solved Lesson 5: Flat vs. Round Characters How do we readers

Lesson 5: Flat vs. Round Characters
How do we readers get to “know” the characters that populate a narrative? On one level, the act of reading becomes a means of observation; we observe characters as they participate in story events, and we come to recognize that they have agency and the capacity to act, to make things happen. From their actions—often outward expressions of their internal states—we glean some sense of who they are, how they think, and how they feel. From the behaviors dramatized by a narrative we can intuit or infer characters’ motives, values, strengths and weaknesses, and other qualities we might assemble under the umbrella of “personality.” What we learn from characters’ actions can be further enriched or complicated by dialogue and other forms of communication with other characters. On a second, perhaps more obvious level, we might get to know more about characters through a narrative’s basic, factual exposition. A narrative might document biographical insights and share information about characters’ backstories. We might get descriptions of the characters’ appearance, their temperament, their mood, their capabilities, their talents, etc. If we take into account narrative perspective, then we may also gain (direct) access to characters’ interiority. If we actually get to see story events through the characters’ eyes (focalization) or overhear the characters’ thoughts (voice), then we may arrive at a deeper understanding of their sensibility, their mindset, and their interpretations of (and reactions to) story events.
Depending upon how much exposition, access to interiority, and opportunity to observe characters in action we get, we will come to recognize that some characters in a given narrative appear or feel more lifelike than the other characters. Hence the distinction between what we’ll call flat characters and round characters.
 
Flat characters tend to exist and function somewhat superficially, sometimes peripherally, in the storyworld. We don’t tend to learn much about them. We may only get a limited description of who they are or why they matter. We may come to identify them according to a very select number of traits or distinguishing features, and we may come to associate them (and their place in the storyworld) with the performance of predictable or mechanical actions. In many cases, flat characters seem more like objects, than subjects—blending in with the furniture at a party if not actively in use.
By comparison, round characters exhibit ranges of depth and complexity. They can be dynamic, and thus they may change, evolve, develop, and/or vary in mood, disposition, and worldview over the course of a narrative. As we gain knowledge about them (through observation of their present circumstances and behaviors, accounts their past, access to their point of view and mindset, etc.), we come to perceive them as being notably lifelike and more or less coherently “whole.”
Despite the binary-like distinction suggested by our terms (flat vs. round), we should note that characters exist on a spectrum. Across different narratives and often within a single narrative, we will encounter round characters that prove to be richer and fuller than other round characters and flat characters that exhibit varying degrees of “flatness.” For example, consider the four characters in Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” While none of them could ever be exceptionally round given the narrative’s brevity, the cast of characters still demonstrates gradations of flatness/roundness.
 
