UNIT 2

CHARACTER AND CHARACTERIZATION

A. Character
Kennedy (1983:45) tries to define character as an imagined person who inhabits a
story. But, this definition, as he himself admits, is over simplified, for, in a story, the
protagonist can be the wind, as in Storm, a novel by George Stewart, or rabbit, as in Water
Ship Down by Richard Adams. Usually, in the main characters of a story, we recognize
human personalities that become familiar to us.
Abrams (1971:20) defines character as a literary genre: a short, and usually witty,
sketch in prose of a distinctive type of person. The genre was inaugurated by
Theophrastus, a Greek author of the second century B.C., who wrote a lively book called
Characters.
Further, Abrams quotes a definition of characters: the person, in a dramatic or
narrative work, endowed with moral and dispositional qualities that are expressed in what
they say (the dialogue), and what they do (the action). The grounds in a character’s
temperament and moral nature for his speech and actions constitute his motivation.
According to Bowen (1946:250), the term “creation of character (or characters)”
is misleading. For her, characters pre-exist. They are found and recognized by the story
writer, but not created. They reveal themselves slowly to the story writer’s perception.
The novelist’s perceptions of his characters take place in the course of the actual writing
of the novel. To an extent, the novelist is in the same position as his reader, but his
perception should be always just in advance.
As Kennedy has pointed out above, stories may happen not only to people but also
to elements of nature such as the wind, the wave, grass or stone, or even animals. The
story will exist only because these things will be treated as if they were human rather than
as what we know they are in nature, with the exception of stories with animals as
characters. We can have fable, in which the animals are taken as human beings, and
animal stories in which the animals are told as animals. George Orwell in Animal Farm
uses animals to act like human beings, while we also recognize other stories like horse
stories and dog stories, which are stories about horses or dogs.
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We read fiction at least because we are intended in what happens to people. We

do not ask that they necessarily be like ourselves, but we do ask that people in the story
be believable, and that these characters be consistent.

B. Characterization
To be believable or convincing, characterization must observe at least three
principles. First, the characters must be consistent in their behavior. They must not behave
one way on one occasion and a different way on another unless there is a clearly sufficient
reason for the change. In other words, a character may remain essentially “stable” or
unchanged in his outlook and dispositions from the beginning to the end of a work, or he
may undergo a radical change, either through a gradual development or as the result of
an extreme crisis. Whether he remains stable or changes, we require consistency in a
character – he should not suddenly break off and act in a way not plausibly grounded in
his temperament as we already have come to know it.
Second, the characters must clearly be motivated in whatever they do, especially
when there is any change in their behavior: we must be able to understand the reasons for
what they do, if not immediately, at least by the end of the story. We are interested to
know that characters act from known motives.
Third, the characters must be plausible of lifelike, credible, realistic, probable. If
the writer can meet the second principle, the third will automatically be realized. The
credibility of character can be achieved by meeting the second principle, i.e., his clear
motivation of taking any action. A character who is introduced as an always skeptical
person cannot suddenly allowed to make a prompt firm decision unless we are informed
about all the possible reasons for him to do so. His motives for taking action deviating
from his known nature must be explained.
The character must be neither paragons of virtue nor monster of evil nor an
impossible combination of contradictory traits. Whether we have observed anyone like
them in our experience or not, we must feel that they have come from the author’s
experience that they could appear somewhere in the normal course of events. We are
interested to read about lifelike people, people of flesh and blood, not a superhuman who
are good in doing trick and magic. We are interested to read deal people, people with fear
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and courage, with emotion and sentiment, rational people, people with hope for life,
people with strength and weaknesses. Real and realistic people.
According to Jahn (2002), there are six main aspects to be considered in analyzing
character, they are how is the character described, by whom is the character described,
how is the characterization distributed throughout the text, how reliable is the source of
information, what do we learn about a character’s inner life and in which arrangements
of contrasts and correspondence is the character depicted.
1. Explicit and implicit characterization
The most obvious technique of characterization is when someone (in the following
excerpt: narrator) tells us explicitly what a character is like:
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, rich, with a comfortable home and happy
disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence: and had
lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
(Austen, Emma).
A character is sometimes also characterized explicitly through a telling name, as for
instance Squire Allworthy, who is a worthy gentleman in all respects, in Fielding’s
Tom Jones. But we also deduce character-trats that are given implicitly through the
character’s action, other characters’ attitudes to him or her, etc.
2. Characterization by narrator or character
Character can be described, implicitly as well as explicitly, either by the narrator
(sometimes, somewhat misleadingly, called authorial characterization) or by
another character in the narrative (also called figural characterization) or even by the
character themselves (self-characterization).
3. Blok characterization
We can be given crucial information all at once about a character in a block
characterization. Block characterization are usually given when a character is first
introduced. Alternatively, the reader receives information piecemeal throughout the
narrative. This is usually the case for complex and dynamic character.
4. Reliability
One needs to take the reliability of the source of characterization into consideration
when assessing the information, one receives about a character. A characterization
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given by a character whose reliability the reader has cause to question, will not be
accepted at face value, it becomes an unreliable narration.
5. Inner life of character
Depending on what sort of information is given about a character, readers will fell to
a larger or smaller degree acquainted with a character. To a large extent this depends
on the penetration of inner life. The more one knows about a character’s thoughts
and emotional responses, the more complex the character will appear and the more
ready the reader is to empathize with the character.
6. Contrasts and correspondences
Characters are also defined in comparison to the other characters. It might be, for
instance, that two characters are confronted with the same difficulty and react
differently. Such contrast and correspondences give the reader additional information
about the character. In Tolkiens’ Lord of the Rings for instance, a number of
characters can be assessed according to their reaction to the influence of the rings.
While, some characters succumb immediately to the ring’s evil power (like Gollum),
others imagine they can use the ring’s power to good purpose (like Boromir), yet
others are hardly affected by the pressure the ring exerts (like Sam or Bilbo Baggins).
Through contrast and correspondences characters act as foil to each other.

