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Characterization through Action, Thought, Appearance & Name

Writers have a hard job. With only words, they must create characters who seem to live and breathe, who are different from the other characters in the story and who stay consistent throughout. Or if they change the change has to be believable.

A friend of mine who likes “The Walking Dead” jokes that if a character suddenly becomes much more sympathetic and likable, they have a week to live, maybe two. Many viewers critique TV shows based on how believable the characters are. And they may not like it when a character changes just to suit the plot.

People change for real reasons, and they act based on real motives, even if those motives aren’t clear to them. Fans of “Breaking Bad”

argue about the main character’s motives. He turned to dealing drugs after a terminal cancer diagnosis because he wanted to leave something for his family. But does he keep dealing drugs for that reason, or does he have hidden motives? That’s part of what makes him interesting. We wonder who he is at his core – a caring father and husband who wants to provide for his family, or a bold battler who wants to live on the edge? Can someone be both? What makes them change from one to the other? How do different people deal with a terminal diagnosis?

So how do writers do it? They have a few techniques.

Some of the main ways writers characterize people

Action under pressure

Pressure and crisis reveal character. Nora and Torvald’s actions in the face of possible disaster at the end of “A Doll’s House” reveal so much about each to the other that the marriage is changed forever.

Figure 1: Andrea from "The Walking Dead"

Figure 2: Does bad news reveal who someone really is or change them?

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The family in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” faces the threat of death. Some of you in the forum wondered why they reacted so passively. Was it shock, denial, or a character flaw? In this scene, the mother seems to be in shock while the daughter is unaware of the danger:

The children's mother had begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn't get her breath. "Lady," he asked, "would you and that little girl like to step off yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your husband?" "Yes, thank you," the mother said faintly. Her left arm dangled helplessly and she was holding the baby, who had gone to sleep, in the other. "Hep that lady up, Hiram," The Misfit said as she struggled to climb out of the ditch, "and Bobby Lee, you hold onto that little girl's hand." "I don't want to hold hands with him," June Star said. "He reminds me of a pig."

And here is the father, Bailey,

"Listen," Bailey began, “we're in a terrible predicament! Nobody realizes what this is,” and his voice cracked. His eyes were as blue and intense as the parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still.

Hmm. What do you think? His blue eyes might have been compared to the sky or the ocean, but no: O’Connor compares them to parrots on a shirt. Not very flattering. Not much courage here. Unless it was the grandmother. At first she seems terrified,

Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, "Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing.

But she has a moment, if not of courage then of love. But perhaps in this situation love takes the most courage:

Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there [when Jesus was alive] I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.

Comment [CE1]: Quotes longer than 3 sentences are indented 5 spaces like this. It’s known as a block quote.

Comment [CE2]: Sounds like shock.

Comment [CE3]: June Star is as snippy here as she is in the opening scene, when she speaks rudely to her grandmother. The lack of change implies great courage or obliviousness. Is she characterized enough for us to know?

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Action in small matters

You also get to know someone by small actions – the way they put on a hat or wash a child’s face. In scolding Nora for eating sweets at the start of A Doll’s House, Torvald shows himself to be a stereotypical overhearing husband. And in keeping secrets from him about small things and then large, Nora fits the stereotypical wife of the time too. Can we see any change in The Misfit after he has killed a whole family? Notice how he treats a cat:

Without his glasses, The Misfit's eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her off and thow her where you shown the others," he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg.

And watch how Sammy in “A & P” takes off his apron after he quits. “I fold the apron, ‘Sammy’ stitched in red on the pocket, and put it on the counter, and drop the bow tie on top of it.” How might a different character quit a job? For up to 20 Bonus Points, write a scene in which a character we have met quits a job. Try to make the way they do it fit the way you see their character. Use any character from the reading / viewing or from any film mentioned in the forum.

In the film “Identity” some small actions loom large. When the main character takes off her mask, it’s a symbolic act. As several people pointed out in the forum, by that act she reclaims her true identity. She reveals herself as a certain type of person, a non-conformist. Another small act that looms large might be a character turning their wedding ring meditatively. As you read A Doll’s House look for small acts that reveal character.

