Prose: Character, Scene, Style

This is Unit Eleven of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part one of two: character, scene and style, and one Dickens paragraph that demonstrates the whole method. Unit ten closed by warning that a fifth defect in the anchor waited here. Here is this unit's governing idea, and it pays off on the word square: a passage rarely says what a person is like, it shows what they say, do and own and what the narrator chooses to mention, so characterisation on this exam is read off the selection of detail, which makes it a style question wearing a character question's clothes. We begin with the two methods of characterisation, the glossary's protagonist and antagonist defined by role, the foil, and epiphany. Then the plot terms, two the glossary defines and four it omits. Then the disclosure: the glossary makes flat and static one term and round and dynamic another, and this course takes the two axes apart. Then Dickens, who opens on a voice demanding Facts and builds a man from one adjective. Last, the family of metaphors that agree with each other about him. By the end you will be able to read character off detail and use the glossary's terms. To supply the plot terms it omits. To separate complexity from change. To read the square man. And to follow a family of metaphors to its argument.

Five entries to start: how prose reveals a character, direct against indirect characterisation, protagonist and antagonist from the glossary, the foil it omits, and epiphany as it defines it.

Read the selection of detail.

AIL 1001 How Prose Reveals a Character

A passage rarely says what a person is like. It shows what they say, what they do, what they own, and what the narrator chooses to mention. Characterisation on this exam is therefore read off the selection of detail, which makes it a question about style; the passage rarely states it outright.

Stated, or shown and inferred.

AIL 1002 Direct and Indirect Characterisation

Direct characterisation states a trait; indirect shows behaviour and leaves the trait to be inferred. The glossary defines neither phrase, so these are the standard senses. Indirect is commoner and is where the exam's inference questions live, because the reader has to do the work; indirect is where the questions are.

Defined by role, not by morals.

AIL 1003 Protagonist and Antagonist

The glossary gives protagonist as the main character in a work, and antagonist as the character whose dramatic role is to oppose the protagonist. Role is the operative word in the second: an antagonist is defined by function, not by being unpleasant, and an antagonist need not be a villain.

Contrast, not opposition.

AIL 1004 The Foil

A foil is a character placed beside another so that contrast reveals them both. The glossary has no headword for it. A foil need not oppose anyone, which is what separates it from an antagonist, and the exam does offer the two against each other; the glossary omits this term.

A sudden insight, to the character.

AIL 1005 Epiphany, as the Anchor Defines It

The glossary defines epiphany as a change, sudden insight or awareness revealed to the main character. Sudden is the mark. Joyce's stories in unit ten are built on the device, and the exam can ask where in a passage the realisation falls; suddenness is the defining mark of it.

Three entries on plot terms: plot and flashback as the glossary defines them, and four standard terms it leaves out, including setting.

Events, order, and relation.

AIL 1006 Plot, as the Anchor Defines It

The glossary gives plot as the events, the order in which they occur, and the relationship of the events to one another. Order and relationship are both included, which makes it a definition about causation rather than a list of happenings; causation, not a list, is what the glossary means.

An earlier event, told later.

AIL 1007 Flashback, as the Anchor Defines It

The glossary defines flashback as narrating an event that occurred before the point in the story the narrator has reached. It is a departure from the order plot would otherwise follow, and a question may ask what the departure accomplishes, so ask what the departure accomplishes.

Four standard terms, all absent.

AIL 1008 Conflict, Climax, Setting

The glossary has no headword for conflict, climax, denouement or setting, though it defines plot and flashback. Those are standard terms: the opposition driving a story, its point of highest tension, its settling afterwards, and the time and place it occupies; the glossary defines plot but not setting.

Seven entries on the anchor's character pairs: what it does, exactly what it says, the two axes taken apart, the combinations it loses, the moral framing it adds, and what to answer on the exam.

The anchor makes them two pairs.

AIL 1009 The Anchor's Character Pairs

The glossary offers flat, static, dynamic and round as two pairs of synonyms: flat equals static, round equals dynamic. That arrangement is not standard and it removes two useful descriptions from a candidate's vocabulary. The next entries take the two axes apart, because the arrangement is not standard.

Quoted as the anchor has it.

AIL 1010 What the Glossary Says

Its flat-character entry reads that a flat character, also known as a static character, is one offered the chance for positive change who fails to embrace it. Its dynamic entry says a dynamic character is sometimes referred to as a round character. There is no separate entry for round.

How much of a person is shown.

AIL 1011 Flat and Round: Complexity

Flat and round describe how much of a person is shown. A flat character has one or two traits and is fully accounted for by them. A round character has enough interior life to surprise. This axis says nothing about whether anyone changes; it is complexity, not change.

Different at the end, or not.

AIL 1012 Static and Dynamic: Change

Static and dynamic describe whether a character is different at the end. A static character finishes as they began; a dynamic one has altered in values, attitudes or understanding. This axis says nothing about how complex the character was to begin with; it is change, not complexity.