C. Types of Character
E.M. Forster, the English novelist, in his Aspects of the Novel (1927) introduced
popular new terms for an old distinction in discriminating between flat and round
characters.

1. Flat character
A flat character (also called “type”, or “two-dimensional”), according to Forster,
is built around “a single idea or quality” and is presented in outline and without much
individualizing detail, and so can be fairly adequately described in a single phase or
sentence. A flat character is characterized by one or two traits.
The flat characters are those who remain in the same in the course of story from
the beginning to the end. Some scholars refer to them as static characters. The do not
undergo significant changes during the course of a story. In the real sense, they are not
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affected by circumstances around them and are usually very rigid in their belief. Many of
them are usually tragic characters because they are prepared to pursue any goal they
believe in to its (perceived) logical conclusion even at the risk of losing their lives.
A good example of flat character is Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall
Apart. If you have read the novel, you will notice that he is very strict and hardworking
person who has no patience with the poor and the weak. He believes in action and no
words. He is a strong adherent of his tradition and is prepared to uphold it and fight
anybody or institution that threatens the existence of that tradition. He therefore opposes
the colonialists, refuses to see any progressive aspect of the Whiteman’s civilization and
remains rigid in his belief even when others are bending to the wind of change. In the
end, he takes his own life. The flat characters are very predictable because there seems
not to be any change in their growth and activities.

2. Round character
A round character is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented
with subtle particularity. Thus, he is as difficult to describe with any adequacy as a person
in real life, and like most people, he is capable of surprising us. He may require an essay
for full analysis. Almost all dramas and narratives, properly enough, have some characters
who serve as mere functionaries and are not characterized at all, as well as other characters
who are quite flat. The degree to which a character needs to be three-dimensional depends
on his function in the plot, and in many types of plot, such as in the detective novel or
adventure story or farce comedy, even the protagonist usually possesses only two
dimensions. From the explanation above, we know that basis for Forster’s distinction of
characters is the proportion to the fullness of their development.
Round characters are those characters that grow in the course of the narration.
Most of the time, they grow from innocence to maturity and adapt to situations
accordingly. They respond to changes in their environment and react differently to
different situations. Meka in Ferdinand Oyono’s Old Man and the Medal is an example
of round character.
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3. Major and minor character

On the basis of importance, we can distinguish two types of character, main or
major character and minor character. Major character is the most important character in
a story. Basically, a story is about this character, but he cannot stand on his own. He needs
other characters to make the story more convincing and lifelike (needless to say that we
need other elements of a story such as setting). Minor characters are characters of less
important than those the main.

