Etymology and Meanings of Literary Device of Characterization
Etymologically, characterization has been derived from a Medieval Latin term, characterizare, which means to put a sign of some specific feature on something. In Greek, it exists as kharakterizein which has the same meanings. However, in English, it seems to have emerged in 1744 with the meaning of giving special feature to something or some person.
Grammatically, it is a noun with plural characterizations. In fiction, it is considered the construction of different characters having human qualities.
Definition of Literary Device of Characterization
As a literary term, characterization means the presentation of the characters or persona appearing in narratives, plays, or even poetry. It also means the presentation of everything that could be considered a character. Interestingly, it is considered an integral element of fiction and movies rather than plays.
Process of Characterization
Writers and authors need to focus on the following points when teaching, learning, or drawing characters in narratives or poetry.
- Physical features
- Good qualities
- Bad qualities
- Future prospects
- Thinking capacity
- Major roles in the storyline
Literary Examples of Characterization
Example # 1
From All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
“Close behind us were our friends: Tjaden, a skinny locksmith of our own age, the biggest eater of the company. He sits down to eat as thin as a grasshopper and gets up as big as a bug in the family way; Haie Westhus, of the same age, a peat-digger, who can easily hold a ration-loaf in his hand and say: Guess what I’ve got in my fist; then Detering, a peasant, who thinks of nothing but his farm-yard and his wife; and finally Stanislaus Katczinsky, the leader of our group, shrewd, cunning, and hard-bitten, forty years of age, with a face of the soil, blue eyes, bent shoulders, and a remarkable nose for dirty weather, good food, and soft jobs.”
This passage has been borrowed from All Quiet on the Western Front, a phenomenal novel by Remarque. It shows how Paul Baumer presents his friends Tjaden, Haie Westhus, Detering, and Katczinsky. He associates every one of them with one specific feature and moves to the next to state that war tied all together. Each character shows one specific feature with their age to demonstrate how they are strong and united.
Example # 2
From Black Boy by Richard Wright
I was a drunkard in my sixth year, before I had begun school. With a gang of children, I roamed the streets, begging pennies from passers-by, haunting the doors of saloons, wandering farther and farther away from home each day. I saw more than I could understand and heard more than I could remember. The point of life became for me the times when I could beg drinks. My mother was in despair. She beat me; then she prayed and wept over me, imploring me to be good, telling me that she had to work, all of which carried no weight to my wayward mind.
Although this passage is a simple narrative of Richard Wright’s Black Boy when he was just six years, he is aware of how children never went to school in the area where he was a student. This description presents the characters of his friends as well as his mother. This characterization shows Wright’s powerful observation as well as his strong memory.
Example # 3
From Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
They had walked in single file down the path, and even in the open one stayed behind the other. Both were dressed in denim trousers and in denim coats with brass buttons. Both wore black, shapeless hats and both carried tight blanket rolls slung over their shoulders. The first man was small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features. Every part of him was defined: small, strong hands, slender arms, a thin and bony nose. Behind him walked his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, and wide, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely.
This passage from Of Mice and Men presents the character of George and Loonie, showing their physical features and costumes. Steinbeck presents them as if they are twins yet they have a strong difference as he lists them as the first man and the second man. These physical features show the power of characterization of Steinbeck.
Example # 4
From The Color Purple by Alice Walker
My mama dead. She die screaming and cussing. She scream at me. She cuss at me. I’ big. I can’t move fast enough. By time I git back from the well, the water be warm. By time I git the tray ready the food be cold. By time I git all the children ready for school it be dinner time. He don’t say nothing. He set there by the bed holding her hand an cryin, talking bout don’t leave me, don’t go.
These words of Celie show how Alice Walker has used her characterization skills in this novel. It also shows that Alice Walker has used Celie as the first-person narrator. She tells about her mother, her physical feature of being a big lady, her weakness of screaming, her own situation, and how she used to do work.
Example # 5
From To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Aunt Alexandra fitted into the world of Maycomb like a hand into a glove, but never into the world of Jem and me. I so often wondered how she could be Atticus’s and Uncle Jack’s sister that I revived half-remembered tales of changelings and mandrake roots that Jem had spun long ago. These were abstract speculations for the first month of her stay, as she had little to say to Jem or me, and we saw her only at mealtimes and at night before we went to bed. It was summer and we were outdoors. Of course, some afternoons when I would run inside for a drink of water, I would find the living room overrun with Maycomb ladies, sipping, whispering, fanning, and I would be called: “Jean Louise, come speak to these ladies.”
This characterization of Aunt Alexandra and her status in Maycomb shows how Harper Lee has used her skill of creating living characters. However, this characterization has less description and more narration about her relations, her power of weaving stories, and how Jean Lousie sees all this.
How to Create Characterization
- Planning a character beforehand.
- Think about character traits.
- Outline the motives, features, and implications of character traits.
- Plan antagonists and protagonists.
- Think about setting and conflict based on features.
- Write descriptions to create peculiarities.
Benefits of Using Characterization
- Characters become personas for teaching moral lessons.
- Characterization makes characters lifelike and real.
- Characterization helps describe figures with clarity.
- Characterization helps the readers and the audiences to sync or equate their own character traits with the person and understand human nature.
- It helps the readers and the audiences build a narrative.
Literary Device of Characterization in Literary Theory
- Characterization in Narratology: The literary device of characterization is the bedrock of a literary piece. Although characters differ in perception, observation, and description, they are almost the same in every other narrative. In narratology, they are very important as a character could be a focuser or a narrator, or even an actor. This depends on the author as well as the readers and how they interpret the authors’ words about the characters.
- Characterization in Formalism Literary Theory: In formalism, however, they are an integral part, for figurative language mostly works when great characters are used. The reason is that to make readers perceive characters as living beings, the author has to use figurative language using metaphors, similes, and other literary terms.
- Characterization in Postcolonialism Literary Theory: In postcolonialism, good characterization is necessary to show power relations, subjectivity, identity, and hybridity of the characters. In fact, it requires highly diverse skills to show indigenous, tribal, racial, and even familial characters from different locations and different nationalities which have undergone colonialism.
- Characterization in Psychoanalytic Literary Theory: To explain id, ego, and superego in a better way, the authors need to present characters having all of these and other attendant features to show the psychoanalytic side of the culture.
- Characterization in Postmodernism, Indigenous Critical Theory, and Critical Race Theory: Even in postmodernism and other critical theoretical perspectives, the authors present characters in their respective cultural settings to show how they evince the relevant features such as survivance, discourses of pathology, fractured figures, mentally deranged persons, identities, indigenous practices, and indigenous epistemological issues. Almost the same is the case of characterization in other theoretical perspectives such as the queer theory or readers’ response theory.
Suggested Readings
Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford University Press, 1996. Print.
Margolin, Uri. “Characterization In Narrative: Some Theoretical Prolegomena.” Neophilologus 67.1 (1983): 1-14. Wellek, Rene, and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956. Print.
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