The Role of the Character in a Story - Term Paper Example

? Day Month Year The Role of the Character in a Story Introduction Characters can make or break the effectiveness of a story. If an author overdevelops the protagonist, then the reader can quickly become lost, confused, and lose interest. It they are not developed enough, then the reader is left wanting more and questioning the true role that the character has in the context of the theme of the story. Readers want to identify with the characters in their favorite story. They want to feel their pain and rejoice in their triumphs. Characters allow us to transport ourselves into the life of another person, if only for a time, to experience things we never before felt possible. Two examples of this truth are William Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’ and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’. Characters are critical to the effectiveness of these stories because they work to develop the plot, provide conflict, and create a protagonist or antagonist that the reader can empathize with. The Plot Faulkner revolutionized story telling with his unique way of organizing a book. ‘A Rose for Emily’ certainly demonstrates this by the way Faulkner divides the book into five distinct sections. In so doing, he is able to develop the main character (Emily) in a systematic manner. We begin by seeing Emily in the twilight of her life, after she died, and how nearly the entire town came to her funeral. By beginning at the ending point of the main character’s life, Faulkner builds his plot around the entire life of the character. He continues this strategy by moving a second section of the story. Here, the author describes events in Emily’s life from 30 years previous to her death. We gain perspective into the tenacity of the character and her willingness to fight any inquiries into her life made by the townspeople. Faulkner is further developing the plot by enabling us to the private side of Emily and how this contributes to her overall persona. The plot thickens in sections 3 and 4 as Faulkner describes various events in his characters life. The picture is of a town that is deeply concerned about Emily and foreshadows her eventual death. The plot climaxes in the final section of story by continuing where the first section left off. Had Faulkner not included the middle three sections of the story, the reader would be left at a loss as to why Emily would have such a lasting legacy on the town. The final section describes the events after Emily’s death and builds on the plot until the end. This type of storytelling is ingenious because the plot is truly built around the main character. The reader can follow along as various events are told and events foreshadowed. Nathaniel Hawthorne developed his stories much differently than Faulkner, yet the characters in his stories remain central to the development of the plot as well. As Leibowtiz noted in one of his essays on Hawthorne, “Hawthorne utilized characters and ideas for his own artistic purposes” (120). One such example of this is the story ‘Young Goodman Brown’. As in most of Hawthorne’s books, this story has a religious underpinning to it. To get to the message, however, the reader is taken on a journey with Goodman Brown. Once again, Hawthorne is like Faulkner in that the story is developed around one main character. This gives Hawthorne a unique ability to really develop everything about a character. Here, the entire story revolves around Goodman Brown. From the very beginning of the story, when Goodman Brown says goodbye to his wife and that he’ll be back in a day, the plot develops quickly as the main character sets off on a series of unexpected adventures. Through various meetings and recollections from Goodman Brown himself, the reader begins to understand the shame and heartache he feels towards many of his relationships and acquaintances in life. It is through these musings that the entire plot is based. The story is quite simple really: Is Goodman Brown going to return home to Faith or not? The reality of the meaning, however, is much deeper. While that meaning can be analyzed at another time and in another essay, suffice it to say that the character development in this story provided the reader with a plot that is riveting thought provoking, and worthy of discussion for years to come. In summary, plot development often depends on good character development. Some novelists do this with numerous characters, all interconnected and woven together to form the story. Others, however, choose to focus their attention on one or two main characters so that the reader can benefit from a focus and clarity of message. In these two stories, we see a contrast of writing styles. From Faulkner’s use of five sections to go back and forth in time, to Hawthorne’s more traditional approach to a timeline method of telling a story, the plot is developed soundly as the reader discovers more about each character with each passing page. The plot alone, however, does not define good character development. Characters must also provide conflict that plays out in the context of the story in order to bring about an eventual conclusion. Providing Conflict In real life, conflict is often easy to spot and understand. All stories also need an element of conflict, but it is often more difficult to develop. Characters provide the conflict and this can come via a variety of mediums such as emotions and physical experiences that take place during the story. In this case of Faulkner’s story, the conflict is more interestingly developed because the main character is deceased by the time the story begins. We see, then, the conflict that she had throughout her life through the various accounts that Faulkner gives us through each of the five sections of