How Do You Analyse Minor Characters?, Where do our conclusions come from? |
 Sep 17 2006, 08:39 AM
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Eeylops Owl Cage Cleaner Posts: 235 Joined: 12:33pm June 19, 2005  |
I hope this is the right forum; Lorie told me to stick it here!
There are many characters in the books whom we see little, yet who sometimes play significant parts, or are simply popular to muse about. Examples would be Narcissa Malfoy, Regulus Black or (to a lesser extent) Percy Weasley. What I would like to know is how you draw your conclusions about them. How much comes from evidence and inference, and how much from assumption and gut feeling? For myself, my own main ways of coming to conclusions about characters are: - discussion (obviously the most objective and properly analytical method) - RP (useful for considering motivations, viewpoints, exploring dynamics, and seeing how well presumed things fit against what is known) Also, I consider things in two ways: - in-character (IC): things such as 'X thinks Z is bad because she believes that ...' - literary POV: things such as 'X is like this because it fits the theme of blah'. The example I'll use to illustrate my own points is Narcissa Malfoy; she's one of my favourite characters and I've spent a lot of time thinking about her. As all the he/she/thems etc. get confusing, I'll refer to the character you're trying to analyse as X. First of all, evidence - what we see of X in canon. Narcissa, my example, has very little screentime, and, as a 'bad' character, what we see of her is (apart from Spinner's End) highly biased. Thus we have only a few actual definitive presentations in canon that we can draw upon when analysing her. However, canon appearances of X are the most reliable information we have on them, even if evidence can be taken many ways. Second, inference. We can use this in two ways: first of all, inferred conclusions we can draw from trying to remove the bias of other characters ('Y') when they speak about X. This is of course less reliable than direct evidence, but can still be very useful, particularly if we understand Y well. The second manner of inference is drawing on the conclusions we make about characters connected to X (conclusions drawn from evidence are stronger than those drawn from inference, of course) to infer what that must say about X. For example, many of my own ideas about Narcissa's personality are drawn from Draco's personality (elements that seem not to have come from his father's genes/upbringing) or Lucius' personality (e.g. what he would look for in a wife). Of course, the dangers in this second method are that you are building upon a stack of guesses and inferences; at every level there is a chance that you are wrong and so going off on completely the wrong track. Thirdly, plain old assumption. Quite often we guess things about X, simply because they seem to fit and work. We don't really know anything about the dynamics of the young Black sisters, but given JKR's use of type, I picture Narcissa as being the little sister in a more than literal birth-order sense. The stereotypical social dynamics of three sisters seem to fit, at least for Narcissa and Bellatrix (though in my mind they work for Andromeda too, given modification for the whole prejudice issue). I have no evidence for this, but it seems to work because it makes sense, not just from the IC view but from a literary one. The Black sisters are not major players and JKR has no reason to make their family dynamics anything especially original; they already have their dash of unusualness because of Andromeda's differing views. Basically, many of my conclusions are based on things I have no evidence for, other than that they don't seem wrong: 'it makes sense for X to be like this'. Finally, our least reliable source, gut feeling. Sometimes we just feel something is as we perceive it to be. 'X is like this because.' Anyway, what I am asking is this: how do you come to your own conclusions about minor characters of whom we see little? What are your methods, how do you attack the problem, and how do you support your claims? |
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Sep 17 2006, 01:53 PM
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Official Singer of the Sorting Hat Song Posts: 6,606 Joined: 3:12pm July 22, 2005 Location: Lost in Hermione's beaded bag   |
Well, claireaurega, that's an excellent summation of character analysis.
