Fictional character: Encyclopedia - Fictional character

Fictional character

A fictional character is any person who appears in a work of fiction. More accurately, a fictional character is the person or conscious entity we imagine to exist within the world of such a work. In addition to people, characters can be aliens, animals, gods or, occasionally, inanimate objects. Characters are almost always at the center of fictional texts, especially novels and plays. It is, in fact, hard to imagine a novel or play without characters, though such texts have been attempted (James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is one of the most famous examples). In poetry, there is almost always some sort of person present, but often only in the form of a narrator or an imagined listener.

In various forms of theatre, performance arts and cinema (except for animation and CGI movies), fictional characters are performed by actors, dancers and singers. In animations and puppetry, they are voiced by voice actors, though there have been several examples, particularly, in machinima, where characters are voiced by computer generated voices.

The process of setting up characters for a work of fiction is called characterization.

Fictional character - Names of characters

The names of fictional characters are often quite important. The conventions of naming have changed over time. In many Restoration comedies, for example, characters are given emblematic names that sound nothing like real life names: "Sir Fidget", "Mr. Pinchwife" and "Mrs. Squeamish" are some typical examples (all from The Country Wife by William Wycherley).

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. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo uses this technique.

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.

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.

Fictional character - 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:

Fictional character - 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).

Fictional character - 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.

Fictional character - 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.

Fictional character - 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.

Fictional character - 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 film criticism. The feminist critic Laura Mulvey is considered a pioneer in the field. Her groundbreaking 1975 article, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"[1], analyzed the role of the male viewer of conventional narrative cinema as fetishist, using psychoanalysis "as a political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form."

Fictional character - 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 novel is certain to be 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.

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. As well as a fictional Character being some for example: Superman,Batman,Wonderwoman.

Fictional character - 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.

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.

Fictional character - Iconic fictional characters

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

Fictional character - Lists of fictional characters

Fictional character - General

• List of advertising characters
• List of aliens in fiction
• Comic and cartoon characters named after people
• List of comic and cartoon pairs
• List of dead fictional characters
• List of fictional characters with one eye
• List of fictional clergy and religious figures
• List of fictional people known for their names
• List of fictional robots and androids
• List of fictional television sitcom characters
• List of fictional witches
• List of Greek mythological characters
• List of heroic fictional scientists and engineers
• List of horror film killers
• List of mad scientists
• List of mythological pairs
• List of notable female fictional characters
• List of real-life characters
• List of unseen characters
• List of video game mascots

Fictional character - Stock characters

• Butch and femme
• Damsel in distress
• Femme fatale
• Hero
• Mad scientist
• Villain

Fictional character - Fictional animals

• List of fictional apes (and other non-human primates, excluding Monkeys)
  • List of fictional monkeys
• List of fictional bears
• List of fictional birds
• List of fictional cats
• List of fictional dinosaurs
• List of fictional dogs
• List of fictional dragons
• List of fictional elephants
• List of fictional horses
• List of fictional mice and rats
• List of fictional pigs
• List of fictional rabbits
• List of fictional sheep
• List of fictional animals of other species

Fictional character - Lists of fictional characters in specific works or series

• List of the Adventures of Tintin characters
• List of Alias characters
• List of Archie Comics characters
• List of Atlas Shrugged characters
• List of Beavis and Butt-head characters
• List of Carmen Sandiego characters
• List of characters in The Chronicles of Narnia
• List of DC Comics characters
• List of Dickens characters
• List of Digimon
• List of Disney characters
• List of Dragon Ball characters
• List of Dune characters
• List of Family Guy characters
• List of Final Fantasy characters
• List of Grand Theft Auto video game characters
• List of Hanna-Barbera characters
• List of Harry Potter characters
• List of Harry Potter characters in translations
• List of minor The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy characters
• List of major Love Hina characters
• List of minor Love Hina characters
• List of Hercules and Xena characters
• List of Invader Zim characters
• List of the Legend of Zelda characters
• List of Mario series characters
• List of Marvel Comics characters
• List of Mega Man characters (Battle Network series)
• List of Mega Man characters (Legends series)
• List of Mega Man characters (original series)
• List of Mega Man characters (X series)
• List of Mega Man characters (Zero series)
• List of Metroid characters
• List of Middle-earth peoples
• List of Middle-earth characters
  • Characters from The Lord of the Rings
• List of Mortal Kombat characters
• List of Nintendo characters
• List of Oz books characters
• List of Pokémon
• List of Robert Heinlein characters
• List of Ruin Mist characters
• List of The Sandman characters
• List of Sesame Street characters
• List of characters from The Simpsons
  • Fictional characters within The Simpsons
  • List of celebrities on The Simpsons
  • List of recurring characters from The Simpsons
  • One-time characters from The Simpsons
• List of Soul Calibur characters
• List of characters from The Sopranos
• List of Star Trek characters
• List of Star Wars characters
• List of Tekken characters
• List of Wheel of Time characters
• List of X-Men

Fictional character - Heroes and villains

• List of black superheroes
• List of female superheroes
• List of fictional heroes
• List of literary works with eponymous heroines
• List of male superheroes
• List of supervillains

See also

• Archive of fictional things
• Fictional realm
• Grand argument
• Mary Sue
• The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time

Categories: Fiction | Lists of fictional characters | Fictional characters | Narratology

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Fictional character", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki