Meeting characters through fiction

By Dilshan Boange

A central facet in studying fiction as a genre of literature is that characters occupy a central role in bringing out the world that is portrayed by the writer.

After all, if a written narrative simply offers a description of the social, economic, political situation of a place in a given period of time and has no story based on persons, their actions, and events then that book is unlikely to have the qualities of a work of 'fiction'.

Therefore, to understand characters and how they interact with other characters and represent the world they are set in is one of the fundamentals of identifying the premise of a work of fiction which could either be a novel or short story.

To analyse a character in a novel with relation to his or her conditions in life the emotional states in which the characters are found and what makes them have their identity is a way by which the social, economic, political, cultural and aesthetic sensibilities of that society in which the character is placed can be understood.

Therefore, characters are pathways, or windows through which the 'milieu' in which the story is set can be gauged and comprehensively grasped.

Now in contrast to novels or short stories, when we consider the genre called 'Drama' and approach it in the nature of literary studies one must keep in mind that a drama can be studied at two levels (unlike a novel or short story), which is firstly as a 'written text', as a 'script', and secondly as a 'performance', as a 'play'.

When we approach drama studies from a purely textual basis and study only the words written by the playwright we interact with and engage the story of the play from the perspective of the playwright.

Vision

The vision created in our minds is then as readers and we can 'visualise' the action in our mind based on what has been described by the playwright in the script.

When we approach the study of a drama by studying the performance we see coming to life through live actors on stage, we see the story from the perspective of the drama director.

Therefore, drama studies can be two fold as firstly studying the playwright's text or script, and study of 'theatre' where the live performance of the play is analysed.

In analysing theatre the primary 'dimension' we encounter is what the director has created for us to grasp visually, as well as through our auditory senses as dialogues and music. And what we encounter when we do drama studies as analysing 'performance' is the 'director's vision' he has intended for us the viewers.

When studying the script of a drama we occupy the seat of a 'reader' and when we approach drama studies as theatre or performance we occupy the seat of a 'viewer'.

The director's vision in a work of theatre is a 'narrated' story to the viewers. Casting of actors, the stage set design and choice of lighting are some of the key elements that create the vision of the director as well as setting the limits of what we are to grasp visually, whereas when reading a drama script and engaging the playwright's written text we can imagine the action developing in our head based on what is described in the script.

Therefore, a similarity of how a novel or short story builds a picture in the mind of the reader from the prose can be seen to an extent when we have the drama as a script and read what the playwright has written.

Limits

A playwright will usually place limits of what is described in the script about the characters appearance or the stage set design.

Unless the playwright intends to stringently limit the director from exploring and experimenting with new elements to create the 'director's vision', the playwright may not go into minute detail about the setting and the facial appearance of the characters.

However, in the more traditional novel, especially the novels that were written during the Victorian age in England we are likely to find a significant amount of details describing the characters and their environments to us.

This is one significant feature we must keep in mind when approaching the study of fiction as a written text, in comparison to drama as a written text, since both these forms of studies are adopted in courses of literature studies today.

The works of fiction as novels and short stories and drama as we have discussed are built on characters and of course at times there can perhaps even be a single character that forms the basis of the story.

A fundamental related to studying or analysing characters in a novel or a drama is to grasp their emotions and feelings in various situations. The importance of this factor is on the one hand as said before, is to gauge the nature of a character and to thereby understand the world around him or her, and also to see if the character undergoes any transformations between the start and end of the story.

Is the protagonist or any other character for that matter the same person that we find at the start, towards the end of the story? If not, then what were the reasons that changed that character towards the end? There are basic and fundamental questions that must be asked when in studying characters in a story.

The story could either be one narrated in prose as a work of fiction, or could be a script written in order to be acted as a work of theatre.

Emotions

How do we approach the matter of gauging the moods and emotions of the characters? In a novel the writer has the freedom to describe at length the state of emotions that a character is going through.

This makes it considerably easier for the reader to approach the character and analyse it. However, it is not only the prose descriptions that are key to unravelling the 'inner being' of a character.

The lines spoken by a character or spoken to and how the reactions will occur through dialogue are also essential to understand the character and his or her state of emotions.

To a great extent when we approach to dissect and analyse a character what we are doing in certain ways is something of the nature of a psychologist.

Because what is happening in a way is that by studying the character's behaviour in the story we are trying to understand 'mind' of the character.

On the basis of purely studying what is written as a text, a novel may at times give more descriptions of the character and situations to gauge the character while a drama written as a script may not always offer a great degree of description as earlier mentioned.

Therefore, it is important to realise that the performance of a drama offers much to grasp the nature of the character in the story.

When actors portray their characters on stage their faces will say much about their moods which may not always be stated in the playwright's 'script'. The tone of voice used by an actor in portraying a particular character will give an indication of certain psychological facets of that character. But of course there is no guarantee that every actor cast in a particular role of a particular play will deliver the same sort of effect in every performance.

Therefore, theatre can offer variations of a drama script while what is presented in the novel remains unvarying.

This article does not by any means claim to be an exhaustive discussion about how character analysis can be done in a work of fiction or drama. It is after all a vast subject, on which I hope my article has offered a few helpful hints to enthusiasts and beginners in literature and drama studies.