While watching the Sam Peckinpah film Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (197_), I started to think about vantage points in fiction; or, more importantly, the lives and perspectives of the characters the author does not explore. Consider what Atticus Finch must have felt and thought during the events of To Kill A Mockingbird; we are given an indication, through dialogue and musings from the reliable-narrator, but we never explicitly read it in the text. An aspect of realism is gained through the development of minor characters– however, it is at the same time important to realize that this must be relevant to the story.
To explain:
The characters of the novel exist within the universe of the novel; the events that transpire take place inside the same universe (barring sci-fi, hmm?). The story told in the novel is a fragment of a much larger universe the author has created upon writing a story.
For example, suppose I have written a novel about a man named Pat who lives in an apartment in Chicago. The first Thursday of each month, Pat’s landlord, Mr. Farley, comes to collect the rent for the previous month. From a technical standpoint, the introduction of Mr. Farley into any scene must serve a purpose for the novel; he must engage the protagonist in dialogue, advance the plot, etc.. However, within the frame work of the story, Mr. Farley is simply showing up because he needs to ‘collect the rent’, and will, as a result of that, engage (there’s that word again!) Pat in dialogue, or whatever the needs of the author are. Mr. Farley has a life of his own, outside that of the novel, and it is the events and decisions he makes outside of the book that effect his actions inside of the novel.
The development of these minor (or major) characters helps develop the universe as a whole, but it must be relevant to the context of the story. Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Cohen exemplify this rule: the characters are very real; they have quirks, seperate interests, and yet, these traits are always relevant to the story. Walter’s comically unhealthy relationship with his ex-wife Cynthia in The Big Lebowski (199_) is one of several contributing factors to his mental instability, which sometimes that manifests itself in his bursts of rage and eccentric, which lead to the development of the plot (his Hazzard-County-esque style attempt to switch suitcases and steal the ransom money, pulling the Big Lebowski out of his wheelchair, smashing a car with a crowbar, etc.). Likewise, in A Serious Man (2009), the protaganist’s neighbour’s consistent abrasive behavior has a direct result on the hero’s psyche, though the neighbours themselves (a father and his son) never directly influence the plot.
I feel a bit better now that I’ve written that out. Back to Peckinpah.
Filed under: Existentialism, Knowledge, Thoughts & Things
