We have learned from Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 BC) that a tragic hero should be ‘of noble birth.’ What does this mean? It means he should be a king (Lear), or the cousin of a king (Macbeth), or a prince (Oedipus) both of whom then became kings, or a general (Othello), or a great warrior and leader (Okonkwo). Why? Because then the tragedy strikes not only the individual, but his people, too, and becomes a symbolic ‘lightning rod’ that effects everyone. In Sophocles’s play, there is a plague upon the land of Thebes, and as it’s king, Oedipus is charged with solving the riddle and ending the plague. He does so, but with tragic consequences, as he learns that he is the cause of the plague, he is the one who is causing this harm to his people.
Okonkwo, the tragic protagonist of Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, is a flawed character, and because of his tragic flaw he commits an act that gets him banished from his village for seven years. During that time the British come with their missionaries, and their bicycles, and colonize the land. Okonkwo is the only one who might have prevented this, but his own personal tragedy spreads to his people when he is unable to intervene.
Arthur Miller proved in 1949 (Death of a Salesman) that we do not need characters ‘of noble birth’ in fiction and non-fiction in the 20th century and beyond. But, we do need characters who possess some of the same traits, the main one being character. What do we mean by this? We mean that there should come a time in every prose narrative when the protagonist is faced with a crisis moment. The rising action has progressed sufficiently to arrive at that moment of truth, and at that moment (the point of no return), the protagonist must make a choice. Be sure that your character, when she arrives at this moment, has the strength of character to make that choice. We want our heroes to be strong characters. This does not mean they must be righteous, or even noble. Look at Macbeth; neither righteous nor noble, he is one of the most evil characters in all of literature. Macbeth provides the sternest test in literature for a ‘likeable’ protagonist. But there is a moment in the play when the reader can identify with whatever there is left of nobility and humanity in Macbeth (more on this later).
Once you have a character worthy of carrying the action of your plot, what else does characterization entail? You must demonstrate your character’s personality to your reader. You must bring your character to life by making her live and breathe on the page. For the reader, all stories must end; but, if you have drawn your character sufficiently, she will live on in your reader’s mind long after the story has ended.
Who are some of the memorable characters from literature that you have not forgotten? For me there are Charles Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge (A Christmas Carol) and Abel Magwitch (the convict from Great Expectations), from Dostoevsky there is Marmeladov (Crime and Punishment), from Joyce there is the unnamed narrator of “Araby,” from Fitzgerald there is Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby), from Faulkner there is Abner Snopes (“Barn Burning”), and from Hemingway there is Francis Macomber (“The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber”). Of course there are dozens more, but what makes these characters so memorable to me, why I remember them so clearly, is that in each case they are more ‘human’ that what you might expect from a fictional character in a book or story. They ‘live’ on the page. And what makes them ‘live’ are the very personal characteristics that are not necessarily unique to them, but that we can recognize in others, in ourselves, and that come together in very special ways in these characters to make them sympathetic in our eyes.
Ebenezer Scrooge was a miserly and miserable man (we’ve all known this type) who undergoes a magical transformation; Abel Magwitch was a convict who never forgot the kindness of a small boy; Marmeladov was a drunk who loved his family but could not keep himself from his cups; the narrator of Joyce’s “Araby” is a young fellow discovering the violent and undecipherable changes that make the girl next door suddenly irresistible; Jay Gatsby is an honorable rogue who once met a girl from ‘high society,’ and who cons his way into that society in order to win her back; Abner Snopes is a criminal and a thief whose pride refuses to bend to the will of another—any other; and Francis Macomber is a likeable coward who finds within him the will to power. Each of these is characterized by the author in ways that bring them to life. Here is Ebenezer Scrooge:
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir.”
“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”
“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
“You wish to be anonymous?”
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned — they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides — excuse me — I don’t know that.”
“But you might know it,” observed the gentleman.
“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge returned his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
It is small wonder that Dickens’s character’s name has become synonymous with the characteristic that he so fully illustrates. Haven’t you heard of someone referred to as a Scrooge?
And the young narrator from Joyce’s “Araby”:
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: “O love! O love!” many times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar, she said she would love to go.
“And why can’t you?” I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
“It’s well for you,” she said.
“If I go,” I said, “I will bring you something.”
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few questions in class. I watched my master’s face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play.
Not only is that ‘showing,’ but it’s masterful characterization: we know this boy, and will long remember him.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby is one of the most enigmatic and memorable of literature’s characters. Here, he has finally re-connected with his high-society love, and is showing her his resplendent mansion:
He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs.
