Characters and characterisation

The novelist E.M. Forster in his critical work “Aspects of the Novel” (1927) made a useful distinction between flat characters and round characters.
Flat characters are two-dimensional and do not change during the course of a novel. They are often described briefly with one or two vivid details. Round characters have complex personalities, are characterized in more subtle ways, and develop during the course of a novel. They reveal themselves gradually, they can surprise us, but just like people we don’t expect them to behave totally erratically without any motivation.
But, of course, this division is slightly artificial. It’s a mistake to think that even apparently closed characters (flat characters) have a fixed range throughout a novel. Some characters are closed and flat for most of the novel and then surprise the reader by displaying characterisations the reader did not think they had.
There are some novelists who give an equal depth of life to all the characters in their books. The most famous example is George Eliot or H. James, who seek to present even some of their minor characters in sympathetic details.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways in which novelists present characters. These are telling and showing.
In telling the narrator directly informs the reader about a character; whereas in showing the reader is left to gather what the character is like from what he or she sees. A novelist usually both tells and shows. Direct telling is often employed when a character first appears. Showing is a subtle mode of narration. Readers are trusted by the author to see things.
These ways of characterisation are closely connected with and influenced the way the author expresses his or her attitude to characters: telling means the author’s direct expression of attitude whereas showing connected with indirect way expression of attitude.

Authors make characters distinctive by giving them:
• recognisable and memorable ways of speaking (speech portrayal);
• by describing their appearance and dress;
• by giving them significant names;
• by showing the way they behave and do different thing;
• by revealing characters’ thoughts and ideas.

Some authors gives a character such a distinctive way of speaking that a few sentences are all that is necessary for that character to be established. What things are important here? Grammatical features: short or long sentences; vocabulary ( complicated words, a lot of adjectives, many personal pronouns, etc.).
As for the appearance of characters, this question is more fruitful with some novelists than others. H.James clearly enjoys painting verbal pictures of his characters, Jane Austen is much less concerned about her characters’ faces. She tells us that Emma is “pretty and looks healthy” but there is no hint to which particular features make her pretty.
It is worth noticing that physical appearance is rarely described on its own. When the author writes about the appearance of a character, he or she is usually telling or showing the reader something about the inner world of the character’s personality.
Closely related to the question of appearance is that of dress. Clothes have several functions in novels:
- clothes as an expression of personality;
- clothes are sometimes used to indicate social status;
- clothes can also help to create the atmosphere of a book;(G.Greene, for instance, presents a world of seedy characters, whose shabby, dirty and scruffy clothes enact the very strong feeling in his novels of corruption, decay and failure);
- clothes can sometimes be an essential element in the development of the plot.
The way in which a character is shown as acting or reacting is one of the chief ways in which authors establish personality. Even an action that is normally thought of as slight, can be made significant.
What a character thinks may reveal more than what is said. An important development in narrative is the stream of consciousness technique. The term was first used by the American psychologist William James in his ‘ Principles of Psychology’ (1890) to define the flow of thoughts in a person’s mind. Events are conveyed to the reader through the memories, associations, feelings etc. Some critics use the term interior monologue interchangeably with stream of consciousness.