Creating A Character
How does a novelist and/or a playwright make a character interesting for us?One would think that the plot of a novel or play would mould it's characters and determine whether they are interesting or not, however, even in a mediocre book there can be a character that is interesting for some reason or other. This 'some reason or other' can be defined through the reader's relationship with this character; what makes a character interesting is that the reader either can identify and empathise with him/her or is placed in a position where s/he is able to make a value judgement about this character.Characters that a reader remembers are usually main characters, purely because one sees and gets to know the most about them. To show how novelists and playwrights make their characters memorable and remarkable it is best to use the example of two main characters that are in situations that are comparable to some extent. The protagonists in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Forster's A Passage to India are involved in crime for various reasons and have to deal with different degrees of punishment but all are affected by mental strain. In this essay I will examine the different techniques the novelist/playwright uses by referring to both nov
This controversy about the character's personality and mind caused by such unresolved questions and the conflicting opinions of others about this character make for a certain detachment on the part of the reader. Forster describes their appearance and views - we hear of Aziz's pride in Islam and the discrepancies in what he thinks about the "haughty and venal" English and how he acts towards them. The first part of the book sets up the incident by bringing the personage together and arranging the situation and the ensuing action - the arrest, the trial and riots and last section of the book - is a repercussion of this. However, Aziz - who the reader gets to know extremely well in the first section of the book through all the ways of obtaining information that I listed before - disappears right after the incident occurs and is not really heard of, just briefly through the opinions of others, until the commotion is over and everything as settled down to it's normal pattern. Lastly it is also the plot that makes the character interesting, more specifically the development of the character throughout whether this leads to the mature Hamlet who finally fulfils his task and dies a heroic death in the last act or to an Aziz who seems to have learnt nothing and is still in the same position at the end of the novel. The reader might not like or sympathise with the petty Aziz or moody Hamlet, however, numerous revelations of the characters' minds creates a certain empathy. These three different opinions again lead to controversy: is Hamlet pretending to be mad because he is planning to kill the King in a 'fit of insanity'? Is Gertrude's feeling that Hamlet's behaviour is linked to her remarriage connected to some complicity in the current husband's crime? Does Polonius merely express his opinion to the King because he wishes to obtain something as Ophelia is his daughter? The reason that a character is more interesting as one gets to know more about him/her is because the facts oft lead to questions and this uncertainty is more provocative than the concrete facts. This is done by letting the character air his/her opinions on a certain theme like when Hamlet asks himself "what is a man?" or by the situation of the character. A character can become much like child whose progression is closely followed by the reader. Shakespeare does this after the spectacular revelation by the ghost in Act One and the excess of exposition through other characters and through Hamlet himself. In A Passage to India Forster employs this technique in an even more forceful way. One technique is to introduce a main character and give the reader a lot of information and insight into this character and then, after setting up a situation, keep this character in the background.
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Acceptance Essays
