Character

Judge Holden, from Cormac McCarthys Blood Meridian

(1985).

Based on a real person, who joined the Glanton Gang of

murderers, torturers, rapists, and scalp hunters operating
across the American-Mexico border in the 19th century.

In the novel, Holden is exceptionally intelligent,

charismatic, but also the epitome of absolute evil.

He murders many people, including children, who he

entices with candy, rapes, and then kills.

He is 7ft tall, completely bereft of any body hair, pale as a

ghost, unnaturally strong, and just might be the devil
himself.
Character
Jeff The Dude Lebowski, from The Big Lebowski (1998)

Single, unemployed, and whose hobbies include smoking

weed, drinking White Russians, and bowling.

Also known as His Dudeness or El Duderino, if youre

not into the whole brevity thing.

His character inspired the philosophy of Dudeism,

which is a real thing. March 6 is the holy day of
Dudeism: The Day of the Dude.

Its philosophy, based on The Dude, is about going with

the flow, taking it easy, and being cool headed in the
face of lifes difficulties. Basically its about how
laziness, idleness, and not giving too much of a flying
f*** is our salvation.

The Dude abides.

Character
Pyramid Head or Sankaku Atama, from the Silent Hill series
of horror video games.

His character is a horrific personification of protagonist

James Sutherlands repressed anger and penitence.

In the series, he stalks the claustrophobic corridors of the

vacant town, and he is probably the most shocking
monstrosities in gaming history. I mean, look at him.

Hes huge, muscular, and wears a bigass metal pyramid on

his head (hence the name), and carries a knife roughly he
size of a helicopter blade.

We first encounter him having twisted sex with another of

the games nightmare creations, and his presence in the
game serves to keep players in a perpetual state of dread.
Character
Stagger Lee, from a popular 20th century American folk
song thats gone through many reproductions.

Based on a real person, Lee Shelton, a pimp who

murdered a guy named Billy Lyons in 1895.

In reality, he got into a fight with Billy in a bar, shot him,

and then just quietly picked up his hat and left.

Since then, hes become a myth, and his characterization

varies with the many different reproductions of the
original song.

His best characterization, I think, is in Nick Caves 1996

version of the song. Hes just the most horrendous as well
as awe-inspiring character you could ever imagine.

Listen to the song and youll understand what I mean.

 Character
[C]haracters loom large in the experience of fiction,
for both its writers and its readers As readers of
fiction, we care about what happens and how mainly
because it happens to someone (Norton, 218).

Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after

your characters have run by on their way to incredible
destinations (Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of
Writing, 139).
 Character
[My writing] begins with a
character, usually, and once he
stands up on his feet and begins
to move, all I can do is trot
along behind him with a paper
and pencil trying to keep up
long enough to put down what
he says and does.
 Character: A Definition
A character is any personage in a literary work
who acts, appears, or is referred to as playing a
part. Though personage usually means a human
being, it doesnt have to. [Think Lord of the Rings,
for example, or Ian McEwans Nutshell, which is
told from the perspective of an unborn baby]. All
characters must have at least some human
qualities, however, such as the ability to think, to
feel pain, or to fall in love (Norton, 219).
 Analyzing Character: Checklist
When thinking about a character in a fictional work, consider:

The characters name

Sometimes a character has a name, like Bob, that holds no greater

significance. But sometimes a characters name might provide more insight
into a characters personality or significance within the story.

For example, John Self, from Martin Amis Money (1984), is a disgusting
pig of a man who thinks only of his own sexual and material gratification,
hence his last name. But John is such a common, Everyman namee.g.
John Doethat Amis is therefore also suggesting that all of us have a little
John Self inside us.
 Analyzing Character: Checklist
When thinking about a character in a fictional work, consider:

The characters physical appearance

Sometimes a characters physical appearancethe way they look and dress

will provide you with an insight into that characters personality or
significance within the story.

For example, the clothes that Jeff The Dude Lebowski always wears
dressing gown, cargo shorts, sandals, and his legendary Westerley cardigan
as well as his long hair and unkempt goatee suggests a man who really
doesnt give that much of a flying fornication about external appearance and
the aesthetic standards of society at large.
 Analyzing Character: Checklist
When thinking about a character in a fictional work, consider:

Objects and places associated with the character

Often, where a character lives or hangs out and what a character

carries around or has in their possession suggests something about
them that isnt stated directly.

Take Shrek, for example. Shrek loves his swamp. Shreks swamp says
something about him as a character. Hes filthy, disgusting, smelly and
green, but also lonely, forgotten, and definitely in need of a womans
touch.
 Analyzing Character: Checklist
When thinking about a character in a fictional work, consider:

A characters actions

How you act often says something about who you are as a person. For example, if you
give up your seat on a busy bus to an elderly person, that usually means your mama
brought you up to be a good person. If, however, you refuse to give up your seat or
pretend not to see the old person desperately hanging on for dear life, then its safe to
assume that youre a bit of a douche.

