AP English Literature and Composition
Hilltop High School
Mrs. Demangos
Round Character

 Complex, multi-faceted, not
predictable
 A round character is depicted
with such psychological depth
and detail that he or she seems
like a "real" person. The round
character contrasts with the flat
character, a character who
serves a specific or minor
literary function in a text, and
who may be a stock character or
simplified stereotype.
Jean Valjean
Round Character

 If the round character changes or evolves over the
course of a narrative or appears to have the capacity
for such change, the character is also dynamic.
 Typically, a short story has one round character and
several flat ones. However, in longer novels and
plays, there may be many round characters. The
terms flat and round were first coined by the novelist
E. M. Forster in his study, Aspects of the Novel.
Flat Character

 Recognizable type; lacks
complexity
 Also called a static character, a flat
character is a simplified character
who does not change or alter his or
her personality over the course of a
narrative, or one without extensive
personality and characterization.
 The term is used in contrast with a
round character.
Scrooge
Confidant

 Protagonist’s intimate
Hamlet & Horatio
Harry, Hermione & Ron
Frodo & Sam
Confidant

 The confidant is a person of great sensibility to whom the
main character reveals his or her innermost thoughts
 . The confidant is essentially a listener and in some cases an
adviser.
 This technique of having a confidant to whom the main
character can talk serves a double function. First of all, it
allows the reader to see what the main character is thinking,
and secondly, it gives a more rounded view of the action. For
example, after something has happened to the main
character, the confidant hears about it and in their discussion
of the event, we, the readers, see and understand the various
subtle implications of this situation more clearly.
Foil

 Character’s illuminator through contrast
 A character that serves by contrast to highlight or
emphasize opposing traits in another character.
 In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Laertes the unthinking man
of action is a foil to the intelligent but reluctant
Hamlet.
Foil

 The angry hothead Hotspur in Henry IV, Part I, is the
foil to the cool and calculating Prince Hal.
Protagonist

 Character around which the action is centered
Antagonist

 Person or force working against the protagonist
 The term antagonist comes from Greek word
“antagonistēs” that means opponent, competitor or
rival.
 It is common to refer to an antagonist as a villain (the
bad guy) against whom a hero (the good guy) fights
in order to relieve himself or others.
 Generally, an antagonist appears as a foil to the main
character embodying qualities that are in contrast
with the qualities of the main character.
Antagonist

 A classical example of an antagonist is
that of King Creon in Sophocles’
tragedy “Antigone”. Here, the function
of the antagonist is to obstruct the main
character’s progress through evil plots
and actions. Antigone, the protagonist,
struggles against King Creon, the
antagonist, in her effort to give her
brother a respectable burial. Through
his evil designs, Creon tries to hamper
her in this attempt by announcing that
her brother is a traitor and decreeing
that “he must be left to the elements.”
This protagonist-antagonist conflict
becomes the theme of this tragedy.
Omniscience

 Teller knows all about everyone
The third-person narrator can be omniscient--a narrator
who knows everything that needs to be known about
the agents and events in the story, and is free to move
at will in time and place, and who has privileged access
to a character's thoughts, feelings, and motives.
Omniscience

 Middlemarch by George Eliot
 Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
Limited Omniscience

 Teller knows all about one character
The narrator can also be limited--a narrator who is
confined to what is experienced, thought, or felt by a
single character, or at most a limited number of
characters.
Dramatic Perspective

 Teller presents just the facts
 When the narrator reports speech
and action, but never comments on
the thoughts of other characters, it
is the dramatic third person point
of view or objective point of view.
 Example: “The Lottery” by Shirley
Jackson
Doppelganger

 Mysterious double
 Doppelganger, German word meaning “look-alike” or “double
walker”, originally meant a ghost or shadow of a person but
nowadays it simply refers to a person that is a look-alike of
another person.
 In literature, doppelganger is usually shaped as a twin, shadow
or a mirror image of a protagonist. It refers to a character who
physically resembles the protagonist and may have the same
name as well. Several types of doppelganger can be spotted in
world literature. It may take the form of an “evil twin”, not
known to the actual person, who confuses people related to that
original person. Besides, it may be figured as one person
existing in two different places at the same time. Sometimes, a
doppelganger is a person’s past or future self. In some cases, it
may simply be a person’s look alike.
Doppelganger

 “William Wilson”, a short story by Edgar Allan Poe
follows the theme of doppelganger. William, the
protagonist, meets another boy in school who had the
same name and looked surprisingly like him. He
dressed and even walked like him. The only difference
between them was that the doppelganger of William
could only talk in a whisper. The doppelganger haunts
William all his life. Worn out by interference from his
double in his affairs, William stabs him only to find in
the mirror that he has stabbed himself:
“In me didst thou exist—and, in my death, see by this image,
which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.”
Doppelganger

 Robert Louis Stevenson explores the theme
of doppelganger in his novel “Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde”. Hyde is an evil double of the
honorable Dr. Jekyll. Jekyll creates Hyde by
scientific experiments to prove his statement:
“man is not truly one, but truly two.”
He means that the human soul is a mixture of evil and good
and Hyde is the manifestation of the evil that existed in Dr.
Jekyll. As a respectable Victorian gentleman, Jekyll can never
fulfill the evil desires existing in him. Therefore, he separates
his “evil-self” by giving himself a separate identity.
Doppelganger

 A survey of Doppelganger examples leads one to
conclude that this literary device serves a variety of
purposes in literature. It may be used to show the “other
self” of a character that he or she has not discovered yet.
This “other self” could be the darker side of the character
that troubles or the brighter side that motivates. Hence, it
helps writers to portray complex characters.
 Moreover, doppelganger gives rise to a conflict in a story.
The doppelganger acts in a way that promises dire
consequences for the main character that puts in efforts to
undo the actions of his double. Sometimes, the conflict is
an inner one where a character tries to understand himself
by understanding his doppelganger.
Antihero

 An ordinary, modern man/woman groping through
life
A protagonist who is a non-hero or the antithesis of a
traditional hero. While the traditional hero may be
dashing, strong, brave, resourceful, or handsome, the
antihero may be incompetent, unlucky, clumsy, dumb,
ugly, or clownish.
Antihero

 Examples here might
include the senile
protagonist of Cervantes'
Don Quixote or the girlish
knight Sir Thopas from
Chaucer's "Sir Thopas."
Antihero

 In the case of the Byronic and
The same is true of
Heathcliffe in Emily
Bronté's Wuthering Heights.
Miltonic antihero, the antihero
is a romanticized but wicked
character who defies authority,
and becomes paradoxically
ennobled by his peculiar
rejection of virtue. In this sense,
Milton presents Satan in
Paradise Lost as an antihero in a
sympathetic manner--at least in
the first half of the poem.