4. Protagonist and antagonist character

The chief character in fiction or in a play is called protagonist (literally, from the
Greek, a competitor at games). In many stories, an important opponent pitted against him,
and he is called the antagonist, who provides opposition.
In most cases, one character stands out in the work and indeed attract the reader’s
attention. It appears as if the story revolves around him/her or that it is his/her story that
is being told. That character becomes the driver of action in the story. She/he therefore is
responsible for achieving the story’s objective or goals. Some scholar refers to the
protagonist as the pint-of-view character because he/she is the character from whose
perspective the audience experiences the story. This is the character that “represents the
point of view the audience will empathize, or at the very least sympathize with. Therefore,
this is the “Main” character.” (Ezeigho: 23)
In traditional fiction, the protagonist is also the hero or heroine, an admirable
character who embodies widely accepted strengths and virtues, who is morally good. The
antagonist in such fiction represents contrasting weaknesses and vices, and if the
antagonist is unsavory enough the word villain or villainess is used.
Marjorie Boulton asserts that the greatest characters have a roundness complexity
and multiplicity. They develop and give the impression that they had a real past, have a
real future. She also mentions some lesser characters, such as a type, e.g., a sensible
housewife, brutal prison guard, gallant soldier. He may be more a spokesman than a true
character. He expresses the viewpoint of a social class, or articulates some moral or
philosophical or religious concept, and he can also be a mouthpiece for the author’s own
views.
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A character may have something of symbol or myth. We see characters as Love,

Law, Good or Right. Perhaps at this point, we need to read further information about
myth.
In classical Greek, “mythos” signified any story or plot, whether true or false. In
its central modern significance, a myth is one story in a mythology – as system of
hereditary stories which were once believed to be true by a particular cultural group, and
which served to explain (in terms of the intentions and actions of supernatural beings)
why the world is as it is and things happen as they do, and to establish the rationale for
social customs and observances and the sanctions for the rules by which men conduct
their lives. Most Myths involves rituals prescribes forms of sacred ceremonials – but
social anthropologists disagree as to whether rituals generated myths or myths generated
rituals.
Characters may appear briefly as mere hints. These are minor figures who are
there in the story to show us what is going on. Minor characters, appearing once only,
may be ornaments. They are bonuses thrown in for our enjoyment. Characters may also
be secretaries whose function is little more than to communicate something, e.g.,
Marlowe in Lord Jim, a novel by Joseph Conrad.
Characters can be organizers, not of much interest themselves, but causing things
to happen, figures of authority in historical novels often function. Thus, in many historical
novels, some historical figures, i.e., real people who lived in the past like Napoleon or
Hitler, are used only as organizers. The novels are normally not about this historical
figure, but about other people living in close proximity and in time with these figures.
Some characters maybe there chiefly as ears or confidant, who exist only as
someone to whom letters are written or stories or secrets are told. Abrams (1971:32)
describes confidant (the feminine form is confidante) as a character in drama or novel
who plays only a minor role in the action, but serves the protagonist as a trusted friend to
whom he can confess his intimate thoughts. The confidant thus provides the playwright
