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a Flat Character
Character which is built around a single idea or quality and presented without much individualizing detail, and therefore can be fairly adequately described in a
single phrase or sentence.
b Round Character
Character which is complex in temperament and it is represented with delicate particularity. This type of character is as difficult to describe with any
adequacy as a person in real life.
b. Theory of Characterization
The theory of characterization offers some useful ways to identify main characters’ trait s. The definitions of characterizations given by different experts are
served to reveal the clearer ideas of characterization.
1 Definition
Rohrberger and Woods, Jr. 1971: 20 mentioned that characterization is a process by which an author creates a character. Furthermore, according to Holman
and Harmon 1986: 81, characterization is the creation of imaginary persons thus to be natural so that the readers can feel their existence.
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2 Methods of Characterization
Murphy 1972: 161-171 classifies some ways that are used by the author to introduce the characters in the novel such as: personal description, characters as seen
by another, speech, past life, conversation of others, reactions, direct comment, thoughts, and behaviormannerism.
a Personal Description
An author may describe a character through his appearance. The author describes characters through their physical outlook. He describes whether the
character is handsome, bad- looking, thin, fat, tall or short. The author may also describe a person’s clothes, what the character wears, whether he or she wears a
beautiful expensive gown or torn dirty dress which shows his or her economic status. Concisely, the author describes characters through visible appearance.
b Characters as Seen by Others
An author may use other characters’ eyes and opinions to describe a character. Through other characters’ judgment toward the other characters, the reader
would be able to know the characteristics of a character.
c Speech
An author can also describe the characteristics of a character through the way the character speaks to other characters. What a character says to other
characters can give the reader an insight of one’s characteristics in a story. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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d Past Life
An author may also use the past life of one character to reveal his characteristics. One’s character past life would enable the readers to know a person’s
characteristics whether he or she was good or bad in the past. The past events can be clues in analyzing the development of characters.
e Conversation of Others
Conversation of others means the author uses the conversation of other people about a character to know the characteristics of one character. Meaning to
say, it is about what people said concerning to the character.
f Reactions
An author can also let the readers know how a person reacts to various situa tions and different events to reveal one’s characteristics. Reactions here mean
how a character faces various situations and events. A character can express hisher emotion through different reactions
g Direct Comment
An author may portray a character by directly giving comments on a person’s characteristics. The author speaks about a character in a story and gives
the reader such a straightforward description in order to find out information about the character does the characterization.
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h Thoughts
The author might give readers direct knowledge and description based on the character’s mind and of what person is thinking about. Here, the
author leads us to analyze the mental process of the character. The reader is in a privileged position; he has a secret listening device plugged into the
deepest thoughts of a person in a novel.
i BehaviorMannerism
The author can describe a person’s mannerisms, habits or idiosyncrasies which tell us something about hisher character. The habits of the character
are revealed both the positive and negative ones which help us know something about the character.
Therefore, from those classifications we can understand more about what Nasar’s meant in describing John and Alicia’s characteristic s in the novel.
2. The Theory of Critical Approaches