Louise doesn’t do much, in terms of performing significant actions, but she nonetheless becomes rich and complex and lifelike during the scene in her bedroom. As she breathes in the spring air and struggles with her mixed reactions to the apparent death of her husband, she gains roundness. And it is Louise’s roundness (and our opportunity to appreciate it) that makes her stunning death feel so ironic and even tragic. The other three characters are all pretty much flat. However, Brently Mallard is profoundly flat in a rather fascinating way. There is nothing to him other than the fact that he shows up unexpectedly alive. Not only is Brently all surface and no depth, but he’s basically just a prop. His significance as a character is extraordinarily mechanical—more object than subject—insofar as he functions merely as a trigger for Louise’s shock.
Standard Flatness Package
As the romantic relationship between the narrator and Kirthi suggests, Charles Yu’s “Standard Loneliness Package” has a thematic stake in questions that ask how much and in what ways we can truly know someone else. Can I (literally) feel your pain, the narrative wonders. In a sense the narrative’s central themes echo phenomena and philosophical notions raised by the experience of reading literary narratives. Doesn’t reading literary narratives also invite us to attempt to get to know someone else and feel their pain (or happiness or anger or grief, etc.)? The degree to which such intellectual and emotional knowledge is achieved when we read a literary narrative relies in part on the flatness or roundness of the characters we encounter. It’s perhaps no surprise, to reiterate the opening point here, that the predominant flatness of the characters in “Standard Loneliness Package” underscores the narrative’s interest in how people’s lives may come to feel undeniably generic, repetitive, and standard both in terms of happiness and unhappiness.
Certainly, the unnamed first-person narrator-protagonist achieves some, limited amount of roundness. As the narrator describes his circumstances at work and his interpersonal relationships with Deepak and Kirthi, we acquire a bit of his individual sensibility. We learn that he’s a hopeless romantic, of sorts, and we balance this aspect of his personality against his general resignation and his disillusionment about his current and future chances at happiness and “the good life”:
I always appreciated Deepak trying to help me understand. But it’s just a job, I would say. I never really understood why Deep thought so much of those programmers, either. In the end, we’re all brains for hire. Mental space for rent, moments as a commodity. They have gotten it down to a science. How much a human being can take in a given twelve-hour shift. (9)
But how round can the narrator-protagonist really be when the narrative almost spends more time representing his experiences inhabiting the pain of others rather than capturing his own thoughts, feelings, and outlook? Indeed, some passages almost necessitate a quick double-take to determine whether they show the narrator’s experiences or the experiences of a client he’s tapped into via the company’s “emotional engineering” technology.
As a quick aside, it’s worth noting that we encounter two ultra-flat characters (Rajiv and Sunil) that function in much the same mechanical way as Brently Mallard. In one scene in which the narrator is “on duty” in the body of a client at a funeral, he suddenly realizes that the widow attending the funeral is being emotionally “occupied” by his coworker Rajiv: “We make eye contact and shie is staring at me and I am trying not to stare at her and then we both realize the same thing at the same time […] I’m not quite sure which ones smiles, Raj, or the person he is hiding inside of” (16). Later, the narrator hangs out with Sunil, who works in tech support. Who Sunil is, what he looks like, how he sees the world, and so on are, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. All that matters to the narrative’s representation of story events is simply that the narrator has the occasion to learn more about Kirthi and her father’s circumstances without talking directly to her (22). The ultra-flat Sunil isn’t a fully-fledged character; he’s merely a vehicle or conduit for important information that the narrator (and us!) needs.
Ultimately, the overall flatness of the characters in “Standard Loneliness Package” (one wonders if the clients even count as characters) becomes a defining characteristic of the storyworld itself. Even if we can identify with and feel some of the scenarios that play out—the bumpy and awkward relationship with Kirthi or the workplace friendship with Deepak and its sad ending—we don’t amass a deep, rich, variegated, and lifelike impression from the narrative. Given the overall speculative quality of the narrative’s storyworld this resistance to roundness and realness is perhaps part of the point.
Lesson 6: Narrators & Narration (An Introduction)
Having established the distinction between story and narrative, we should now be comfortable with the notion that story events and the actions, thoughts, and behaviors of characters involved are represented to us readers; we don’t have unmediated access to the storyworld or what’s going on in it. What we know and how we’re able to react and respond are greatly influenced by how these story events get told. The concept of plot, for example, helps us recognize the logistical ways in which a narrative organizes and controls which story events we learn about and the order in which we learn about them. Of course, plot isn’t a unique feature of literary narratives. Indeed, most of our preliminary observations about how narratives work (including matters of plot, conflict, expectation/anticipation, storyworlds, gaps, flat vs. round characters, etc.) make lots of sense in the context of other narrative media, like film and television. When we start to think about how movies and tv shows that tell stories actually carry out the process of telling, we notice that these media have modes of representation unavailable to literature. We aren’t so much told what’s happening; instead, we get to watch (and hear) the story get represented to us through a complex multimodal discourse comprised of various types of images and sounds. When we return to reading literary narratives, we discover little more than words on a page (or screen). And yet, when we scrutinize how literary narratives deploy language in order to tell stories we discover that the seeming limitations or constraints of written communication are directly responsible for some of the most intriguing, profound and powerful aspects of our reading experience. In this lesson, which provides an introduction to narrators and narration, we will make our first overt observations about the significance of the written “discourse” at work in literary narratives.
1st-person narration vs. 3rd-person narration
University students taking writing-intensive courses often want clarity about whether or not they can use I in their essays and reports. In other words, can they write in first person? In academic writing, first person—using I—when presenting information or analysis is usually deemed problematic and inappropriate because it risks giving the appearance of asserting one’s unsubstantiated opinion rather than evidence-/logic-based arguments or conclusions. And so, many of you will have been encouraged—perhaps enthusiastically required—to use third person in academic writing so as to convey to your audience a stronger sense of objectivity.
Narration: the activity of telling of a story
Narrator: the entity that carries out the telling of a story
In the context of literary narratives, the matter of first person and third person primarily relates to narration and narrators. As we work our way through a literary narrative, we typically perceive the representation of story events as something that doesn’t simply exist. Instead, such narrative representation takes place as we read; it’s communicated or transmitted to us via language. We tend to think of what’s occurring or being carried out here as an act of telling, or what we’ll call narration. The significance of first person and third person surfaces when we ask who (or what?) is actually doing the telling, the narrating. This would be the narrator, of course, and our ability to distinguish between first person and third person is of paramount importance if we want to locate and identify this narrator because in many ways this affects where information about story events come from and if/how certain perspectives might influence our understanding of these story events.
 
