Fictional character

A fictional character is any person who appears
in a work of fiction. More accurately, a fictional character is
the person or conscious entity we imagine to exist within the world
of such a work. In addition to people, characters can be aliens,
animals, gods or, occasionally, inanimate objects. Characters are
almost always at the center of fictional texts, especially novels
and plays. It is, in fact, hard to imagine a novel or play without
characters, though such texts have been attempted (James
Joyce's Finnegans Wake is one of the most famous
examples). In poetry, there is almost always some sort of person
present, but often only in the form of a narrator or an
imagined listener.

In various forms of theatre, performance arts and cinema (except for
animation and CGI movies), fictional characters are
performed by actors, dancers and singers. In animations and
puppetry, they are voiced by voice
actors, though there have been several examples, particularly,
in machinima, where characters are voiced by computer generated voices.

Cartoon characters can be classified as fictional characters
which cover both fictional humans, for examples, Tarzan or
Spiderman, or non-humans, for examples, Mickey Mouse or Donald
Duck.

The process of setting up characters for a work of fiction is
called characterization.

The opposite of a fictional character is a nonfictional character.

Names of characters

The names of fictional characters are often quite important. The
conventions of naming have changed over time. In many Restoration comedies, for example,
characters are given emblematic names that sound nothing like real
life names: "Sir Fidget", "Mr. Pinchwife" and "Mrs. Squeamish" are
some typical examples (all from The Country Wife by William Wycherley).

Some 18th and 19th
century texts, on the other hand, represent characters' names
by the use of a single letter and a long dash (this convention is
also used for other proper nouns, such as place names). This has
the effect of suggesting that the author had a real person in mind
but omitted the full name for propriety's sake. Les Misérables by Victor
Hugo uses this technique. A similar technique was employed by
Ian
Fleming in his 20th Century James Bond
novels, where the real name for M, if spoken in dialogue, was always written "Adm.
Sir M**** M*******."

One reason for this dash is that, in Britain and in
other countries with a feudal heritage, the names of counties and places
might be the names of the feudal lords over those places. One
cannot arbitrarily give someone the name "Earl of Manchester"
because someone may either have or be elevated to such a title, so it may be
grounds for a lawsuit. Hence fictitious names are based on
disparaged historical characters, or tend to be re-used. For
example, "Lady de Winter" is a character in Dumas père's
Three Musketeers, and the family name was used in Du
Maurier's Rebecca. (The same holds true for the names of
houses: in the latter book, "Windermere" is named after a
lake, not a feudal holding).

The 19th century movements of sentimentalism, realism and naturalism all encouraged readers to
imagine characters as real people by giving them realistic names,
names that were often the titles of books, such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre or
Charles Dickens' David Copperfield.
These conventions were followed by the majority of subsequent
literature, including most contemporary literature.

Charles Dickens is also known for
"Dickensian" character names (like Wackford Squeers and Oliver
Twist) which occupy a middle ground between the emblematic
names of 18th-century comedy and realistic naming. At least some of
his surnames are real (if uncommon) English surnames ("Twist" being
an example), but they often convey something indirectly about the
character as well.

However, there are few characters with names that are completely
arbitrary. At the very least, names tend to indicate nationality
and status. Often, the literal meaning or origin of a name is of
some symbolic importance.

The names of cartoon characters can also be developed as a
brand, which is a marketing tool used to sell various products or
services.

Some ways of reading characters

Readers vary enormously in how they understand fictional
characters. The most extreme ways of reading fictional characters
would be to think of them exactly as real people or to think of
them as purely artistic creations that have everything to do with
craft and nothing to do with real life. Most styles of reading fall
somewhere in between.

Here are some typical ways of reading fictional characters in
literary criticism:

Character as symbol

In some readings, certain characters are understood to represent
a given quality or abstraction. Rather than simply being people,
these characters stand for something larger. Many characters in
Western literature have been read as
Christ symbols, for example. Other characters have been read as
symbolizing capitalist greed (as in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby), the futility of
fulfilling the American Dream, or quixotic romanticism (Don
Quixote).