with a plausible device for communicating to the audience, the mind and intention of his
principal character without the use of stage devices as the soliloquy or the aside. Horatio
in Hamlet is a confidant, and a famous confidant in prose fiction is Dr Watson in A. Conan
Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes. The device is particularly useful to modern
writers who, like Henry James, have largely renounced the novelist’s earlier privilege of
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intruding in order to address himself directly to the reader. To the confidant James also
applied the term ficelle, French for the strings by which the puppeteer manages his
puppets. Maria Gostrey, in the novel The Ambassador, who is Strether’s confidante,
according to Henry James himself, is a “ficelle” who is not in essence, Strether’s friend.
She is the reader’s friend much rather.
Janet Burroway (1987: 119) writes a comprehensive discussion of types of
character, some have been discussed above, but viewed with new insights. She called the
characters “book people”, and recognizes them as individual, typical, and universal;
round and flat character; and the Aristotelian hero.
She writes, that truism about characters which should be individual, typical, and
universal is riot very helpful to a practicing writer, because in reality, these types cannot
be viewed separated one from the other. If we are to create a “typical” character, we are
likely to produce a caricature, because people are typical only in the generalized qualities
that lump together. Typical is the most provincial adjective in a writer’s vocabulary,
signaling that we are writing only for those who share our assumptions. Every person is
typical of many things successively or simultaneously. He may be a typical shopkeeper,
husband, father, or village leader.
If the author sets out deliberately to produce type rather than individuals, then that
author invariably wants to condemn or ridicule those types. Typicality invites judgement.
We can identify only with characters who come alive to us through their individuality.
Burroway further gives a fresh example to clarify the distinctions among the universal,
the typical, and the individual; the child chases a ball into the street. The tires screech, the
bumper thuds, the blood geysers into the air, the pulp of the small body lies inert on the
asphalt. How would a bystander react? (Is it universal?) How would a passing doctor
react? (Is it typical?) How would Dr Henry Lowes, just coming from the miscarriage,
react? (Is it individual?) Each question narrows the range of convincing reaction, and as
a writer, we want to convince in each range. If you succeed in the third, you are likely to
have succeeded in the other two.
Except where we want the reader to find our characters ridiculous, or heinous or
both, then the rule of thumb is to aim for the individual (which means the specific,
concrete, definite, and particular). The typical will take care of itself. The universal cannot
be forced.
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When talking about round and flat characters (term originally invented by EM
Forster, as you have read above), Burroway tries to explain them more clearly. A flat
character, for Burroway, is one has only one distinctive characteristic, exists only to
exhibit that characteristic, and is incapable of varying from that characteristic. A round
character is many facted and is capable of change. Eric Bentley suggests in The Life of
the Drama that if a messenger’s function in a play is to deliver his message, it would be
very tedious to stop and learn about his psychology. However, on stage even a flat
character has a face and a costume, and in fiction detail can give even a flat character a
few angles and contour. Charles Dickins is very skillful in bringing flat characters alive
in detail:
And Mrs. Miff, the wheezy little pew opener – a mighty dry old lady, sparely
dressed, with not an inch of fullness anywhere about her – is also here.