In both Charles Yu’s “Standard Loneliness Package” and Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, we can readily spot the first-person narrators within the first few lines of these narratives. In both cases, the narrator is also the main character or protagonist, and in effect, the use of first-person reinforces the feeling that these narrators are telling us their stories. Because these narrators (Yu’s unnamed “I” and Ward’s Esch) inhabit the storyworlds and participate in the story events as they occur, we gain intimate knowledge of whatever impressions, understandings, feelings, and attitudes they narrate. In other words, the first-person narration enhances and intensifies the power of perspective in these two cases. We see the storyworld and story events through their eyes; we hear them think and contemplate and reflect and try to make sense of their experiences. In “Standard Loneliness Package,” we have direct access to the narrator’s assessment of his workplace, his coworkers, the repetitive grind of his workday—“I am at a funeral. I am losing someone to cancer. I am coping with something vague. I am at a funeral. I am at a funeral. I am at a funeral.” (12)—and the uncertainty and disillusionment he harbors about his future and potential happiness. Similarly, in Salvage the Bones, our connection with Esch and our understanding of her identity and personality are enriched and deepened by the way in which the narrative’s first-person narration creates a kind of emotional and intellectual proximity. Over the course of the narrative, we readers effectively gain the experience of being immersed in her consciousness. 
At the same time, first-person narration introduces significant limitations that directly affect our comprehension and view of the storyworld and story events. Put simply, we the first-person narrator is pretty much limited to presenting or showing us story events that she has witnessed or participated in. In Salvage the Bones, we’re pretty much stuck relying on 15-year-old Esch’s account of everything. While we get access to her interiority—we can observe how she privately resonates with and draws inspiration from the heroines of Greek mythology—we don’t get to find out how Manny feels about her or why Skeetah is so dedicated to China unless these characters report such information through dialogue or actions witnessed and interpreted by Esch.
 
While a first-person narrator, like Esch, narrates in the process of participating in or witnessing the story as it takes place, a third-person narrator, like those in the literary texts from Week 1, effectively exists and operates outside of or apart from the storyworld and story events. Now you might be asking, “if a third-person narrator isn’t a character in the story and exists outside of the story world, then how the heck does the narrator know anything?” This is a tricky question to answer, but one that illuminates one of the aforementioned ways in which the language/discourse of narratives enable intriguing and profound possibilities. As readers we can often hear the voice of the narrator telling the story even in third person, but we’re not encountering a character or even the author. Instead, as odd as it may sound, a third-person narrator—even when it takes on a kind of persona and voice—is merely a device or language-based construction that like plot functions as part of a narrative’s representation of story events.
In much the same way that a narrative uses plot to arrange the order of story events in order to create the illusion of connections, tensions, and cause-and-effect types of relations, a narrative uses a third-person narrator to tell the story at hand in very particular ways that pretty much shape everything we know about what’s happening, how it’s happening and why. The narrator may have almost complete, all-seeing knowledge of the storyworld and its inhabitants, or the narrator may have limited knowledge (you may have heard these types of knowledge get referred to as degrees of omniscience). Moreover, as we’ve experienced already, a third-person narrator can “decide” what information to share, whose perspective to share, and when to share them. For example, in “Business Deal,” the narrator provides a window into Mr. Klingspiel’s worldview and state of mind but offers nothing of Charlie’s except what’s reported to us via dialogue. In TSHLOFM, the third-person narrator not only provides descriptions of the storyworld and detached (objective?) accounts of certain story events, but also modulates the distance between us and the three main characters. In this case, our experience doesn’t rely on the presence, participation, or perspective of a single character. The third-person narrator can transport us to spaces/places in the storyworld regardless of which characters are there at the time, and likewise, the narrator can provide access to the interiority of multiple characters rather than just one. For instance, the use of focalization and voice allows us to “get closer” to Wilson or Margot, while at other moments like the one quoted above, our proximity to Francis increases. Even while the third-person narrator is telling us about Francis’s fear and loss of confidence, the language used in the narration of this moment gives us the sensation that we are close enough to see, hear, and feel Francis’s perspective. Ultimately, when compared to first-person narrators, third-person narrators possess a wider range of powers that can shape and influence our experience of the storyworld and story events. Which of these “powers” get deployed, however, is a different matter entirely.
Question 13 pts
It’s probably fair to say that Esch in Salvage the Bones is a noticeably rounder character than the narrator in “Standard Loneliness Package.” With this in mind, identify three (3) important biographical or personality characteristics/traits you’ve learned about Esch and provide a brief explanation of how each of them contributes to your sense of her roundness.
EXAMPLE – Here’s an example characteristic/trait and explanation using Francis Macomber (rather than Esch):

Francis’s fear/lack of confidence: Learning about and seeing how fearful Francis became before and during the lion hunt helps us appreciate how much he develops when he later acquires a surprising new sense of bravery during the buffalo hunt. 

Question 2
We know that gaps refer to “voids in the information provided by a narrative.” As we read a literary narrative, we may discover that a narrative eventually fills in certain gaps for us, and we may also need to use our imagination to fill in gaps on our own. 
True or False? – Every literary narrative contains gaps no matter how long or detailed it is.
Group of answer choicesTrue
False
Question 3 
Based on your reading of the opening 3 chapters of Salvage the Bones, identify two key conflicts/tensions or questions you want to see resolved or answered by the end of the novel, and explain your motivations/thinking for both. 
Question 4 pts
Which of the five literary narratives we have read or started use third-person narration? Select all titles that apply. 
Group of answer choices”Business Deal”
“The Story of an Hour”
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
“Standard Loneliness Package”
*Salvage the Bones*
Question 5
Directly quote a passage from “Standard Loneliness Package” (other than the opening passage already discussed in Lesson 4) that helped you better understand or get oriented to the narrative’s storyworld, and explain your choice.
Question 6
Which of the four “short stories” that we have read (i.e., everything but Salvage the Bones) do you think is the most complex narrative? Why?