In fictionespecially stories told from an objective 3 rd-person perspectiveyou should

study how a character acts in order to get a better or more considered idea of who they are.

As Anton Chekhov once wrote in a letter to his brother, Alexander, in 1887: Be sure not
to discuss your heros state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.
 Analyzing Character: Checklist
When thinking about a character in a fictional work, consider:

A characters thoughts and speech

Your personality manifests itself not just through what you do, but also
what you think or say, when you think or say it, and how you think or say
it.

Sometimes a character might do something nice, like welcome a blind man

into their home. But their thoughts and speech might suggest something
else about them, just as the thoughts and speech of the narrator of Raymond
Carvers Cathedral indicates his prejudice and ignorance.
 Analyzing Character: Checklist
When thinking about a character in a fictional work, consider:

What other characters think and say about and to the character

As the comedian Louis C.K. says, Self-love is a good thing but self-awareness is more important.
You need to once in a while go, Uh, Im kind of an asshole. What you think or say about
yourself doesnt always cohere with how others see you.

The same goes for fiction. Sometimes a character will tell you, the reader, how great and amazing
they are. But then you should also consider what other characters say about them, and why.

Think Jack Nicholsons character Melvin Udall in As Good as it Gets (1997). Hes an OCD-
suffering, racist, misogynistic misanthrope who thinks hes great. He therefore doesnt like it
when other characters tell him what a Grade-A asshole he is.

As my fellow Scot, Robert Burns, once wrote: O wid some Power the giftie gie us / Tae see
oursels as ithers see us. Translation: wouldnt it be great if we had the power to see ourselves as
others see us.
 Analyzing Character: Checklist
When thinking about a character in a fictional work, consider:

What the narrator says about the character

Fiction that is narrated from a 3 rd-person omniscient or limited

perspective will often include the thoughts of the narrator about a
specific character. These might be sympathetic, complimentary,
mocking, negative, etc.

Think, for example, of how the narrators external comments

about Abner in Barn Burning differ from Sartys and therefore
influence out own understanding.
 Types of Characters
Heroes, Heroines, and Villains

Heroes and heroines are usually larger than life, stronger or better than most human beings,
sometimes almost godlike. They are characters that the text encourages us to admire and even to
emulate (Norton, 219).

Beowulf, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the warrior princess, Xena, are all heroes or heroines.

Villains are the bad guys. They represent everything that is bad and evil and dark in the world.

The Joker, Lord Voldemort, Darth Vader, and the Russian team from D2: The Mighty Ducks are
all villains.

As your text says, however, most modern fiction has more ordinary, down-to-earth heroes and
heroines, so it is perhaps better to describe them as protagonists and their adversaries as
antagonists. But its still productive to ask if a modern protagonist, like Willy Loman, is a hero or
not.
 Types of Characters
Antiheroes

Talking about Heroes/Heroines vs. Villians, the Good Guys vs. the Bad
Guys, Light vs. Darkness, etc. is perhaps too simplistic a way of looking
at the world and the people who inhabit it. Lifes more complicated than
that.

Antiheroes have virtues, but they are also difficult to like or admire.

For example, John Miltons Satan has heroic or admirable traits: he

fights against authoritarianism and defends existential freedoms. But
hes alsoSatan, and he does, says, and thinks things that are
reprehensible. Same goes for Batman, or Homer Simpson, or Dirty
Harry, or Scarface, orhe list is endless.
 Types of Characters
Main and Minor Characters

The major or main characters are those we see more of over time; we learn
more about them, and we think of them as more complex and, frequently, as
more realistic than the minor characters, the figures who fill out the story.
These major characters can grow and change, too, sometimes defying our
expectations (Norton, 220).

But minor characters can sometimes play an important part in character

development. Take Harry Potter, for example. The main character in Harry
Potter is, of course, Harry Potter. Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, is a
minor character. But Draco plays a key role in shaping our interpretations
of, and attitudes towards, Harry. Draco therefore functions as a foila
character that helps by way of contrast to reveal the unique qualities of
another (especially main) character (Norton, 220).
 Types of Characters
Round and Flat Characters

A round character is a protagonist or antagonist who has psychological complexity and/or acts from varied, often
conflicting motives impulses, and desires.

Think about Hamlet, for example. Hes complex, idiosyncratic, moody, introspective, spontaneous and rash,
philosophical, sensitive, disturbed, intelligenthes the epitome of the modern hyperconscious human.