Round and static; flat and dynamic.

AIL 1013 The Combinations the Anchor Loses

A round static character is complex and unaltered, which describes a great many narrators and most minor figures in a long novel. A flat dynamic character is simple and changed, which describes many characters in fable and allegory. Collapsing the axes makes both unnameable, and both combinations are common.

A craft term made into a judgment.

AIL 1014 The Moral Framing in the Anchor

The glossary's flatness is a failure to embrace positive change, which makes a craft description into a judgment on the character. Neither standard axis carries that. A candidate using the anchor's version would look for moral failure where the exam is asking about complexity; the exam asks about craft, not morals.

Answer to standard usage.

AIL 1015 What to Answer If the Exam Asks

Use the two axes as standard usage has them, because the exam is written to standard usage and not to this anchor. If an option pairs flat with static as though they were the same, treat the pairing as a signal that the option is imprecise; the pairing itself is a warning sign.

Five entries on Dickens's opening: a voice before any description, want in both senses, one adjective five times, why that adjective, and five sentences with one opening.

A voice before any description.

AIL 1016 Dickens Opens on a Voice

Hard Times begins with a man speaking, before any description. He says what he wants is Facts, that these boys and girls should be taught nothing but Facts, that Facts alone are wanted in life, and that everything else should be rooted out. The capital letter is Dickens's own.

Both senses, one paragraph.

AIL 1017 "What I Want" and "Are Wanted"

The speaker says what he wants is Facts, then that Facts alone are wanted in life. The first is the modern sense of desire; the second is the older sense of needed, from unit three. Both senses sit in one paragraph, which is why that unit warned against a single rule; the warning is demonstrated.

One adjective, five times.

AIL 1018 The Square Man

The description gives a square forefinger, a square wall of a forehead, a square coat, square legs and square shoulders. One adjective, five times, for one man. Dickens is not running short of words; he is making a person out of a single shape, and the repetition is the portrait.

Right angles, and no surprises.

AIL 1019 Why Square

Square suggests the measurable, the unyielding, and the man-made. A character built entirely from right angles has no curves to be surprised by. The adjective does the characterisation before a single trait has been named, which is this unit's opening point in its clearest form, and here the governing idea pays off.

Five sentences, one opening.

AIL 1020 "The Emphasis Was Helped By"

Five consecutive sentences open with the same phrase, the emphasis was helped by, each adding a feature: forefinger, forehead, mouth, voice, hair. Unit eight called this parallel grammar. Here the repetition makes the man's insistence audible in the prose describing him; the prose insists as the man does.

Five entries on the metaphors: anaphora as the term for that repeated opening, then the eyes in their cellarage, the plantation of firs and the plum pie, the warehouse-room, and the neckcloth called a stubborn fact.

The same opening, repeated.

AIL 1021 Anaphora

Anaphora is the repetition of the same words at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences. The glossary has no headword for it, though it defines alliteration and assonance. It is the commonest rhetorical device in the exam's prose band, and unit twelve returns to it; it is absent from the glossary.

The head becomes a building.

AIL 1022 The Eyes in Their Caves

Dickens gives the forehead as a wall with the eyebrows for its base, and says the eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves overshadowed by it. Commodious cellarage is estate-agent language. The head has become a building, and the eyes are storage, described as though they were stock.

Building, plantation, pie.

AIL 1023 A Plantation of Firs

The hair bristles on the skirts of a bald head, called a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface. Then the head is covered with knobs like the crust of a plum pie. Building, plantation, and pie in three clauses: three vehicles in three clauses.

Cellarage, plantation, warehouse.

AIL 1024 "Warehouse-Room for the Hard Facts"

The knobs are there as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. Every figure has been commercial or industrial: cellarage, plantation, warehouse. The vehicles are consistent, and their consistency is an argument about the man; the vehicles agree with each other.

The simile is then called literal.

AIL 1025 The Neckcloth Like a Stubborn Fact

His neckcloth is trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was. The simile compares a thing to the abstraction the man worships, then the aside as it was asserts the comparison is literal. The joke is compressed into three words.

That is how prose reveals character, the terms defined and omitted, the anchor's collapsed axes, and Dickens's square man, with the governing idea paid off on one adjective. You can read character off the selection of detail, tell stated from shown, define an antagonist by role and a foil by contrast, and mark epiphany as sudden. You can define plot as causation and flashback as a departure, and supply conflict, climax, denouement and setting. You can quote what the glossary says about flat and static, separate complexity from change, name the round static and flat dynamic characters the anchor cannot, see the moral framing it adds, and answer to standard usage. You can hear Dickens open on a voice demanding Facts, catch want in both senses, and read square five times as a portrait made before any trait is named, with five sentences opening the same way. And you can name that anaphora and follow cellarage, plantation, pie and warehouse to a neckcloth that is literally a stubborn fact. Part two brings the vessels.