Round and Flat

[bekah]

At 3:09 PM +0200 11/4/06, Ya Sam wrote:
>Within the framework of character discussion I propose a query. Name 
>two characters (by any author) that in your opinion represent the 
>most obvious cases of 'roundness' and 'flatness'.
>


Well,  I guess even E.M. Forster  couldn't really "pin it down" to a 
long term useful definition.   It's really a range between the 
flatness of Miss Haversham and the roundness of Tolstoy's Levin. 
What Forster said was (see "Aspects of the Novel"  (1927) - Chapter 4 
- an old but sometimes helpful book):

Flat characters have one idea behind them.
Flat characters are easily recognized emotionally,
Flat characters are easily memorable.
Flat characters don't change much - their permanence is comforting. 
(according to Forster)

He said that most of Dickens' characters are flat and most characters 
in Russian novels are round (and they really are!).    I think this 
distinction is rather too simplistic for contemporary literature, 
but it can still useful or at least interesting.

Some quotes:

"We may divide characters into flat and round. Flat characters were 
called 'humorous' in the seventeenth century, and are sometimes 
called types, and sometimes caricatures. In their purest form, they 
are constructed round a single idea or quality: when there is more 
than one factor in them, we get the beginning of the curve towards 
the round."    pg 67

"A novel that is at all complex often requires flat people as well as 
round, and the outcome of their collisions parallels life . . . 
accurately."  pg 71

"The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising 
in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does 
not convince, it is flat pretending to be round."  pg 78


My submissions from very contemporary literature which might be 
familiar to listers:

Round:   Humbert Humbert,   Holden Caulfield,  the protagonist in Middlesex

Flat:  Zoyd,  T.C. Boyle's characters tend to be quite flattish 
(might be an exception in there),  Franzen's characters in "The 
Corrections"

Roth is interesting in that he creates both very rounded characters 
in some novels (Portnoy's Complaint and The Human Stain) but the 
characters are quite flat in others (American Pastoral,  The Plot 
Against America).  Most of them are somewhere between.

DeLillo's characters tend to be flattish, of a "type,"  but with some 
room for ideosyncracy.  (I looooove DeLillo.)


Bekah
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