In a recent set of English tuition discussions several students examined the following extracts featuring rather powerful characters.
Powerful characterisation forms the heart of a compelling story. Readers need characters to orientate themeslves around a narrative. And, as these examples may prove, outlandish or despicable characters are very welcome!
Students enjoyed reading the following examples of characterisation, and reacted in all sorts of different ways to each one. I have tried to preserve the freshness and integrity of their reactions underneath each example:
“If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild — long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins.”
Several students recognised JKRowling’s Hagrid and all enjoyed the phrase ‘too big to be allowed”! We discussed what can be permitted and why is it powerful to transgress our conventional expectations of characters.
Two students in particular found the simile ‘like baby dolphins’ anomalous. It ‘clangs’ and ‘doesn’t fit’. We discussed what Rowling might be doing with the dolphin boots and how incongruity gives room for contradiction or surprise. ‘The boots give space for manouevre with his character’ added another wisely!
Students also added that the genre gave readers different expectations as did the tone of the narrative. All agreed the tone is affectionate and some felt it wittily ironic too.
“There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar’s eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelry; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing alike.”
This description by Neil Gaiman attracted the most interest. How ‘random’ it appeared to most yet how ‘weird and wonderfull’ too. One student though this demonstrated the best use of the word ‘also’..that they had ever seen¬it is a ‘riddle’ decided another.
When I asked about the ‘tone’ of this narrator and their view of the characters several thought the narrator a little insane or surreal. The mind does do ‘somersaults’ as we try to make sense of the description: Mr Vandemar is two and a half heads taller” which in my head feels rather like Dali on holiday! The rings made out of ‘the skulls of four ravens” also seem surreal as we start to wonder the actual size of the raven-ringed fingers and hand! The grotesque mingles with the comical. And why go to such trouble to describe the particulars, and then casually dismiss the similarities at all?
I mentioned Gogol’s marvellously surreal story ‘The Nose’ where a nose becomes separated from a face(and body!) and starts to really enjoy his independent life. The nose goes to church, prays, chats up girls and even takes snuff! Ye for all the humour, the reader does strain to keep imagining or picturing how a dislocated nose lives its own life. Our minds tend to attach the nose to legs and arms making a cartoon figure in order to make sense!
“Lord Asriel was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter. It was a face to be dominated by, or to fight: never a face to patronize or pity. All his movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal, and when he appeared in a room like this, he seemed a wild animal held in a cage too small for it.”
Students all agreed this was the most straightforward characterisation, as it follows the expectaions generated by the initial presentation. it seems ‘symmmetrical’ said one student and another liked ‘wild animal’ comparisons.
Another suggested that it was a very direct form of characterisation and one that made Lord Asriel’s role in the novel apparent.
The punctuation is very ‘useful’ stated another student ‘because it gives you space to think about him.’
“a red-haired person – a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older – whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony’s head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us in the chaise. He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm, which was very ugly”
Dickens’s presentation of Uriah Heep challenged students because of the adjectives used to describe his eyes: ‘unsheltered and unshaded’. These words caused slight consternation as they transported the reader into realms of characterisation that seemed different and more psychologically demanding. Uriah did encourage a little acting out of the famous ‘writhing’ hands and students were impressed by the imaginative consideration concerning ‘ how he went to sleep’ which not unnaturally brought vampires into the discussion.
We also discussed the type of narrator that David Copperfield might prove to be, not least because he seems so fascinated by his own repulsion.