Character as representative

Another way of reading characters symbolically is to understand
each character as a representative of a certain group of people.
For example, Bigger Thomas of Native
Son by Richard Wright is often seen as
representative of young black men in the 1930s, doomed to a life of
poverty and exploitation. Dagny Taggart and other characters from
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand are
seen as representative of American's hard-nosed, hard-working
class.

Many practitioners of cultural criticism and feminist criticism focus
their analysis of characters on cultural stereotypes. In particular, they consider the
ways in which authors rely on and/or work against stereotypes when
they create their characters. Such critics, for example, would read
Native Son in relation to racist stereotypes
of African American men as sexually violent
(especially against white women). In reading Bigger Thomas'
character, one could ask in what ways Richard Wright relied on these
stereotypes to create a violent African-American male character and
in what ways he fought against it by making that character the
protagonist of the novel rather than an anonymous
villain.

Often, readings that focus on stereotypes demand that we focus
our attention on seemingly unimportant characters, such as the
ubiquitous sambo characters in early cinema. Minor characters, or
stock characters, are often the focus of
this kind of analysis since they tend to rely more heavily on
stereotypes than more central characters.

Characters as historical or biographical references

Sometimes characters obviously represent important historical
figures. For example, Nazi-hunter Yakov Liebermann in The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin is
often compared to real life Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, and corrupted populist
politician Willie Stark from All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren is often compared to
Louisiana governor Huey P.
Long.

Other times, authors base characters on people from their own
personal lives. Glenarvon by Lady Caroline Lamb chronicles her love
affair with Lord Byron, who is thinly disguised as the title
character. Nicole, a destructive, mentally ill woman in Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is often seen as a
fictionalized version of Fitzgerald's wife Zelda.

Perhaps because so many people enjoy imagining characters as
real people, many critics devote their time to seeking out real
people on whom literary figures were likely based. Frequently
authors base stories on themselves or their loved ones.

Character as words

Some language- or text-oriented critics emphasize that
characters are nothing more than certain conventional uses of words
on a page: names or even just pronouns repeated throughout a text.
They refer to characters as functions of the text. Some
critics go so far as to suggest that even authors do not exist
outside the texts that construct them.

Character as patient: psychoanalytic readings

Psychoanalytic criticism usually
treats characters as real people possessing complex psyches.
Psychoanalytic critics approach literary characters as an analyst
would treat a patient, searching their dreams, past, and behavior
for explanations of their fictional situations.

Alternatively, some psychoanalytic critics read characters as
mirrors for the audience's psychological fears and desires. Rather
than representing realistic psyches then, fictional characters
offer us a way to act out psychological dramas of our own in
symbolic and often hyperbolic form. The classic example of this would
be Freud's reading of Oedipus (and
Hamlet,
for that matter) as emblematizing every child's fantasy of
murdering his father to possess his mother.

This form of reading persists today in much film
criticism. The feminist critic Laura
Mulvey is considered a pioneer in the field. Her groundbreaking
1975 article,
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema",
analyzed the role of the male viewer of conventional narrative
cinema as fetishist, using psychoanalysis "as a political
weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal
society has structured film form."

Round characters vs. flat characters

Some critics distinguish between "round characters" and "flat
characters" or types. The former are made up of many personality
traits and tend to be complex and both more life-like and
believable, while the latter consist of only a few personality
traits and tend to be simple and less believable. The protagonist
(main character, sometimes known as the "hero" or the "heroine") of
a traditional novel is certain to be a round character; a minor,
supporting character in the same novel may be a flat character.
Scarlett O'Hara, of Gone with the Wind, is a good example
of a round character, whereas her servant Prissy exemplifies the
flat character. Likewise, many antagonists (characters in conflict
with protagonists, sometimes known as "villains") are round
characters. An example of an antagonist who is a round character is
Gone with the Wind's Rhett Butler. Experimental literature
and postmodern fiction will often intentionally make use of flat
characters, even for protagonists; the "round character" did not
become the standard until well after the Renaissance.

