Literary Elements Character

1
Literary ElementsCharacter

• as a literary term, refers to a person or an
  animal in a story, poem, novel, or a play.
• A writer who is adept in the realistic creation
  of characters is said to be good at
  characterization.

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Real Life andLiterary Characters

• One of the marvels of literature is that writers
  can teach us about real people and about human
  nature by creating and presenting to us their
  imaginary characters.
• One reason readers love literature is that we
  experience and come to know people whom we will
  never otherwise meet. Getting to know
  characters such as Don Quixote, Hester Prynne,
  Hamlet, Jay Gatsby, and Madame Bovary enriches
  our lives.

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The Difference. . . .

• When we say about a real person, Hes a real
  character, we mean that he has notably unique or
  conspicuous traits. All characters in fiction
  have chosen traits and perform actions which the
  author has chosen, eliminating other possible
  traits and actions in order to highlight certain
  aspects of that one character. Some characters
  seem very lifelike or true to life, while others
  may seem fantastic, so imagined that we would
  never really expect to meet such a real person in
  our own lives.

4
. . . is Choice and Arrangement

• Writing fiction and poetry is making art.
  Characters are made, artificial representations.
  Authors carefully choose the background and
  circumstances in which they place their
  characters. In doing so, they eliminate the more
  trivial everyday occurrences which tend to
  clutter the scenes in our own everyday lives.
  This is why literary characters are so different
  from the rest of us. Just about everything they
  do and say may seem important and interesting!

5
Everything Matters

• In fact, since authors choose their characters
  words and actions, those authors consider
  everything a character says and does to be
  important. And so should we. Its helpful, then,
  to pay close and special attention to what each
  character says and does. Such attention is
  crucial in a short story because no character is
  really on stage very long.
• Pay special attention to repetition of images or
  patterns in relation to any character. Such
  images may give us a key insight into that
  characters personality.

6
Born Again Characters

• Some authors do bring their characters back to
  life in other works. Then we can get to know the
  characters even better because we are allowed to
  see them in a variety of circumstances, in other
  stories. But such is generally not the case in
  short stories, although there are many notable
  exceptions. One is Sherlock Holmes, whom we know
  through a lengthy series of Arthur Conan Doyles
  stories. We continue reading these stories and
  others with recurring characters because we have
  grown to know and perhaps love the character and
  we want to know what he or she is up to, what new
  circumstance presents itself.

7
Life on the Page

• Characters live only on the page. They have no
  lives beyond the page. Thus -- although we can
  speculate -- it is not really fruitful to write
  too much about what a character might do off the
  page, after a story ends. This limitation forces
  readers to focus our attention, and our own
  critical writing, on the evidence we do have --
  whatever the characters say, do, or tell us about
  themselves in the storyat hand, or on whatever
  another character or the storys narrator tells
  us.

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Knowing a Character

• Ways we can learn about particular characters
• Action what the character does
• Dialogue what the character says
• Narration what a narrator conveys
• Appearance how the character looks
• Name how the character is named
• (Mr Gradgrind, for example, is a dull,
  strict, and unforgiving teacher in Charles
  Dickens novel Hard Times.)

9
Types of Conflict

• Remember types of conflict occurring in a short
  story
• character vs. character
• character vs. society
• character vs. nature
• character vs. self
• __________________________________

10
Character by Role

• Protagonist the central character
• Antagonist the character or force against whom
  the central character struggles
• Foil a character whose only role is to emphasize
  and highlight by contrast the development taking
  place in other characters
• ____________________________________________
• No moral judgment is implied by the terms
  protagonist and antagonist. An antagonist
  could be good while a protagonist could be
  evil.

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Character by Change and Development

• Static character one who remains the same, or
  very nearly so, throughout a story, unchanging
• Dynamic character one who changes
• Flat character a type or one-dimensionalor,
  perhaps, a stock character with no depth or
  complexity of personality the faithful
  sidekick the shrewish wife the cruel
  stepmother the bad cop
• Round character a three-dimensional character,
  sufficiently complex as to be believable as a
  person with all the depth and unpredictability
  that real people have, one having more facets
  than a flat character (Kennedy Gioia 61).

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For more info

• Characterization. A Handbook to Literature.
  Holman, C. Hugh and William Harmon, eds. New
  York MacMillan, 1986.

Works Cited
Kennedy, X. J. and Dana Gioia, eds. Literature
An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
New York Longman, 1999. 60-63.