narrator tells us that Bob has brown hair, we can (usually) rest assured that Bob has brown hair. If the narrator is an anonymous, omniscient being who is outside the story, her pronouncements on characters can be taken as correct. The closer the narrator is to the action of the story, the less authoritative her assertions are. So, a narrator who is also the protagonist of a novel can be relied upon to give an impression of herself which is more flattering than the impression others might give. Taken to an extreme, as it is in some notable novels like Conrad's Lord Jim and Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, the narrator can have such an obvious agenda, mental illness, or simple proclivity for lying that their statements about others almost serve to prove the opposite of what they claim; when this is the case, the narrating agent is known as an unreliable narrator, and nothing this person says can be taken as true without careful examination.
The narrator who is close to the action functions similarly to the second way we have of gleaning information on a given character, which is through the comments of other (non-narrating) characters. As in real life, these characters have motivations and perspectives which will cause them to treat and describe others in more and less fair manners. Generally, the less personal interest a character has in another, the more unbiased their descriptions will be. However, little interest might also indicate little acquaintance, meaning that the character's qualifications to judge the other are limited.
The last of the basic ways we have of learning about a given character comes through the character herself, both in what she says about herself (and what she says in general of course: we learn a lot about people through all the comments they make) and in how she behaves. In comparison to actual people again, characters reveal themselves both accidentally and intentionally in their words and actions, and we sometimes have to watch closely to discern the natural self of the character from the artificial self portrayed to the public. It is important to remember that it is not through one source, but through many, that we get to know both real people and fictional characters, and that we must weigh all of our sources carefully against each other before coming to conclusions. As a general rule, we will believe the words of the narrator and/or the first characters we hear speaking about another, but as the novel progresses, this original information and our preliminary conclusions must be constantly reconsidered. This often results in our having a completely different opinion of a character by the end of a novel, not because he or she has changed significantly, but because we have come to a more complete understanding of their personalities and motivations.