Indirect Characterization Examples
Introduction
Indirect characterization is all about understanding how a character can be described based on certain insights. For example, readers can determine what a character is like based on their actions, what they say, and what they think.
By contrast, direct characterization is all about what the author tells us explicitly. For instance, an author might write, “Heather is short, has long brown hair, and has bright blue eyes. She is very funny.”
All of those descriptors help readers understand who the character is without having to work very hard or make their own interpretations. The author simply tells the reader about the character’s attributes.
Therefore, indirect characterization depends more on the reader’s ability to make assertions based on the evidence provided.
For writers, this also provides an opportunity to illustrate who the character is based on what they do, say, and think. Rather than stating these qualities explicitly, the writer can craft the story deliberately to include scenes and dialogue that elucidate a character’s traits.
Indirect characterization allows readers and writers to build their interpretive skills and boost their ability to consider the value of context.
Definition
Indirect characterization is how a character can be described based on what they do, say, and think.
Examples
Indirect Characterization and Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby
In classic literature, writers have used descriptions of characters to share what they want readers to understand. This is what helps readers visualize the character.
However, at other points, an author may choose to put the character in a scenario that helps us understand more about them.
F. Scott Fitzgerald does this in his work, The Great Gatsby, a story about a chaotic Long Island summer in the 1920s.
A chief antagonist, Tom Buchanan, is described this way:
“[Tom,] her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that…
The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts…”
From here, readers gain a sense of who Tom Buchanan is in the story. There are clear descriptions that describe his physical character, background, and status through the narrator, Nick Carraway. Visualizing who Tom Buchanan is, is made more simple through the explicit descriptions.
However, there are other attributes that readers can interpret about him later on in that same passage, which also echo how Tom is described through Nick’s point-of-view. For instance, Fitzgerald continues:
“‘Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,’ he seemed to say, ‘just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
‘I’ve got a nice place here,’ he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
‘It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.’ He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. ‘We’ll go inside.’”
Based on this interaction, readers can determine that Tom is opinionated and does not mind flaunting his wealth.
These are two attributes we can determine without the previous direct characterization afforded by Fitzgerald, the author.
Beyond this, if we did not have a single point-of view or narrator, as we do with The Great Gatsby, we would likely have to determine what we know about a figure’s characterization through our own interpretation.
When analyzing for indirect characterization, readers must consider what the character says, does, and thinks.
Conclusion
With careful and repeated review, readers can determine a variety of descriptors that can bring greater clarity to the unique features of that figure in the story.
Don’t forget to take a look at our indirect characterization anchor chart for an additional visual reference.