A flat character is a protagonist or antagonist who is one-dimensional and speaks, thinks, and acts in predictable or
repetitive ways.

Think about Queen Gertrude, for example. She seems weak-willed, walks blindly through life, and seems oblivious
to the machinations going on around her. Claudius and Polonius use her easily as a tool to spy on her son. She
remains passive, flat, and shows no signs of transformation until shes choking on poisoned wine at the end of the
play.

You shouldnt be too dismissive of flat characters, however. As your text says: A truly original flat character with
only one or two very distinctive traits or behavioural or verbal tics will often prove more memorable than a round
one (Norton, 221).

Think about Kenny from South Park, for example. He has zero dialogue and always seems to die. But hes one of the
greatest creations of that show. Or Milton from Office Space. He is quiet, passive, and gets used and abused by
everyone around him. But you could argue he is the ultimate hero because of what he does at the end of the movie.
William Faulkner, Barn Burning (1932)
Q. What narrative perspective is this story told from?

Third-person limited. There is an external narrator,

who tells the story but who is not included in the
action. The narrator focuses in on the character of
the young boy, Sarty, giving us insight into his inner
thoughts (shown through the use of italics),
providing information about the father that the boy,
then, does not know, and even comments on how
Sarty might see the events of the story in the future.
Q. A good example of the narrators conjecturing about how Sarty might see things later in life
comes on page 228, paragraph 25. Read this paragraph again, and explain the stages of how Surty,
according to the narrator, might consider the significance of why his father burned small fires when
they were on the road.

According to the narrator, an older Sarty might first question why a man who had seen the waste
and extravagance of war and who stole and used other peoples property without a second
thought might make such small fires. This still seems quite a nave or underdeveloped view of his
father and his fathers motivations.

The narrator then states that Sarty might think about it more critically, looking for a deeper
significance. Perhaps it was the consequence of this fathers many nights hiding as a vagabond
from both armies during the Civil War? This perspective seems to suggest a development in
Sartys view of his father. Instead of seeing him as courageousa view he clings to at the end of
the storythe sarcastic tone used to describe the stolen horsescaptured horses, [his father]
called themsuggests that Sarty will see his fathers wartime exploits differently with time.

Finally, the narrator suggests that, older still, Sarty might divine the true reason: that fire was
a symbol and element of resistance or defiance for his father, and hence to be regarded with
respect and used with discretion.
Q. What expository details do we learn about Sarty in, say, the first 3 pages of
the story? Look over these pages again yourself, or with a partner, and try to
pick out at least one solid piece of evidence.

Hes hungry, uneducated (he cant read the tins of food), and poor (he
wears patched and faded jeans even too small for him and hes barefoot).

Hes obviously very young too. This is suggested by how the Justice of
Peace and Harris treat him, and by his own terrified sense of events, which
is described in a defamiliarized way from the perspective of a child: he
saw the men between himself and the table part and become a lane of grim
faces, at the end of which he saw the Justice, a shabby, collarless, graying
man in spectacles, beckoning him. He felt no floor under his bare feet; he
seemed to walk beneath the palpable weight of the grim turning faces (my
emphasis). There also a great simile in paragraph 10 describing Sartys
terrified anticipation that could only come from the imagination of a child.
 There is a wildness in him, a brooding independence, which is opposite to his
fathers cold eyes and descriptions of his siblings as passive cattle: eyes
gray and wild as storm scud. You might consider his siblings as foils: they are
docile, passive, lumbering.

There is the suggestion of conflict between Sarty and his father. While he feels
the old fierce pull of blood, which suggests a blood-bond to his kin, he has
to remind himself that his fathers enemies are his enemies too: He could not
see his fathers enemy (our enemy he thought in that despair; ourn! mine
and hisn both! Hes my father!) Hes also obviously conflicted that he is
going to have to lie to help his father: He aims for me to lie, he thought, again
with that frantic grief and despair. And I will have to do hit.

Hes also got a strong and violent sense of pride, as he tries to attack some kid
for mocking him. This seems to be in his familys blood, as his father certainly
has it; and its something Sarty will fight against as the story progresses.
Q. Where in the story would you locate the inciting incident?

You were fixing to tell them [about my guilt]. You would have
told him. [Sarty] didnt answer. His father struck him with the flat
of his hand on the side of the head, hard but without heat, exactly
as he had struck the two mules at the store : Youre getting to
be a man. You got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own
blood or you aint going to have any blood to stick to you
Later, twenty years later, he was to tell himself, If I had said they
wanted only truth, justice, he would have hit me again. But now
he said nothing (my emphasis).

This incident changes things for Sarty, even if he cant articulate

why. Look at page 229, paragraph 39. What significance does this
passage hold in terms of Sartys character development?
Q. Where in the story would you locate the inciting incident?

