ENCUENTAS A LOS DOCENTES
6. PROPUESTA DE REDISEÑO CURRICULAR
You may wish to write an allegory, or a parable. In such seeming
“fantasy” writing, your characters are “abstract” objects personified. In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, in many Biblical “stories” which Jesus used to illustrate facts and rules of life, the characters were not always “persons” as we normally think of them. Instead you may want to focus on the things around you that make you ask whether life is worth living or not, things like crime, poverty, injustice, death; or the
“things” inside each one of us, things like frustration, boredom, despair, and turn them into “living” characters. Read carefully the parable of Jesus at Mark 4:1-10, 13-20, and you will see how an abstract of
“farmer” (“Sower”), “Seeds” on “path”, on “rocky places”, or “thorny ground”, and on “good soil” translate from abstractions to concrete features of life in “the word” of God among various experiences of people – with Satan, with superficial attitudes, with succumbing to deceits and temptations. In the end, “sower”, “seed” and “soil” become lively characters.
To further clarify how abstract, symbolic characters may be understood and created, let us look at a contrast: realistic characters created in action. Remember that all your characters are in a setting, have voices, have beliefs and concerns in their environment, do develop and evolve.
‘Abstract’ characters tend to be fixed in a situation where they exist to illustrate some idea or belief. Now, real-life characters are real.
Let us take an example of a character really created by “showing” her actions, in the famous American novel. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, as Robert Olmstead illustrates it.
“…The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise – she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression – then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralyzed with happiness”
She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face,
promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker.
(I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.”
Here is a character, real, with a name; you come to know her from WHAT she is doing: - “attempts to rise, “leans”… “laughs”…
“speaks”… “laughs again”…” “hold hands”…
looks”…”promises”…”hints”…”murmurs”…. Each action affects the story-teller because, he in turn, “…leans”, “laughs,” “listens”, “holds”
her hands. Behaviour and appearance here help to further concretize the character. It is not like that in the abstract characters of the parable or allegory.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 3
1. Make a list of your own of as many movements as you can which you think a person could make to display ‘character’
2. One character’s series of actions observed by another do affect that observer. Now, take these examples:
a) “Ugo was crying and I started to cry too”
b) “Nkwekwe tossed the bone in the air and the dog leapt and grabbed it in its snout”
c) “Esther leaned toward me and I learned away”
Using one of these, develop a short scene between two characters.
4.0 CONCLUSION
Character and character creation are a big challenge to the writer. He has to build them; he has to take them from life, but not brazenly or carelessly; he has to balance various aspects and observe and use the least detail, provide them with believable motivations, or even make them abstract. Characterization produces excellent story.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 4
Do you agree that characters are the tall trees that populate the forest that a good novel is?
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit, characterization, we have set facts about character-making in fiction concretely out for you:
• Characters must be well-drawn to become memorable.
• A notable character can be made out of any kind of social type.
• Characters are built, develop, and are not still-pictures, but mobile and dynamic in their actions and words.
• Characters come from real world and life around the author, not just from imagination.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
1. What do you understand by the expression “Reader suspends disbelief when a character is good”? (See ‘introduction above) 2. Do African stories differ from American or other non-African
ones? In what concrete ways?
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Goldberg, Natalie.(1986). Writing-Down The Bones. Boston & London:
Shambhala Publications.
Olmstead, Robert. (1997). Elements of the Writing Craft. Cincinnati, Ohio: Story Press Books.
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress.
“Ecclesiastes” in the KJV of the Bible.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Kachingwe, Aubrey. No Easy Task. London: Heinemann, 19