Dombey and Son

To borrow a notion from George Orwell’s Animal Farm which reads “all animals are
equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Burroway concludes that all good
characters are created round, but some are created rounder than others. However, the
central characters in your story or novel need to be not merely round, but spherical. They
should contain enough conflict and contradiction so that we can recognize them as
belonging to the contradictory human race, and they should be, as we are or hope we are,
capable of change.
Burroway believes that although literature has changed a great deal in the twenty-
three intervening centuries, what Aristotle put in his Poetic about requirements of
successful hero are still necessary attributes of a fully three-dimensional character.
Aristotle mentioned that a character should be good, appropriate, like, and consistent.
Some of these have also been discussed above, but it is worth to read what she writes
about these.
Aristotle says, he quotes, “there will be an element of character if …. What a
person says or does reveals a certain moral purpose; and a good element of character, if
the purpose so revealed is good.” It might seem that the antiheroes, brutes, hoods, whores,
perverts, and bums who people modern literature do very little in the way of “revealing
good moral purpose.” Our ideas of “good” have changed in the course of time.
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Aristotle also says that “the character before us may be, say manly.” But it is not
appropriate in a female character to be manly. Our ideas of female or manly have changed,
and we have outgrown a sense of what is appropriate. Here we are dealing with the idea
of the “typical” which includes all the biological and environmental influence that form
us. In the first paragraph of the story, we need to know soon the character’s gender, age,
race or nationality, because appropriateness can only be judged on the basis of this
information, together with information on his social class, period, and region.
There is a critical controversy over what Aristotle meant by likeness. The first is
that by like he meant “natural” – that we should find the character credibly human, that
his or her actions and reactions should ring true. The sense here is a king to the idea of
“universal.” The second interpretation of like comes from Aristotle’s comparison of the
writer and the portrait painter. Each, he says, attempts to capture the best possible
“likeness” of the model. This is a limiting notion, but as the characters of your fiction live
only on the page, you need to be true only to them. It cannot be too strongly stressed that
a person who exists in the form of words exists only in that form.
About being consistent as a requirement of a successful hero, Aristotle says that
an author should make character “consistent and the same throughout” – that is, that their
actions should be plausible in light of what we know about them – for “even if
inconsistency should be part of the man …. He should still be consistently inconsistent.”
It is with this last injunction that we leave the area of plausibility and acknowledge the
complexity of character. “Consistently inconsistent” does not mean that a character
should be continually behaving unnaturally or acting against type. On the contrary,
Aristotle acknowledge the continuing conflict within character that is the source of most
human trouble and most literature.
Hills (1987:43) discusses character in relation with action, movement of character,
and types of characters. He says that character and action are like the subject and the verb
in a sentence, they are there to express a complete thought. In a story, both character
(subject) and plot (verb) must have a significant relationship. You can talk about
character, but until you put the characters into action, you have no story. You can talk
about plot alone, but plot structure and crises and reversal, but until you have a character
to act and be acted on you will not know what form the plot should take, and until you
know what happened to the character you will not what plot to use.
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As in the sentence, the agreement between character and action, the agreement or
appropriateness of all the parts to the whole to create the exact emphasis, the specific
effect, the precise meaning that is intended to have, is primary. To use a fixed action
instead of a moving action as the plot of a story would be like using a participle instead
of a verb in a sentence. In this case, you will get a sketch a story in which nothing happens.
Similarly, the character to whom the action of a story “happens” must be capable
of “agreeing” with that action. The complex interaction of character and plot in fiction
requires a “subject” able to perform a two-fold function; the character mush have the
capability to cause action, and the capacity to reveal change.
Hills also discusses about the movement of character, by questioning whether a
character or personality ever in fact fealty, “change.” He writes that a person is a person
and a character is a character and remains the same person or character no matter how he
acts or what he does. Even if his nature changes in the most extreme way, the identity
remains the same. What has happened is that another “side” of the personality, or “more”
of the character, has been exposed – this other aspect of the personality or character
having always been there, but not previously observed. All they have done is reveal a new
potential of their personality, a new way that they are capable of being. Either we did not
see it before, or they did not show it. It is more accurate to speak of the “disclosure” or
“unveiling” of “latent qualities” in a character, or of a “development” of “further
manifestation” due to the “revelations” of the plot. In fiction, as in life, the effect of seeing
a new aspect of character, hitherto unperceived, is to feel that there has been a change.
Another thing that Hills discusses is character shift, as against movement of
character. For him, character shift is the conventional term for a convincing alteration in
character, and should be distinguished carefully from the movement of character by action
that we have been discussing. The two, although seem similar, have some actual
differences. One way of detecting the difference between the character shift and
movement of character is by considering the function the character change performs in