You were fixing to tell them [about my guilt]. You would have told
him. [Sarty] didnt answer. His father struck him with the flat of his
hand on the side of the head, hard but without heat, exactly as he had
struck the two mules at the store : Youre getting to be a man. You
got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you aint
going to have any blood to stick to you Later, twenty years later,
he was to tell himself, If I had said they wanted only truth, justice,
he would have hit me again. But now he said nothing (my
emphasis).

Sarty is handicapped by his age, but there definitely seems to be a

developing desire for a vague freedomfrom his situation, his
father? He seems to be at the borderline between youth and a desire
for independence
Q. At one point the in story, Sarty thinks that maybe his father couldnt help but
be who he is. What motives and values drive and explain him? What might be
admirable, as well as abhorrent, about him? By yourself, with a partner, or in a group,
try to come up with an answer to the question: What is Abner Snopes? Freewrite for 5
mins if youre coming up blank.

Hes constantly described as cold, harsh, stiff (this adjective is used constantly),
with irascible brows.

He has an absolute contempt for law, privilege, and who people today describe as
the 1% (i.e. that small portion of society who have the majority of wealth and
power). The fact that he deliberately trails horseshit over the nice, expensive rug of
his employer highlights this.

This defiance is something the boy admires; its why he sticks up for his father at
the second court session, and there is a great bonding scene when the father
controls the horse with his son after they deliver the rug back to the mansion.
 He was shot during the Civil War, not as a soldier, but as a thief stealing horses.
While Sarty thinks his father was a brave soldier during that war, he was, in
actuality, a mercenary: his father had gone to that war a private in the fine old
European sense, wearing no uniform, admitting the authority of and giving fidelity
to no man or army or flag, going to war for booty Its up to you, really, if
you think his non-partisan, independent, freebooting ways are admirable or not.

There was something about his wolf-like independence and even courage when
the advantage was at least neutral which impressed strangers, as if they got from
his latent ravening ferocity not so much a sense of dependability as a feeling that
his ferocious conviction in the rightness of his own actions would be of advantage
to all whose interest lay with his.

While the concepts of independence and courage seem admirable, Abners actions
in pursuit of these ideals seem maniacal, ferocious, unbending, and of a benefit
not to all people, but only those to expect to gain from it. His convictions, while
admirable, seem extremely blinkered and stiff.
 [Sarty] merely ate his supper beside [the fire] and was already
half asleep over his iron plate when his father called him, and
once more he followed the stiff back, the stiff and ruthless
limp, up the slope and on to the starlit road where, turning, he
could see his father against the stars but without face or depth
a shape black, flat, and bloodless as though cut from tin in
the iron folds of the frockcoat which had not been made for
him, the voice harsh like tin and without heat like tin.

The repetition of stiff and the description of his father being

without face or depthand bloodless as though cut from tin
makes him seem cold, metallic, unemotional, and non-human.
Q. How is Sarty characterized? Does he change or develop over the course of the
story? Again, freewrite if youre mind is blank.

He hates lying for his father, and he wishes his father would stop doing all the
mad things he does. But he doesnt dare tell his father this at the beginning of
the story.

The mansion house holds the promise of stability and peace for Sarty, but his
fathers actions shatter that nave ideal. As he thinks to himself at one point, a
day or so before his father decides to burn down the barn: Maybe this is the
end of it. Maybe even that twenty bushels that seems hard to have to pay for
just a rug will be a cheap price for him to stop forever and always from being
what he used to be.

Hes obviously got a different sense of justice to his father. Sartys involves due
process, the law; Abners involves burning shit to the ground.
 The climax to the storywhen Abner tells Sarty to fetch the oil to
burn down the barnalso seems to suggest at shift in Sartys
character. He hesitates, questions his father, shows his defiance. As
Faulkner writes: The boy did not move. Then he could speak.

Look at page 235, paragraph 88. What significance does blood

hold in this passage?

First of all, he wants to fight against his old blood, his familys
genetic disposition towards violence and vengeance. He is
showing a desire to act upon his own free will. But he cant,
because the old fierce pull of blood he felt right at the beginning
of the story is too strong to defy.
Q. Sartys father and brother tie him up to make
sure he doesnt break free and inform de Spain
of their intentions. But, of course, he does break
free, and he does inform de Spain, who rushes
out and supposedly kills Sartys father and
brother. Do you think Sarty makes the right
choice in informing de Spain? What would
youve done?
Q. The conclusion to the story has Sarty sitting
on the crest of a hill at midnight, a setting
which suggests Sarty being at some kind of
turning point in his life. Read the last paragraph
of the story and analyze its significance. What
conclusion does this story come to in terms of
Sarty as a character?