I would say there's also context. When we see someone like Narcissa, we see her defined by contrast. Her sister nags and badgers her in such a way that we have to conclude that she's not nearly as sympathetic to the Dark Lord as her husband. And the tenderness between Narcissa and Snape opens the door to motivations far more complex. You are right about backstory. The minor characters flit by so quickly that JKR has to give us plenty of clues. The merciless teasing of Percy by his siblings isn't necessarily to make us sympathetic to him, it's to hint that he really is a pompous git and we can conclude this for ourselves as we see him making odd patronizing comments throughout. And then there's that quick seen in Flourish and Blotts where he's reading Prefects Who Achieved Greatness or whatever the nakedly ambitious title was. These fleeting bits of colour should have tipped us off to Percy's eventual break with his family. JKR said she'd been dropping anvil sized hints about Ginny since the beginning. And rereading the series you can see it's true. And those asides from others, as you point out, are so important. Harry thinks Ginny's too shy to talk and Ron marvels that at home she won't shut up. It shouldn't surprise us then when we finally meet up with Ron's Ginny and the tongue-tied Ginny of the first two books disappears. There is also the author's message to consider. How many girls have crushes on Snape or Draco? And yet JKR warns about the "Bad Boy" thing, and even excuses these things by saying the girls must really be taken by Tom Fulton or Alan Rickman. I think we have to take JKR at her word and these characters will not turn out to be the best romantic bets. Oh, Snape may be loyal to Dumbledore, but he wouldn't make the best or even 2nd best mate. And Draco will come to a bad end I fear. I also think readers have to avoid projecting. There were quite a few members who disliked Molly. Gasp! I know, hard to believe. But most of these members were projecting their own family dynamics onto the Weasley home and ignoring how the Weasleys actually responded and how much Harry appreciated Molly. So you have the direct evidence of the characters words and deeds. The testimony or commentary of other characters. The comments of the author. -------------------- Come the words that bubble
Up through broken laughter, Sweeter than spring-water, "Gods, I am so happy!" |
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Sep 17 2006, 03:53 PM
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Eeylops Owl Cage Cleaner Posts: 235 Joined: 12:33pm June 19, 2005 |
Thank you, I can't believe I forgot that one last thing - the least biased and easiest-interpreted evidence of all, what JKR directly says outside the books. There we don't even have the trouble of saying 'you can take things one way or another' because she's usually explicitly sharing something.
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Sep 17 2006, 05:14 PM
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Kibble Boy/Girl at the Magical Menagerie Posts: 261 Joined: 7:51am May 14, 2005 Location: Cologne |
And that's where I really disagree. JKR can be very sneaky in her interviews (and good for her and us! I want to be surprised when I read the books and not guessing everything by reading her interviews). She for example answered a question, if we will hear more about Regulus, that he is dead and therefore pretty quiet these days. This was before HBP was released. And after the book we can interpret her statement in another way. Regulus is dead and quiet, but if he's RAB (which IMO he's to 100%), we do hear more about him. She did not lie, but she invite us us to misinterpret her statement. Besides, she is contradictory in those things, despite of her warning the readers about Malfoy and Snape, she obviously likes them (and Percy) well enough, to wish them a Happy Birthday on her website.
QUOTE The merciless teasing of Percy by his siblings isn't necessarily to make us sympathetic to him, it's to hint that he really is a pompous git And why are you that sure about it? Really, she did portray pretty well that Percy is proud and pompous by the way she has Percy talk and behave, starting from his very first scene onwards. The teasing is done by Percy's silblings, therefore it should us say something about their characters, not about Percy's. I think the Weasley family dynamic is portrayed pretty well. The more the Twins tease him, the bigger git Percy becomes, and the bigger git he is, the more he gets teased. It's a vicious circle. Besides, there are scenes that show him in a better light, most notably the Second Task of GoF. One cannot fully analyze a character while ignoring such scenes. There is a reason why JKR has Percy behave the way he did in this scene, or for that matter, why she even included him here. Alternatively, the Twins' products and pranks were used for evil in HBP, Ron even pointed this out, so we are not meant to see them as wholly good (and luckily so. It would make them much less interesting characters). To be more precise, if it weren't for the Twins shoving Montague into that cabinet, Greyback very well might never have attacked Bill. And in case anyone misunderstand me, I do not think Percy is an innocent little lamb or that the Twins are rotten to the core, but I think by fully analyzing characters, we cannot ignore their bad sides (or their good sides, if they are unsympathetic characters), if those other sides are presented to us in Canon. And the Twins' bad side is presented to us, for example in the way their teasing affected Ron in ootP and how Ron started to get more confident once the Twins left Hogwarts. They are good natured and fun loving and can be helpful, but they are also portrayed as thoughtless and inable to see, when they are going to far, and I don't see, why this should exclude their behviour towards Percy. This post has been edited by hg1: Sep 17 2006, 05:16 PM -------------------- |
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Sep 18 2006, 09:49 AM
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Eeylops Owl Cage Cleaner Posts: 235 Joined: 12:33pm June 19, 2005 |
The thing is, people like the twins or Ginny, we see enough of them to come to our own conclusions. But what do we know of Narcissa? Scrimgeour? Andromeda? What I am wondering is the methods other people use to form opinions and draw conclusions on characters like these.