the narrative. A character shift usually permits, rather than causes, something to happen,
while the movement of character takes pace after the action and as a consequence of the
action. The function of movement of character is not to allow something to happen, as in
character shift, but to show that something indeed has happened in the story. It remains
an aspect of characterization, not a device of plotting.
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Movement of character involves nothing like the complete change about the
character shift. It is just sufficient to show, or even just to suggest, by a change in tone or
mood, that something has “happened”, that as a result of the experience of the story a
character has made some slight, but significant, adjustment to life.
Movement of character is made convincing by being prepared for, for example,
by the use of foreshadowing of character, i.e., intimations given early in the story of
elements in the character that are appear at the end. The plot or action or narrative itself
must be composed of event or incident that is significant or meaningful enough or so
focused that it makes its effect, the change of character, credible and convincing.
Further, Hills discusses about moving character as against fixed character.
Agreement between character and plot, he writes, is important because once a
characterization has been established it ought not to be simply changed so as to
accommodate the action (character shift), but must alter naturally as a result of it
(movement of character). More than that, to serve as a dynamic or moving character in
action of a story, a characterization must have not only the capacity to be affected by the
action, but also the capability of causing it. Hills calls this “the back-and-forth, one-
causes-the-other which-in-turn-causes-the-other interaction of character and plot”
(1987:53).
Hills also compares the distinction of moving character and fixed character with
the one proposed by Forster, i.e., flat and round character. He sees the difficulty when
talking about “discs” which are both round and flat, but the real trouble with the terms is
that they do not indicate the function that these two kinds of characters perform in
literature. Flat characters are fixed characters, capable of what we call fixed action, while
round characters are moving characters, capable of movement bot of and by action.
What sort of character will this be? The answer is anyone, any kind. Any
individual in life could be the model for moving protagonist in fiction. Anyone is capable
of changing, anyone is capable of doing something, or of allowing something to be done
to him, that will cause change in his life. It really all depends on how convincingly the
character and the narrative are presented by the author and the skill with which he uses
the methods of enhancing the interaction of character and plot.
The most important thing is that the characterization of a moving figure must be
deep enough, because if too little is known of the character, if he is presented only
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superficially or in one-sided way, then he will appear fixed to the reader. The character
must be presented as capable of having something happen to him. This requires
development and it is of course why so many of the so-called major figures of fiction are
moving characters, while fixed characters function more usually as minor ones.
In every good story, Hills further states, individualization is thought to be at the
heart of successful characterization, however, for the sake of economy of time and space,
sometimes it is necessary to “type” characters, especially in a short story. From
psychology, we learn about the temperaments of man associated with the four cosmic
elements: air, earth, fire, and water. Air which is warm and moist, was associated with
the bodily fluid blood and a person with a prevalence of that was considered a “sanguine”
type, that is, with a ruddy complexion, cheerful, of hopeful spirits. Water, cold and moist,
was associated with phlegm and a prevalence of that made for a “phlegmatic” type
sluggish, apathetic, calm, composed. This is the origin of the term “humor characters” –
not comic types, but characters dominated by a single trait.
Another famous types typology is Sheldon’s “endomorph, mesomorph, and
ectomorph”, or Kretschmer’s typology of character into “asthenic” (long and frail) and
“picnic” (short and round) types, or Bain’s typology of “The Metal Type”, “The
Volitional Type”, and “The Vital Type”, or Fourier’s typology of characters into 801 type
with different predominate “ruling passions” or Carl Jung’s distinction of characters into
“introverts” (lonely, shy types who withdraw into themselves), and the “extroverts”
(those who are so sociable and outgoing).
We all know that there are kinds of people, people who are more one way the
another, yet we sense that no individual seems wholly “a type”, and that there could never
be a final listing of types that would include everybody. What we have to realize is that
the only reason these various depictions of types seems so plausible, when first presented,
is that they represent extremes of a kind of behavior that is familiar to us.
One interesting point that Hills makes is that he considers type as exceptions,
which seems contradictory but it is not. He writes, as character in a story resembles a pure
type, he is not “typical” or usual or common at all; he is far out on the scale, far from the
average or mode; he is the extreme; he is in fact, the exception. Types are really more
exceptional than they are typical. This profound-sounding paradox applies not just to a
grading system like the extroversion-introversion scale, it applies to any manner or
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behavior that is usually thought “typical.” A “’typical” character from a certain place in
a story or a film is not typical at all. He is an exaggeration, a phony composite, an
extension or an extreme, and ultimately an exception. Types, then, are used to distinguish
or separate persons or characters, to emphasize differences, and not, as is commonly
thought, used to lump them together with a lot of others. That types are familiar is
certainly true, but that is because we have become used to writers and other exaggerating
the same manners or attitudes or accents, not because there are so many people in the
world who are actually like these extreme cases.

