xx Dynamic characters exhibit this capacity; static characters do not. As might be
expected the degree and rate of some works, the development is so subtle that it may go almost unnoticed; in others, it is sufficiently drastic and profound as to cause a
total reorganization of the character’s personality or system of values and beliefs.
11
Changing in character may come slowly and incrementally over many pages and chapters, or it may take place with a dramatic suddenness that surprises, and even
overwhelms, the character. With characters who fully qualify as dynamic, such change, however and whenever it occurs, can be expected to alter subsequent
behavior in some significant and demonstrable way. Static characters leave the plot as they entered it, largely untouched by the
events that heave taken place. “Static characters, however, remain unchanged; their character is the same at the end of the story as at the beginning”.
12
Although static characters tend to be minor ones, because the author’s principal focus is elsewhere, this is not always the case.
3. The Characterization
Character creation is the art of characterization – what the author does to bring a character to life, to provide the reader with sense of the character’s personality, to
make that character unique. Authors can characterize or develop a character directly or indirectly. In presenting and establishing character, an author has two basic
methods or techniques which are direct characterization or telling method. The
11
Ibid. p. 26
12
Gordon, Jane Bachman and Kuehner, Karen, Fiction: the Elements of the Story New York: Mc. Grew Hill, ,p.97.
xxi narrator or a character summarizes or tells the reader what another character looks
like or what kind of person he or she is. Direct characterization often occurs during the exposition since it conveys background information efficiently, but it can occur
throughout the story. And the other method is the indirect characterization or dramatic method of showing, narrators and characters describe, without comment, a
character’s appearance or dress. In this way they suggest something about the character’s personality. A character’s repeated gesture or a facial tic, for example,
may imply a character’s arrogance or nervousness. A character’s own statements are another way of revealing character; diction
choice of words and grammar may connote a person’s educational level. A character’s actions – including reactions and mannerism – are another way
to read a character. Marley is always bit the wall-paper at home, an indication of Marley is a naughty dog and full of desire to make something broken or messy.
Through indirect characterization, a writer shows rather than tells, allowing the reader to infer the nature of character.
Direct method of revealing character – characterization by telling – includes the following:
- Characterization through the use of names. Names are often used to provide
essential clues that aid in characterization. Some characters are given that suggest their dominant or controlling traits.
13
As for example in this film
13
Pickering, James H and Hoeper, Jeffret D. Concise companion to literature.New York: MacMillan Publishing Co.,Inc. p.28
xxii Marley and Me
. Marley as the major character, the name Marley taken from the singer Bob Marley, to identify that Marley has character look like Bob
Marley, which always make people especially the master happy and Marley even though he is a dog, he can make everyone in everywhere smile.
- Characterization through Appearance. Although in the real life most of us are
aware that appearances are often deceiving, in the world of film detail of appearance what a character wears, and how he looks often provide essential
clues to a character.
14
Take for example, Jenny Grogan is always wear the neat clothes to go to the office, as a reporter in the Newspaper Office, but
contrast with the daily life when bond the time with her family and Marley, her appearance most of like another people who loves dog. It shows that
characterization through appearance support the film as long as the result in characters those are in their own way convincing.
- Characterization by the author. In the most customary form of telling the
author interrupts the narrative and reveals directly, through a series of editorial comments, the nature and personality of the characters, including the
thoughts and the feelings that enter and pass through the characters’ minds. By so doing the author not only directs our attention to or even character, but
tells us exactly what our attitude toward that character ought to be. Nothing is left to the reader’s imagination. Unless the author is being ironic – and there is
always that possibility – we can do little more that assent and allow our
14
Ibid. p. 29
xxiii conception of character to be formed on the basis of what the author has told
us.
15
Telling and showing are not mutually exclusive, however. Most of authors employ a combination of each. Even when the exposition. Most of modern authors
prefer showing to telling, but neither method is necessarily better of more fruitful that the other. As with so many other choices that the writer of film is called on to make,
choice of a method of characterization depends on a number of different circumstances, including the author’s temperament, the particular literary conventions
of the period in which he or she is writing.
B. Psychology of Literature