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Sep 18 2006, 03:32 PM
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Official Singer of the Sorting Hat Song Posts: 6,606 Joined: 3:12pm July 22, 2005 Location: Lost in Hermione's beaded bag |
Well, we can infer something about Andromeda from her daughter and the fact that she married a Muggleborn and got blasted of the family tapestry. I also think that she's the middle daughter, coming between Bellatrix and Narcissa, and so we can see something there of the other two. Andromeda rebelling against Bella's fanaticism and Narcissa, perhaps, being frightened into submission by the anger at her parents' reaction to the blood-treason.
All speculation, but very plausible. -------------------- Come the words that bubble
Up through broken laughter, Sweeter than spring-water, "Gods, I am so happy!" |
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Sep 18 2006, 07:53 PM
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Director of Nicholas Flamel Laboratories Posts: 11,087 Joined: 11:06am January 28, 2005 Location: Lighting the mountain path for Llewellyn ap Gryffudd |
There's something else we know about Narcissa: she loves her husband and son. She's very defensive of Lucius, and dares to go against the Dark Lord to save Draco. In all of our previous encounters with her, she is haughty and arrogant, but in HBP we see another, softer side to her. She is terrified. It's bad enough having your husband in prison, but to discover that her son was being sacrificed as punishment for those mistakes would be awful. Most women would do anything to save their families, and Narcissa is no exception.
-------------------- The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.--Harlan Ellison
My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.--Aldous Huxley |
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Sep 19 2006, 07:46 AM
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Mrs. A. W. Riddle Posts: 10,925 Joined: 12:26pm January 28, 2005 Location: The Chamber of Secrets |
I think, firstly, it depends upon the level of information.
For instance -- a person's name. If that is the only thing that you are given, you could probably only guess -- badly -- at any detail. Maybe you'd be told of a surname. For instance: Abraxas Malfoy. Even if we didn't know any other details about him, we would be able to infer a lot simply because we know he is -- probably -- related to the Malfoys (yes, I know he is, but I'm saying if we didn't know that!). Secondly, we could be given a name and a House for the character -- thus we'd be able to infer and guess at their personality. For instance, we're told that Daphne Greengrass is a Slytherin, so we can make inferences there. We can also assume that as she is a contemporary of Pansy, she might well belong in Pansy's gang of Slytherin girls. As with most things regarding Potter, I think fans tend to look for as many clues as possible -- names are a particular favourite (remember Mark Evans?  ). I also remembered people guessing at what sort of character Piers Polkiss was simply for the fact that he shared the same initials (P.P.) as Peter Pettigrew, and thus he would be that sort of ratty person.We can also use deduction -- i.e. We can deduce that because Harry hasn't mentioned a person in a certain context, then they wouldn't be involved. We can also apply models. For instance, we know that most OotP members behave in a certain way -- they go to meetings, they support Dumbledore and they are normally very qualified or willing in a certain area (Aurors, Remus as a Werewolf, Snape as a Death Eater spy) and thus we can say the same of other OotP members. Finally, isn't it all just like a logic problem? You get the clues, make assumptions and deductions and see how it all fits together? -------------------- We Slytherins are brave, yes, but not stupid -- Phineas Nigellus.
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