the book. The townspeople, as well, become Emily’s voice and begin to describe in intimate detail the conflict and turmoil she must have been facing her entire life. One student described Emily’s conflict as such when she wrote, “Emily had to maintain her traditions and her attempts to force the town to remain at a standstill (Ellis Par. 4). We get the picture of a bitter person who lacks self-esteem which is manifested through her various crusades throughout the town. This greatly enhances the character of Emily and provides the reader with an opportunity to really get into her mind and understand her potential pain, even though we never met her in real life in the book. Hawthorne develops the conflict in ‘Young Goodman Brown’ a bit differently. We meet Goodman right from the outset of the book and quickly learn that he is a man wrestling with many demons. The inner turmoil and conflict that he faces comes up in his narration of the story and his recounting of his journey through the forest. The reader learns the emotional make-up of this character and can begin to realize why he took the journey in the first place. This sense of conflict greatly enhances the character development of the story because we are given an emotional description of Goodman, as opposed to a simply recounting of his appearance and the events taking place during the context of the story. Rather than simply mentioning what is taking place, Hawthorne really develops the character of Goodman Brown by making every aspect and part of his life an open book and up for examination. In short, the use of conflict is yet another way that both Faulkner and Hawthorne enhanced the development of their characters. Without this type of conflict, the reader would not truly have a sense for the essence of either Emily or Goodman. Especially with Emily, who had no real voice in the story, Faulkner had to develop this sense of conflict in order for the reader to understand what her life was like. In contrast, Hawthorne used conflict as a way to make us understand the reason behind Goodman’s journey and what had bought him to this place in his life. That would not have been possible had the sense of conflict not been fully developed. Finally, each author developed their characters by using the mechanisms of a protagonist and antagonist. Protagonist or Antagonist Many people read to escape their own life for a moment and live the life of another through the written word. In order for this to truly happen, author’s need to create a protagonist or antagonist in their story. These are characters that the reader can empathize with. They can either be despised or love, pitied or exalted, but the concept remains the same. Faulkner and Hawthorne were both master’s at creating such a character that the reader could really study and feel for. Emily, by design, was a difficult character to empathize with. On the one hand, the reader immediately feels bad for her because she has just passed away. On the other hand, however, she lived a life of pain and heartache it seemed. She had her own pain, which the reader certainly could sympathize with, but she also caused pain for others. John Skinner, in one of his interpretations of the character of Emily, notes that she “represented a refusal to submit to, or even to concede, the inevitability of change” (215). At times in the story she is quite ill, while at other’s she is doing things that further cause the townspeople to think ill of her. In short, Faulkner seems to have developed both a protagonist and antagonist in Emily. This was masterful as the reader is torn as whether they want to love her or shun her. Hawthorne creates a protagonist in ‘Young Goodman Brown’. It is not that he does anything special. He does not rush into burning buildings or perform superhuman feats. Whether what Hawthorne has created is a young man who is struggling to find his own way. All readers can sympathize with this. We have all struggled to keep ourselves together in the midst of a world that seems to be stacked against us. Goodman is so innocent, yet he is worried about the corruption in society. He seems ready to go on a crusade against the dark side of the society in which he lives. He sees evil lurking at every corner and feels that he must be the one that begins to seek out the truth. To do this, Hawthorne has created a deeply reflective character that the reader must take great pains to understand. In the end, however, the struggle is well worth it as we come to grips with a protagonist that we can all grow fond of, identify with, and admire. Conclusion We all love to read about our favorite character. Some make us laugh, others make us cry, and still others make us angry. In the end, however, characters are what make us want to read. We desire to feel their pain and rejoice with them in triumph. If you will, we want to live alongside them, if only for a moment in time. Character development, however, is not always a task easily accomplished. Fail to adequately explain a character and the reader will quickly lose interest. The effectiveness of a story can only truly be captured when all characters take on a life of their own and, by the end of a story, the reader feels that they have known them all of their lives. Both William Faulkner and Nathaniel Hawthorne were masters of developing their characters. In the two books read for this essay, both authors took this student on a journey through Emily and Goodman Brown’s life. It was exhilarating and thought provoking and the importance of character development is now fully realized. Works Cited Leibowtiz, Herbert. “Hawthorne and Spenser: Two Sources.” American Literature, 30(4) 1959: 120-128. Skinner, John. “’A Rose for Emily’ Against Interpretation”. The Journal of Narrative Technique, 15(1) 1985: 215-222. Read More