His bedroom was the simplest room of all — except where the dresser was garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush with delight, and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and shaded his eyes and began to laugh.
“It’s the funniest thing, old sport,” he said hilariously. “I can’t — When I try to ——”
He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.
Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.
“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”
He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher — shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, and monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.
“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.”
And here Fitzgerald has characterized not only Gatsby, but Daisy, too, by her reaction to the shirts. Yes, she does still love him.
How does one accomplish such vivid characterization? By all means possible. By descriptions, by dialog, by actions, by personality quirks, by all the things that real people have and do that make them unique and different from the mass of other people.
My brother is an interesting guy; not because he is my brother, but because he has some unique personality traits that make him stand out. I have sisters who I love very much, and each of whom has interesting personality traits. But my brother’s are more ‘out there,’ let us say. One of his ‘quirks’ is that he never leaves a telephone message that is not a lengthy comic routine, delivered in the affected comic voice of the comedian “Professor” Irwin Corey (YouTube him, that’s the voice), that is filled with non-sequiturs and asides that circle one another like a verbal labyrinth. In the pre-digital days of tape cassettes, the tape would sometimes run out before he had completed his message. This is a character trait that is a) sometimes exasperating, but b) always endearing, and that makes for, in either case, a memorable and unique personality trait.
If you have seen the 1980’s television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, you may recall that Captain Jean-Luc Picard (portrayed by Sir Patrick Stewart) had a personality quirk: he was constantly tugging with both hands at the hem of his uniform.
I suspect that my brother’s comic routines have always masked his unease with language, and that Captain Picard’s pulling at his tunic somehow made him feel taller. If you give your character a quirk, make sure that it symbolizes something in his makeup. In Herman Wouk’s 1950 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Caine Mutiny, Captain Queeg rolls in one hand two large metal ball bearings, a personality trait by which we remember him. The behavior is compulsive: it marks the character’s paranoia and symbolizes his flaws.
LIKEABLE PROTAGONIST
There is a time-worn precept in the narrative tradition that requires that your protagonist must be a ‘likeable’ character. Or, if not ‘likeable,’ that he must possess some aspect of character with which your reader can identify. Why? Because it is that level of ‘identification’ that keeps your reader turning pages. If you are writing a mafia story, and your reader doesn’t like mafia stories or characters, you may write a brilliant novel, but your reader won’t get past page two. He’s just not interested, and doesn’t identify with those kinds of people. If, on the other hand, you write a story about a mafia family whose youngest son also hates the mafia, and does everything in his power to get an education and distance himself from the family, then you have a character that this particular reader can identify with. This is Michael Corleone in Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather. In Francis Ford Coppola’s film, The Godfather Part III, for which Puzo wrote the screenplay, there is a moment in the film when Michael Corleone says: Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Do we like Michael Corleone? No. But we identify with his desire to live a life separate from this ‘family business.’
Likewise, you will recall that I wrote earlier that Shakespeare’s Macbeth presents the sternest test in literature for a ‘likeable’ character. He is perhaps the most vile and evil character in all of literature, killing everyone he once called ‘family’ and ‘friend.’ Can we like this character? No. Can we identify with him? Still no. After all, he has a chance to provide the right answer when Lady Macbeth presses him to kill the king. What is the right answer? No! When Lady Macbeth counsels him to “look like th’innocent flower,/But be the serpent under’t” (I.v.65-66), this is the moment when he has a chance to provide the right answer. But he does not. What does he say? “We will speak further.” (I,v.71). But this is the wrong answer. In no universe is this the right answer.
Then how can Macbeth fulfill the precept that a protagonist must be ‘likeable?’ Because there is a moment in the play—only one, but a significant one—when Macbeth acts like the hero we want him to be. It occurs during the famous soliloquy in which he considers his relation to King Duncan, and reflects (to the effect) that he’s my kinsman, he’s my king, he’s been a good king, he’s been very good to me, he’s my guest, I’m his host, and everyone loves him. Lady Macbeth enters, and Macbeth utters the line that finds its root in the reader’s sympathies: “We will proceed no further in this business” (I.vii.13-31). That is the right answer, and we applaud Macbeth for his morality, his loyalty, his humanity. Now he is our hero. Granted, it doesn’t last long, and Lady Macbeth eventually does turn him round again to kill the king, but for this moment he was the noble hero. Like Michael Corleone, his instincts are good, but he lacks the strength of character to fulfill his convictions.