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Characters in Fiction
The term character applies to any individual in a literary work. For purposes of analysis, characters in fiction are customarily described by their relationship to plot, by the degree of development they are given by the author, and by whether or not they undergo significant character change.
The major, or central, character of the plot is the protagonist; his opponent, the character against whom the protagonist struggles or contends is the antagonist. The protagonist is usually easy to identify: he or she is the essential character without whom there would be no plot in the first place. It is the protagonist’s fate on which the attention of the reader is focused. The terms protagonist and antagonist do not, however, imply a judgment about the moral worth of either, for many protagonists and antagonists (like their counterparts in real life) embody a complex mixture of both positive and negative qualities. For this reason they are more suitable terms than hero, heroine, or villain, which connote a degree of moral absoluteness that major characters in great fictional works, as opposed, say, to popular melodrama, simply do not exhibit.
To describe the relative degree to which fictional characters are developed by their creators, E. M. Forster distinguishes between what he calls flat and round characters. Flat characters are those who embody or represent a single characteristic, trait, or idea, or at most a very limited number of such qualities. Flat characters are also referred to as type characters, as one-dimensional characters, or when they are distorted to create humor, as caricatures. As in the case in many of Dickens’ novels, they often serve as convenient vehicles for humour and satire. These characters and their deeds are always predictable and never vary.
Flat characters are usually minor actors in the novels and stories in which they appear, but not always so. Flat characters have much in common with the kind of stock characters who appear again and again in certain types of literary works: e.g., the rich uncle of domestic comedy, the hard-boiled private eye of the detective story, the female confidante of the romance, and the mustachioed villain of old-fashioned drama.
Round characters are just the opposite. They embody a number of qualities and traits, and are complex multidimensional characters of considerable intellectual and emotional depth who have the capacity to grow and change. Major characters in fiction are usually round characters, and it is with the very complexity of such characters that most of us become engrossed and fascinated. The terms round and flat do not automatically imply value judgements. Each kind of character has its uses in literature. Even when they are minor characters, as they usually are, flat characters often are convenient devices to draw out and help us to understand the personalities of characters who are more fully realized. Finally, round characters are not necessarily more alive or more convincing than flat ones. If they are, it is because the author has succeeded in making them so.
Characters in fiction can also be distinguished on the basis of whether they demonstrate the capacity to develop or change as the result of their experiences. Dynamic characters exhibit a capacity to change; static characters do not. As might be expected, , the degree and rate of character change varies widely, even among dynamic characters. In some works, the development is so subtle that it may go almost unnoticed; in others, it is sufficiently drastic and profound to cause a total reorganization of the character’s personality or system of values. Change in character may come slowly and incrementally over many pages and chapters, or it may take place with a dramatic suddenness that surprises, and even overwhelms, the character. With characters who fully qualify as dynamic, such change can be expected to alter subsequent behaviour in some significant way.
Dynamic characters include the protagonists in most novels, which by virtue of their very size and scope provide excellent vehicles for illustrating the process of change. So-called initiation novels, such as David Copperfield, Huckleberry Finn and the Great Gatsby, are examples. In each case the author has arranged the events of the plot so that they reveal the slow and painful maturing of the young protagonist coming into contact with the world of adult experience.
Static characters leave the plot as they entered it, largely untouched by the events that have taken place. Although static characters tend to be minor ones, because the author’s principal focus is elsewhere, this is not always the case. Olenka, the protagonist of Anton Chekhov’s The Darling, is a static character whose essential qualities are submissiveness and blind devotion. Without opinions, personality, or inner resources of her own, she passes through a series of relationships which leave her character essentially unchanged. But protagonists like Olenka are comparatively rare; for the most part, the author creates static characters as foils to emphasize and set off by contrast the development taking place in others.
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