Character and porridge...

About 30 years ago, I wrote a short story called "Porridge." The basis of the story emerged from questions I was asking myself at the time as to whether or not an individual's character remained fixed or changed over time Here is the opening paragraph. 

For Dick and I, the problems started when we were children. For my brother, it was an old woman standing helpless at the roadside. For me, it was porridge. I still recall the steam on my face as, drawing the spoon through the oats, I separated it into half-moons. The trick was to put the spoon in the mouth and repeat the action before the half-moons met again. If this happened, I knew it would cause a calamity like the closing of the Red Sea. One morning, runny porridge appeared at my nose. Struck with terror, I refused to touch it. Mother called me Fussy Freddy and the name, like a virus, spread through friends and family until its point of origin was forgotten. From that point on, I was "the fussy one."

Something similar happened to Dick. Many years ago, he stopped to help an old lady across the road.

"How he loves to help people," someone said.

From that day, Dick was condemned. He was the caring one, the one they said would become a social worker. And he did. It was a pity that he never married, but what could you reasonably expect of one so caring?

Now, I don't know about you, but I often object when somebody says of me: "He behaved out of character." Such a comment suggests that my character came into existence at birth, continues to exist for my whole life and drops of a cliff when I cease to be and there is little I can do to change it! 

For example, it often seems to me that "significant others" like to attach adjectives to us (like the mother in my story) and they often refuse, or find it difficult, to acknowledge changes in us. After all, much of their appreciation and understanding of us turns on which pigeon holes they have stuffed us into! How many times in a relationship do we hear comments like: What has got into you? I don't recognise you any more!  The problem here is that holes are for pigeons and not for people. 

I suggest that unchanging individuals do not exist and never have existed! Most of us are, in fact, forever changing and developing. Character is something that develops over time. It is not something we are stuck with until we die.

Having said that, static characters can be useful to the writer or film director, for example: James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Romeo but woe betide the actor or writer who tries to introduce too much character development!

 

 

Comments

[Ranald Barnicot]

Vive l'existentialisme! And a very good beginning to a story. But, if you'll pardon my carping ex-EFL teacher's pedantry, shouldn't the first sentence have started "For Dick and me, ...", not for "Dick and I, ..." ?

[Robert Goddard]

Of course you are fully pardoned, Ranald, and as an ex-EFL teacher myself, I see you are right about the first sentence. But over the last 30 years of writing, I find myself breaking the rules or simply disregarding them because I like the sound of the "incorrect" version better. The word "but" at the beginning of the previous sentence is something I often do although I know it is - technically - "incorrect."