Characterization: “See Me, Hear Me, Touch Me…”

Characterization: “See Me, Hear Me, Touch Me…”
(—The Who, lyrics from “See Me, Feel Me/Listening to You” from Tommy)

The terms “round” and “flat” ascribed to characterization were coined by E. M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel. From this rose “three-dimensional” and “one-dimensional,” and the assumption that the latter characteristic leads to forgettable figures, something writers should avoid. Forster would demur; he describes how flat characterization itself can give the appropriate diminution to a character. The immediate point is to be attentive to what your characterization is doing, so that the few descriptive words you choose will precisely serve your intent. Regardless of the genre, characterizations are opportunities that can enrich the weight and visual reality of scene, add flavor and color, and augment subtext.

An example from Forster’s nonfiction narrative in Aspects of the Novel is his referral to the earliest listener of stories, the Neanderthal, as a “primitive audience of shock-heads, gaping around the campfire.” From these few words springs a vivid picture described with wit and humor. Nabokov, in his memoir, Speak, Memory, economically says about a military general: “His thickset, uniform-encased body creaking slightly…”

Fiction abounds with rich examples of meaningful characterization, including this first line from Bernard Malamud’s Lady of the Lake, “Henry Levin, an ambitious, handsome thirty, who walked the floors of Macy’s book department wearing a white flower in his label…” Note that “an ambitious, handsome thirty” are rather flat characterizations which suggest something vacuous about Levin’s personality, a suggestion confirmed by the visual of Levin at his job. And I can’t remember the author or book, but can never forget the woman – a cleaning lady – described as having a face “like a pudding.”

Many of Mary Oliver’s poems are pure characterizations: simple language describing particular details about animals or nature, an attentiveness that in itself comes to reveal the meaning of her observations. She describes “William” in an eponymous poem: “He comes pecking, like a bird, at my heart. His eyebrows are like the feathers of a wren. His ears are like seashells.” We grasp both the literal and metaphoric image of William.

Forster emphasizes the idea of “expression. Not completion. Not rounding off but opening out.” Attentiveness to characterization allows us that.