Fictional Character

In various forms of Theatre , performance arts and Cinema (except for Animation and CGI movies), fictional characters are performed by Actor s, dancers and singers. In animations and puppetry, they are voiced by Voice Actor s, though there have been several examples, particularly, in Machinima , where characters are voiced by Computer Generated Voices .

The process of creating and describing characters in a work of fiction is called Characterization .

The opposite of a fictional character is a Nonfictional Character .

NAMES OF CHARACTERS

The names of fictional characters are often quite important. The conventions of naming have changed over time. In many ).

Some 18th and 19th Century texts, on the other hand, represent characters' names by the use of a single letter and a long dash (this convention is also used for other proper nouns, such as place names). This has the effect of suggesting that the author had a real person in mind but omitted the full name for propriety's sake.

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One reason for this dash is that, in Britain and in other countries with a Feudal heritage, the names of counties and places might be the names of the feudal lords over those places. One cannot arbitrarily give someone the name "Earl of Manchester" because someone may either have or be elevated to such a Title , so it may be grounds for a lawsuit. Hence fictitious names are based on disparaged historical characters, or tend to be re-used. For example, "Lady de Winter" is a character in Dumas ''père'''s ''Three Musketeers'', and the family name was used in Du Maurier's ''Rebecca''. (The same holds true for the names of ''houses'': in the latter book, "Windermere" is named after a ''lake'', not a feudal holding).

The 19th Century movements of Sentimentalism , Realism and Naturalism all encouraged readers to imagine characters as real people by giving them realistic names, names that were often the titles of books, such as Charlotte Brontë 's ''Jane Eyre'' or Charles Dickens ' ''David Copperfield''. These conventions were followed by the majority of subsequent literature, including most contemporary literature.

Charles Dickens is also known for "Dickensian" character names (like Wackford Squeers and Oliver Twist ) which occupy a middle ground between the emblematic names of 18th-century comedy and realistic naming. At least some of his surnames are real (if uncommon) English surnames ("Twist" being an example), but they often convey something indirectly about the character as well.

However, there are few characters with names that are completely arbitrary. At the very least, names tend to indicate nationality and status. Often, the literal meaning or origin of a name is of some symbolic importance.

The names salem of cartoon characters can also be developed as a brand, which is a marketing tool used to sell various products or services.

SOME WAYS OF READING CHARACTERS

Readers vary enormously in how they understand fictional characters. The most extreme ways of reading fictional characters would be to think of them exactly as real people or to think of them as purely artistic creations that have everything to do with craft and nothing to do with real life. Most styles of reading fall somewhere in between.

Here are some typical ways of reading fictional characters in literary criticism:

Character as symbol

In some readings, certain characters are understood to represent a given quality or abstraction. Rather than simply being people, these characters stand for something larger. Many characters in Western Literature have been read as Christ symbols, for example. Other characters have been read as symbolizing capitalist greed (as in F. Scott Fitzgerald 's '' The Great Gatsby ''), the futility of fulfilling the American Dream, or quixotic romanticism ( Don Quixote ). Three of the principle characters in Lord Of The Flies can be said to symbolize elements of civilization: Ralph represents the civilizing instinct; Jack represents the savage instinct; Piggy represents the rational side of human nature.

Character as representative

Another way of reading characters symbolically is to understand each character as a representative of a certain group of people. For example, Bigger Thomas of '' Native Son '' by Richard Wright is often seen as representative of young black men in the 1930s, doomed to a life of poverty and exploitation. Dagny Taggart and other characters from '' Atlas Shrugged '' by Ayn Rand are seen as representative of American's hard-nosed, hard-working class.

Many practitioners of Cultural Criticism and Feminist Criticism focus their analysis of characters on cultural Stereotypes . In particular, they consider the ways in which authors rely on and/or work against stereotypes when they create their characters. Such critics, for example, would read ''Native Son'' in relation to Racist stereotypes of African American men as sexually violent (especially against white women). In reading Bigger Thomas' character, one could ask in what ways Richard Wright ''relied'' on these stereotypes to create a violent African-American male character and in what ways he fought against it by making that character the Protagonist of the novel rather than an anonymous Villain .

Often, readings that focus on stereotypes demand that we focus our attention on seemingly unimportant characters, such as the ubiquitous Sambo characters in early cinema. Minor characters, or Stock Characters , are often the focus of this kind of analysis since they tend to rely more heavily on stereotypes than more central characters.

Characters as historical or biographical references

Sometimes characters obviously represent important historical figures. For example, Nazi-hunter Yakov Liebermann in '' The Boys From Brazil '' by Ira Levin is often compared to real life Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal , and corrupted populist politician Willie Stark from '' All The King's Men '' by Robert Penn Warren is often compared to Louisiana governor Huey P. Long .

Other times, authors base characters on people from their own personal lives. '' Glenarvon '' by Lady Caroline Lamb chronicles her love affair with Lord Byron , who is thinly disguised as the title character. Nicole, a destructive, mentally ill woman in '' Tender Is The Night '' by F. Scott Fitzgerald , is often seen as a fictionalized version of Fitzgerald's wife Zelda.

Perhaps because so many people enjoy imagining characters as real people, many critics devote their time to seeking out real people on whom literary figures were likely based. Frequently authors base stories on themselves or their loved ones.

Character as words

Some language- or text-oriented critics emphasize that characters are nothing more than certain conventional uses of words on a page: names or even just pronouns repeated throughout a text. They refer to characters as ''functions'' of the text. Some critics go so far as to suggest that even authors do not exist outside the texts that construct them.

Character as patient: psychoanalytic readings

Psychoanalytic Criticism usually treats characters as real people possessing complex psyches. Psychoanalytic critics approach literary characters as an analyst would treat a patient, searching their dreams, past, and behavior for explanations of their fictional situations.

Alternatively, some psychoanalytic critics read characters as mirrors for the audience's psychological fears and desires. Rather than representing realistic psyches then, fictional characters offer us a way to act out psychological dramas of our own in symbolic and often Hyperbolic form. The classic example of this would be Freud's reading of Oedipus (and Hamlet , for that matter) as emblematizing every child's fantasy of murdering his father to possess his mother.

This form of reading persists today in much ist, using psychoanalysis "as a political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form."

Round characters vs. flat characters

Some critics distinguish between "round characters" and "flat characters" or Types . The former are made up of many personality traits and tend to be complex and both more life-like and believable, while the latter consist of only a few personality traits and tend to be simple and less believable. The protagonist (main character, sometimes known as the "hero" or the "heroine") of a traditional novel is almost always a round character; a minor, supporting character in the same novel may be a flat character. Scarlett O'Hara, of '' Gone With The Wind '', is a good example of a round character, whereas her servant Prissy exemplifies the flat character. Likewise, many antagonists (characters in conflict with protagonists, sometimes known as "villains") are round characters. An example of an antagonist who is a round character is ''Gone with the Wind's'' Rhett Butler. Experimental literature and postmodern fiction will often intentionally make use of flat characters, even for protagonists; the "round character" did not become the standard until well after the Renaissance.

A number of Stereotypical Or "stock" Characters have developed throughout the history of drama. Some of these characters include the country bumpkin, the con artist, and the city slicker. Often, these characters are the basis of "flat characters", though elements of stock characters can also be present in round characters as well. An entire tradition of theater, the Italian Commedia Dell'arte , was based on performers improvising situations around well-known stock characters.

UNUSUAL USES

Postmodern Fiction frequently incorporates real characters into fictional and even realistic surroundings. In film, the appearance of a real person as himself inside of a fictional story is a type of Cameo . For instance, Woody Allen 's '' Annie Hall '' has Allen's character call in Marshall McLuhan to resolve a disagreement. A prominent example of this approach is Being John Malkovich , in which the actor John Malkovitch plays the actor John Malkovitch (though the real actor and the character have different middle names).

In some experimental fiction, the author acts as a character within his own text. One of the earliest examples of this is '' Niebla '' ("Fog") by Miguel De Unamuno (1907), in which the main character visits Unamuno in his office to discuss his fate in the novel. Paul Auster also employs this device in his novel ''City of Glass'' (1985), which opens with the main character getting a phone call for Paul Auster. At first the main character explains that the caller has reached a wrong number, but eventually he decides to pretend to be Auster and see where it leads him. In '' Immortality '' by Milan Kundera , the author references himself in a storyline seemingly separate from that of his fictional characters, but at the end of the novel, Kundera meets his own characters.

With the rise of the "star" system in Hollywood, many famous actors are so familiar that it can be hard to limit our reading of their character to a single film. In some sense, Bruce Lee is always Bruce Lee, Woody Allen is always Woody Allen, and Harrison Ford is always Harrison Ford; all often portray characters that are very alike, so audiences fuse the star persona with the characters they tend to play, a principle explored in the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle '' Last Action Hero ''.

Some fiction and drama make constant reference to a Character Who Is Never Seen . This often becomes a sort of joke with the audience. This device is the centrepoint of one of the most unusual and original plays of the 20th Century , Samuel Beckett 's '' Waiting For Godot '', in which Godot of the title never arrives.

ICONIC FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

Some fictional characters are so famous that they can be referenced easily outside of the work from which they came, often because they have come to symbolize some Archetype or ideal.

LISTS OF FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

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