Chapter 3: Study Project on Character

Working with character most often means paying attention to two different but related aspects of character: the details of character description and the character's various roles or functions in the narrative. The following exercises will help you work with a character's description and functions. The idea, of course, is to come via character to some larger understanding or interpretation of the story.

1. Description

Many different elements come together to describe characters in fiction. Reading character is like playing the role of detective. Readers notice many characteristics that provide clues about character, but which don't seem immediately important to a story. Just remember: Nothing in a story is an accident. It all functions in some way.

Here are a few of the elements you might look at to see how a character is described:

1. The narrator's direct descriptions of character (see the paragraph below from "Bartleby the Scrivener")
2. How characters act, including both actions important to the story and apparently "minor" actions such as habits, tics, occupation, and so forth
3. What characters themselves say and how they say it (what kind of vocabulary, manner, authority, humor, sense of self is exhibited by their way of speaking?)  Also what they don't say or openly refrain from saying
4. What other characters say about them
5. Characters' names; no name is accidental
6. Characters' social status, national and ethnic identity, age and gender
7. Characters' relations with other characters
8. At what point in the story the character is described and for what purpose

To test your skills, locate (by underlining or listing) all of the attributes of the narrator from "Bartleby the Scrivener" contained in the following paragraph.

I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never address a jury, or in any way draw down public applause; but, in the cool tranquility of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men's bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man.

Consider the following questions about this self-description:

1. Who is this guy and why should we care?
2. Where in the story does this description occur?
3. What do his preferences say about him as a lawyer and a man?
4. Describe the narrator based on this description.
5. What does the term "safe" mean in the passage?
6. Why is the word "snug" repeated?
7. What are we to think of this peaceful attorney? (What does the narrator's attitude indicate?)

2. Functions

Characterization or description provides a basis for our understandings of character motivation. Although, clearly description and action are inter-related (since we look to actions to define character and character to explain actions), we tend to look to character description for clues about why characters behave as they do. But we also look for similarities among characters as well as at their relationships with one another (do they love or hate each other?) as a way of understanding what is going on in the story.

Based on the narrator's self-description, consider the following questions about the character's function:

1. How do the attributes established in this passage continue throughout the story in other descriptions of the narrator?
2. How do the narrator's characterizations of himself explain his actions in the story?
3. Are there any other characters in the story who have similar attributes?
4. If so, what might those similarities tell us about what is going on between those two characters?
5. Why is this character the narrator of the story?

3. Interpretation

Interpretation involves looking at all the characters, major and minor, and asking questions such as the following:

1. Why does the narrator describe his assistants in detail?  How do we understand what the narrator describes as their complementary relationship (one is good in the morning, the other in the afternoon)?
2. Do the narrator's characterizations of Bartleby explain Bartleby's motivations? In what ways?
3. If it is no accident that the narrator and Bartleby are similar, what does that similarity tell us about the conflict going on between them?
4. Why does the narrator behave as he does toward Bartleby?

4. Putting It All Together 

Considering everything you now know, what is the relation between the narrator and Bartleby?  Which character is the story about?

As a part of thinking about character, you have used character psychology or psychological criticism. In other words, you have applied what you know about human behavior and motivation to the characters in this story based on what they say and do. If the characters in "Bartleby the Scrivener" also fit more or less neatly into a model or pattern offered by mythology—such as Oedipus or Prometheus—we might also be tempted to understand the story in light of that pattern. Such an interpretation would be a part of myth criticism. If, for example, we had reason to see Bartleby as Prometheus (or a scapegoat figure of any kind—a scapegoat is a figure who is sacrificed for the good of everyone else), we might read the story as a retelling of the scapegoat myth in which Bartleby is sacrificed for the good of everyone else. It might also be that this story is a reverse scapegoat myth in that Bartleby is a scapegoat, but to no good end. In this sense the story might be a cynical rewriting of that myth.