A number of stereotypical or "stock" characters
have developed throughout the history of drama. Some of these
characters include the country bumpkin, the con artist, and the
city slicker. Often, these characters are the basis of "flat
characters", though elements of stock characters can also be
present in round characters as well. An entire tradition of
theater, the Italian commedia dell'arte, was based on
performers improvising situations around well-known stock
characters.

Unusual uses

Postmodern fiction frequently
incorporates real characters into fictional and even realistic
surroundings. In film, the appearance of a real person as himself
inside of a fictional story is a type of cameo. For
instance, Woody Allen's Annie
Hall has Allen's character call in Marshall McLuhan to resolve a disagreement.
A prominent example of this approach is Being John Malkovich, in which the actor
John Malkovitch plays the actor John
Malkovitch (though the real actor and the character have different
middle names).

In some experimental fiction, the author acts as a character
within his own text. One of the earliest examples of this is
Niebla ("Fog") by Miguel de Unamuno (1907), in which the main
character visits Unamuno in his office to discuss his fate in the
novel. Paul Auster also employs this device in his novel
City of Glass (1985), which opens with the main character
getting a phone call for Paul Auster. At first the main character
explains that the caller has reached a wrong number, but eventually
he decides to pretend to be Auster and see where it leads him. In
Immortality by
Milan Kundera, the author references himself in
a storyline seemingly separate from that of his fictional
characters, but at the end of the novel, Kundera meets his own
characters.

With the rise of the "star" system in Hollywood, many famous
actors are so familiar that it can be hard to limit our reading of
their character to a single film. In some sense, Bruce Lee is
always Bruce Lee, Woody Allen is always Woody Allen, and Harrison
Ford is always Harrison Ford; all often portray characters that
are very alike, so audiences fuse the star persona with the
characters they tend to play, a principle explored in the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle
Last Action Hero.

Some fiction and drama make constant reference to a character who is never seen. This often
becomes a sort of joke with the audience. This device is the
centrepoint of one of the most unusual and original plays of the
20th century, Samuel
Beckett's Waiting for Godot, in which Godot
of the title never arrives.

Iconic fictional characters

Some fictional characters are so famous that they can be
referenced easily outside of the work from which they came, often
because they have come to symbolize some archetype or
ideal.

