LITERATURE: Character Build

There’s much going through my head this morning about characters within a story and I’ll be posting more on it later, but I wanted to get the base down now–before I go write up sales slips and plant geraniums.

We are free as readers to form opinions of story characters, and are just as free to verbalize them without threat of slander.  Now we form opinions of real people as well, but it hopefully takes longer, and is done with a touch of polite conservative open-mindedness.  In building a character, a writer strives to make his protagonist real and likable–whether a good guy or a bad guy.  There is no doubt that Dorothy Parker’s characters are relative–even when they are from a now bygone era (as read in the present), and the relationships between protagonist and antagonist is where Parker shines as a writer.  We also see Parker’s personal opinions of them, and especially in a marital plot, as she blesses them with the worst traits and common pitfalls of man/woman interplay.

Cormac McCarthy’s characters are tougher to figure out.  We see many sides of them as he gradually puts them into a scenario and we must watch carefully to see how they react.  We’re unsure of Cornelius Suttree.  I like him; I see some good things in him as he helps his friends.  But there’s always the question:  Why did he desert his family, his wife and child, and why is there such hatred towards him from some of them?  Is it justified? 

By the time McCarthy brings in the death of Suttree’s young son, whom we didn’t know about until we hear the news, we are torn between his abandonment and the vicious reaction of his inlaws and the town when he goes for the funeral.  Much more than the normal reaction of divorce.  What did he do?  How big a bad-ass was he?

So we reserve judgement, and follow him more carefully, cautiously back home.  We watch, wait, and become totally involved in his life.