Faden – Introducing a Character

There are different ways to introduce a character depending on the style and theme of your book. In the chapter, Introducing a Character by Lodge, he outlined the ways of introduction. There is the simple way where the author lists physical characteristics straight out the bat, and there is another way where the author makes the reader figure out traits about a character through the story. Lodge states that typically the formal introductions of listing physical and emotional traits about a character are slightly older techniques; this is a basic way of beginning your story and in my opinion, doesn’t grab the reader’s attention as much as the other way. By letting the reader discover characters traits on their own through the characters sayings and actions, it keeps the reader interested. People nowadays don’t want to be given the straight facts, they want to feel like they are discovering something and figuring it out on their own. Lodge says that this technique in introducing a character is the more modern technique.

Kurt Vonnegut is a modern style artist, he uses some normal and some very bizarre events and adds weird characters to them in order to create action. Vonnegut’s main thing is including weird characters and playing with the reader and the character’s emotions. The question is, in what way does he do this? In his work the modern style of letting the reader figure out his character is used. He does give basic background, however, lets the psychological aspect of the character be figured out by the reader. For example in the short story “Who Am I This Time” he does state that Helene is an antisocial woman who constantly moves, he doesn’t explicitly say she doesn’t know her identity and is conflicted about her place in life, neither does he straight out say she falls in love with Harry; Vonnegut likes to have his readers figure these things out. In a way, this subtle way of letting a character be discovered makes his stories open to interpretation. If all facts were given then it would be harder to maybe find something in the character that relates to you, which is what Vonnegut aims to do. He wants you to be able to understand his characters the way you want to understand them. There is another example of this in “Harrison Bergeron”, the author is slightly required to say certain characteristics in order to fill the gaps in what’s going on. Because this short story is a fictional bizarre idea, he needs to give context for readers to understand the backstory. This backstory of characters is the characters’ physical description; their handicaps due to the ‘equality’ given to all in this specific short story. Vonnegut gave the basic information towards the introduction of the story then left the rest up to interpretation by the reader.

What we can conclude from Vonnegut’s work using the Lodge chapter “Introducing a Character” is that Vonnegut is a very modern style writer who plays to the needs of younger readers. He lightly introduces the basic physical characteristics of the character however leaves most psychological and ‘interesting’ traits up to the reader to find out. This technique creates an attachment from the reader to the character. Discovering things about the character that make you relate them to your real life is a very important aspect with gaining attention and appreciation from your readers.

Personally, when I write my own short story in Vonnegut’s style of writing I plan on doing the same thing. His style in progressively letting out characters’ details kept me on my feet, as well as allowed me to come to a final conclusion towards the end of which characters I felt like I related to most. In my opinion, with making a short story you should form it like the reader is meeting a real person, when meeting someone you don’t learn everything off the bat, you progressively get to know them. This is the way I plan on bringing Vonnegut’s ideas into my writing.