Character	Description	Significance	Characters influenced
Alice	The young heroine of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll	Symbolic of a naïve girl introduced into a strange, new world	Shadowcat in X-Men
Batman	DC Comics superhero created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger	Symbol of mystery and heroism driven by a dark obsession.	The Punisher
Big Brother	Iconic leader of the totalitarian state of Oceania in 1984 by George Orwell	Term describing any propaganda symbol people are made to love fervently without sense or reason; also used for any monitoring or supervision perceived as overly intrusive
Bugs Bunny	Carrot-chomping, Warner Bros. cartoon rabbit, known for the catch phrase “What’s Up Doc?”	Symbol of benign slyness and cunning	Babs and Buster Bunny
Archie Bunker	Character in the sitcom All in the Family	His name has become a term for bigot, especially an older one who maintains outdated attitudes	Eric Cartman
Charlie Brown	Child protagonist of the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz	Prototypical lovable loser and chronic worrier	Arthur Dent
Captain Ahab	Sea captain from Moby Dick by Hermann Melville, who is on a never-ending quest to kill the title whale	Often used to describe a person with a destructive, hate-driven and all-consuming quest
Cinderella	Title character from an age-old rags-to-riches fairy tale	Term for anyone who rises from a meager, unhappy life into a more pleasant one; especially a woman who does so through a relationship with an elite man	Maria in Maid in Manhattan
Conan the Barbarian	The barbarian in Robert E. Howard's series about Conan the Cimmerian.	Noble Savage	He-Man
Cthulhu	Godlike monstrosity in H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Call of Cthulhu"	Personification of cosmic forces beyond mankind's comprehension	Apocalypse in X men
Darth Vader	Hero-turned-villain, and right hand to the Emperor in George Lucas’Star Wars films	Tragic hero, symbol of evil, heartlessness, and supreme power who is almost impossible to kill.	Sephiroth
Don Quixote	Title character from Miguel Cervantes' novel; believed he was a chivalric knight although he was actually a self-deluded buffoon	Symbol of dedication to achieving one's goals in spite of all obstacles, especially reality; source of adjective "quixotic"
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	Title characters from the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson; due to a wayward experience the quiet scientist Jekyll would transform into the malicious Hyde	Refers to anyone particularly two-faced, especially with one bad and one good side	Incredible Hulk,Two Face
The Doctor	Title characters from the BBC Television show Doctor Who; a Time Lord who travel through time and space for the purposes of defeating evil	Symbol for cunning, mystery, and bravery
Dracula	Title vampire from Bram Stoker’s horror novel	Archetypal vampire, a metaphor for any person, thing or idea that is life or energy-draining
Hamlet	Protagonist of William Shakespeare play of the same name	Symbol of any brooding, angry young man with a willingness to accost others; also used to symbolize indecisiveness
Holden Caulfield	Protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger	Symbol of troubled, cynical young men
Homer Simpson	Character from the animated sitcom The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening	Often used to refer to an oafish American adult male	Peter Griffin
Huckleberry Finn	Runaway youth featured in several works by Mark Twain	Symbol of anyone with an exceedingly simple moral code, especially one that clashes with larger society
Indiana Jones	Globe-trotting archaeologist in a series of films by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg	Symbol of high adventure
James Bond	Secret agent from a series of novels by Ian Fleming and a long-running series films	Used to describe anyone who is suave, charming, clever and attractive to women; the personification of espionage at its most romantic
King Arthur	Legendary British king; maybe not entirely fictional	Epitome of righteousness, justice and virtue.	Harry Potter
Lolita	Nickname of the 12-year-old girl from Vladimir Nabokov's novel of the same name	Name for any young girl involved with an older man.
Macbeth	Title character from a William Shakespeare play of the same name	Symbolic of anyone undone by a drive for power
Merlin	Mentor of King Arthur	A mysterious and wise mentor or wizard	Gandalf, Albus Dumbledore
Ophelia	Character in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. One-time love interest of the title character; she who drowns, possibly by suicide	Term used to describe any troubled and mentally unstable young woman
Prince Charming	Prince from the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault	Term for any handsome, charismatic, and ideal male suitor
Robin Hood	Outlaw from British legend who "steals from the rich to give to the poor"	Archetypical “outlaw hero” who fights the wealthy and powerful for the sake of the poor and helpless.	Green Arrow
Romeo and Juliet	Title couple from William Shakespeare's play of the same name, lovers whose marriage is forbidden by a family rivalry.	Their names are used to describe any passionate pair of young lovers, especially one whose love is doomed or forbidden
Ebenezer Scrooge	Wealthy, ill-tempered old man from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens	Term used to describe anyone miserly and uncharitable	Scrooge McDuck
Santa Claus	Jolly old, bearded figure	Figure representing love and kindness towards children.
Sherlock Holmes	Detective from several stories by Arthur Conan Doyle	Figure representing the power of observation and reason in the cause of justice.	Dr. Gregory House, M.D.
Mr. Spock	Character in the television series Star Trek, a Vulcan/human hybrid	Symbol of logic and reason over passion and emotion
Superman	DC Comics superhero created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster	Archetypical superhero, modern messiah figure and a symbol of unstoppable good
Captain America	Marvel comics World War II Superhero	The Ultimate Super-Soldier at the peak of Human fitness.	Star Wars Clone Troopers
Spider-Man	Marvel Comics superhero created by Stan Lee	Friendly, neighbourhood superhero who has to cope with the problems of everyday life while coping with a dual identity.	Static Shock
Puck	Prankster from Shakespeare's play Midsummer Night's dream	Trickster figure
Uncle Tom	Character in Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a black slave who is docile and obedient	Term for a person who is a disgrace to his or her race, especially African Americans who act in a stereotypical manner or act to please the "white establishment"
Wile E. Coyote	Warner Bros. cartoon character who constantly tries and fails to kill the Road Runner	Symbol of dedication in the face of futility, or of incompetent malevolence inevitably defeated	Ralph Wolf
Zorro	Superhero of man movies pre-American Civil War era .	The Face of resistance during times of Corruption .