Character and Characterization Review of Related Theories
7
story. Usually the acts of the story are focused on this character from the beginning to the ending parts 20.
Furthermore, Abrams states that as people presented in the story, characters have the same characteristics as real human beings. They have
temperament and moral nature. Their temperament will be the basis of their speeches and actions. In the story, characters may remain constant or stable or
may undergo a radical change through its development or as result of an extreme crisis in the story itself 20.
In An Introduction to Fiction, Stanton states 23 that characters are the individuals who appear in the story and these individuals are resulted from
mixture of interests, desires, emotions, and moral principles. He also divides a character into two: central character and minor character. A central character is a
character who dominates the whole story and is presented frequently to develop. The minor character is presented to explain and to help other characters,
especially the major character. While, Jacobs, in Fiction: An Introduction to Reading and Writing 501, states that character is an extended verbal
representation of human being, the inner self that determines thought, speech and behavior. A character is then a person in the literary work.
Murphy in his book Understanding Unseen points out nine ways in which an author attempts to present the character in the story understandable and feel
like the characters are alive for the readers 161-173. They are from the personal description, the way in which the character is seen by others, the character’s
speech, his past life, the conversation of others, the figure’s reactions, direct
8
comments given by the author, the character’s thought and mannerism. The explanation of each point given as follows:
It is about personal description. It is the way that the author describes the physical appearance or attributes of the characters. It includes their clothes,
accessories, face, skin, eyes, and look. The first is by seeing a character as seen by another. The author describes
a character through the eyes and opinion of other characters and the readers will get such reflected image of the character. The second point is the speech. The
readers have an insight about one’s character through his or her conversation with the other character, in which the readers are eventually able to uncover his or her
opinion or view. The next point is by identifying the past life of the character. The author describes or tells the past life of a character. This information, in turn,
helps the readers to know and understand the events that have helped to shape the character.
Using conversations of others in the novel is the other points. It is the way in which the author gives the readers clues about one’s character through the
conversation of the others about him or her. The next point is the reactions which occur in the novel. By describing the reaction of a character to various situation or
events, the author gives the readers clues to know his or her characters. Direct comments and thoughts are also considered as the points to reveal the
characterization. Direct comments show that the author describes or comments on one’s character directly. While by seeing thoughts, we can identify that the author
gives the readers direct knowledge of what a character is thinking about.
9
The last point is Mannerism. It gives us explanation that the author portrays a character’s mannerism, habits, and idiosyncrasies, which may tell the readers his
or her character. In Reading and Writing About Literature, Rohrberger and Woods 81
explain that characterization is the process by which an author creates character, the devices by which heshe makes the reader believe that a character is a
particular type of a person heshe is.