5. Stereotype and stock character

In characterization, a stereotype exhibits particular attributes by which a particular
individual, group, or race is known. In a prose fiction, it may be one or two characters
that is (are) stereotypes. The writer creates such characters for special effects or to make
a point. This attribute of the stereotype may or may not be true but it is the notion or
opinion which people have about that group and could equally be applicable to the other
group. For instance, in Nigeria, it is generally believed that the Igbo Man will be ready to
do anything including selling or killing a friend or relation to make money. This means
that they love money obsessively. A writer may therefore create an Igbo Man in his work
to reflect this notion. Meanwhile this is not true. If it is the truth, there will no longer be
poor people in Igboland or most of them must have been killed by wealthy few. Besides,
there is no tribe or ethnic group that does not love money obsessively and ritual killing is
not limited to the Igbos alone.
While, a stock character is a character that closely related to the stereotype, but
here, the character is a true representation of a particular group especially a profession.
In most cases, stock characters are created for satirical purposes. For instance, soldiers
and some other related professionals are associated with force and brutality especially in
Nigeria. A writer might therefore create such character(s) to draw attention to their
brutality, viciousness, cruelty and irrationality of most of their actions. Writers of most
novels that satirize military leaders, portray such leaders as despotic, tyrannical, and
dictatorial.
Hills also mentions about “stock character” that is one that we have grown too
familiar with, through having seen him over and over in films and in novels and stories
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and on TV, always performing the same role or function in the plot. His characterization
is based on a cliché of plot. An example of stock character is the old sheriff who has lost
his nerve in a Western film. A type character, on the other hand, is a character cliché
rather than a plot cliché. He is what we have been speaking of: an extension of
exaggeration of commonly-held quality or manner or accent. He is the extreme, the
artificially thrown-together paste-up qualities, attitudes, accents, that are thought to be
“typical” of racial, national, regional, occupational, psychological, or class groups.
The latest psychology approaches both in theory and in therapy tend to emphasize
roles rather than types. The part we play in life becomes the destiny that defines us.
Transactional psychology with its emphasis on life’s “games”, suggests that people will
repeatedly play “the victim” part, or “be a Don Juan or a schlemiel. In other words, now,
instead of saying “character is fate,” we seem to feel that “fate is character.”

6. Allegorical character
Allegorical characters are characters that are not human beings. Such characters
are employed and manipulated by the writer to convey a double meaning of the subject
matter at the literal level and a deeper level. In such works, all the characters are
allegorical. Such a work “would normally operate at a primary level as well as the
secondary level of significance. … narration offers the writer an opportunity to describe
one subject under the guise of another and thus to be ambivalent in his or her themes.

D. Exercise
Answer the following question!
1. What is the definition of character?
2. What is the distinctive between flat character and round character?
3. Characterization must observe at most three principles. What are they?

E. Conclusion
Character is different type of person which presented by the author in a story. It
is the representation of human beings in any fiction. The characters humans, animal or
abstract qualities but exhibit human characteristics. This means there are different types
of characters. They are flat and round character, major and minor character, protagonist
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and antagonist character, etc. While, characterization is the way of the author presents
different type of character in a story. And, there are six consideration to analyze the
characters, they are how is the character described, by whom is the character described,
how is the characterization distributed throughout the text, how reliable is the source of
information, what do we learn about a character’s inner life and in which arrangements
of contrasts and correspondence is the character depicted.

F. Formative Test
Answer the following questions by giving cross (X) on the correct option (a, b,
c, or d)!
1. The person, in a dramatic or narrative work, endowed with moral and dispositional
qualities that are expressed in what they say (the dialogue), and what they do (the
action) known as ….
a. plot c. theme
b. character d. setting
2. The following principles that can not be used to observe the characterization is ….
a. changeable c. probable
b. stable d. plausible
3. The following characterization which is NOT the aspect to be considered in
analyzing the character is ….
a. explicit characterization c. block characterization
b. implicit characterization d. foil characterization
4. The flat characters are those who remain in the same in the course of story from the
beginning to the end. Some scholars refer to them as … character.
a. stable c. static
b. dynamic d. changeable
5. Meka in Ferdinand Oyono’s Old Man and the Medal is an example of … character.
a. flat c. major
b. round d. minor
6. … character is an admirable character who embodies widely accepted strength and
virtues, who is morally good.
a. Major c. Protagonist
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b. Minor d. Antagonist
7. Janet Burroway writes comprehensive discussion of types of character that she called
the characters “book people” and recognized them as the following, except ….
a. individual and typical c. the Aristotelian hero
b. round and flat character d. major and minor character
8. A flat character, for Burroway is ….
a. one who is capable of varying that characteristic
b. one who has only one distinctive characteristic
c. one who exist not only to exhibit that characteristic
d. one who has more distinctive characteristic
9. According to Aristotle, a successful hero are still necessary attributes of a fully three-
dimensional character. A character should be ….
a. good, appropriate, and dynamic
b. appropriate, like, and consistent
c. consistent, dynamic, and good
d. appropriate, lifelike, changeable
10. The old sheriff who has lost his nerve in a Western film is an example of ….
a. stock c. typical
b. individual d. universal