Thoughts

Think how well you’d know someone if you could hear their thoughts. In the famous balcony scene, Romeo overhears Juliet thinking aloud about him. This lets him see into her heart. In John Updike’s story “A & P,” we overhear perhaps more than we want to of Sammy’s thoughts as he judges the shoppers, “the sheep in their slots,” and appraises the three young women in bathing suits. Some films use voice-overs that let us hear the main character’s thoughts – a shortcut to characterization. “Cathedral,” an optional read in Week 6, is full of characterization of the main character through his thoughts and actions. But does he change at the end? How? This scene reveals new thoughts and new, strange actions that the man might never have taken at the start of the story, when he was grumbling about a visit from “some blind guy,” a friend of his wife’s. After they have had dinner and relaxed together, the blind man asks him to draw a cathedral and to let him follow along, hand to hand, to feel his movements.

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"Close your eyes now," the blind man said to me. I did it. I closed them just like he said. [He’s more cooperative than he was before] "Are they closed?" he said. "Don't fudge." "They're closed," I said. "Keep them that way," he said. He said, "Don't stop now. Draw." So we kept on with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now. [His thoughts show he is amazed] Then he said, "I think that's it. I think you got it," he said. "Take a look. What do you think?" But I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do. [He seems to want to experience blindness. Before this, he was close-minded and biased against people who can’t see. Now he’s opening his mind.] "Well?" he said. "Are you looking?" My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything. "It's really something," I said. [He didn’t open his eyes. So he’s talking about this feeling of not being “inside anything.” He has had what James Joyce called an Epiphany – a sudden realization, a moment of being larger than yourself. Changed.]

Appearance

Some say the face reflects the soul. Others say don’t judge a book by its cover. Either way, we do find out things about a person by how they look and dress. Even posture and body language can reveal who is inside and what kind of mood they’re in. The young woman in Kate Chopin’s story “The Story of an Hour” is characterized first by how she acts when she learns of her husband’s supposed death: “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.” Sometime later her body language and appearance are described:

Figure 3: John Boyega as Finn in Star Wars

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She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky.

Name

Albus Dumbledore, Lord Voldemort, Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, Charity Burbage – J. K. Rowling was a brilliant namer. The characters in this list have names that are interesting, original and fitting. For 10 bonus points, if you have read in the Harry Potter series, choose one character and discuss how their name fits their character.

Rowling may have picked up her naming skill from another massively popular British author, Charles Dickens. Here is a well known but not well liked school teacher he created, characterized first by how he speaks. Here he is instructing a new teacher:

“Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the mind of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”

After we’ve heard more of his opinions and bossy tone, we find out his name: Mr. Grandgrind. Fits, right? And what about Krogstad , the money lender so important in A Doll’s House? Not a very nice guy with a not very nice name. In fact it means crooked in the writer’s native Norwegian.

Two other Methods: Telling and Flashbacks

In plays and film, there is usually no narrator explicitly telling the story. But fiction has the advantage of a story teller, a narrator, who can just come out and tell us what kind of person we’re dealing with. “My aunt seemed incredibly course to me,” Jamaica Kincaid tells us. “She didn’t have my mother’s graceful ways.” We’re told, not shown. Perhaps if this short story were a whole novel, we would be shown through her actions and thoughts why the aunt was less “bourgeoisie” (to use Kincaid’s own term) than the mother.

Telling instead of showing works really well when there is an omniscient narrator, one who knows all, even the thoughts and childhoods of the characters. Let’s look again at Chopin’s young woman. We’ve been shown how she’s sitting and what she looks like – things we could see if we were there. We’re also told that she’s gazing at a patch of blue sky in the distance. Then this: “It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.” We might say nowadays that she is “spacing out.” This is the narrator telling us

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what’s going on inside the character. If “The Camel and His Friends” had an omniscient narrator, we might have been told from the start that the fox was not the type to be trusted. As it is, we’re left to figure that out by the fox’s actions. His name helps too.

We all know that a person’s childhood is a big influence. In the poem “Sugarcane,” the poet tells the story of a time when she wished she had a different name, and how her mother reacted. This changed and shaped her, made her who she is. Sarah Kay’s poem “Ghost Ship” opens with her remembering how she and her brother used to “shove the words [of a song] at each other as if it were a competition to see who could get them out the fastest.” This memory characterizes each of them and the brother-sister relationship. Some of you felt, in the forum, that you would have liked more about the brother. A heartbreak is hinted at but never revealed. Or it might just have been that life is tough for everyone growing up.

In A Doll’s House, Nora’s childhood relationship with her father shaped and limited her in ways she starts to realize over the course of the play.

For up to 20 Bonus Points, describe an early childhood experience of yours and reflect on how it helped form your character. Email your description to me with these instructions.