Character in literary works examples. Folk character in works of modern Russian literature
Character is a set of the most pronounced and stable personality traits that are systematically manifested in all his actions and influence his actions.
Heroic character in literature
Literary character is usually called the combination of personal traits in a hero with universal ones that are characteristic of a certain group of people. It is this combination that creates the character’s unique personality and makes him inner world complex and mysterious for readers.
There are the following types of literary characters: tragic, satirical, romantic, heroic and sentimental. Examples heroic character in literature are Ostap and Taras Bulba in “Taras Bulba” and Kalashnikov in “The Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov...”. Heroic character, like heroic theme, is one of the main motifs in world literature.
Heroic character refers to people who carried out national tasks and dedicated their lives to the struggle for independence. Initially, warriors and defenders of their lands - Roland, Achilles, Ivanhoe - had a heroic character in literature. Then the heroic character was embodied in the images of heroic travelers - the heroes of the novels by J. Verne and Robinson Crusoe by D. Defoe.
Heroic character is always based on fight, which is led by the character. He constantly faces obstacles, which can be external circumstances, or internal doubts and fears. It is important to note that the struggle is carried out in the name of some goal or against something. Basically, this is a fight for justice and freedom, and a fight against world evil.
This is the highest manifestation of the heroic character in literature. Often a hero of this nature destroys stereotypes and old worldviews, and presents new system values to the world.
Therefore, the main features of a heroic character are courage, fearlessness, courage and intelligence, dedication and high spiritual level development. A striking example heroic character can be called Gadfly from the novel by E. Voynich.
Ways to Create a Heroic Character
The main ways to create a heroic character in work of art considered: portrait, speech of the hero, actions of the hero, psychologism, author's assessment character and characterization of the hero by other characters.
Portrait- This is what, artistic medium, which is necessary when creating any type of character. With the help of a portrait, we reveal the personality of the hero; often the portrait indicates the main character traits of the hero, his clearly expressed sides. IN in this case, the author carefully presents the reader with a portrait of the hero, emphasizing the necessary details and nuances of his appearance.
It is impossible to imagine creating a full-fledged heroic character without using such a method as hero's speech. It is through speech that the author reveals to us the hero’s way of thinking and how he appears to other people and society as a whole. The hero’s speech reflects nature, it is thanks to it that we truly learn the character of the hero and the characteristics of his behavior and thinking.
CHARACTER (in literature) CHARACTER (in literature)
Artistic CHARACTER, the image of a person in a literary work, outlined with a certain completeness and individual certainty, through which both a historically determined type of behavior and the moral and aesthetic concept inherent in the author are revealed human existence. The principles and techniques for recreating character vary depending on tragic, satirical and other ways of depicting life, from literary kind works and genre; they largely determine the face of a literary movement.
encyclopedic Dictionary . 2009 .
See what “CHARACTER (in literature)” is in other dictionaries:
A literary character, an image of a person, outlined with a certain completeness and individual certainty, through which a type of behavior (actions, thoughts, experiences, speech...) is revealed as conditioned by a given socio-historical situation.
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Books
- Yaroslavl character, Smirnov Yaroslav, Ermolin Evgeniy. Modern processes globalization is erasing the difference between people living in different continents, V different countries, different regions and cities. However, “its own” remains the same and becomes from...
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3. Character in literature
1. Character as a literary category.
CHARACTERliterary- an image of a person, outlined with a certain completeness and individual certainty, through which they are revealed as conditioned by a given socio-historical. situation type of behavior, and the author’s inherent moral and aesthetic. human concept. existence. Lit. H. is an artist. integrity, organic unity general, repeating and individual;objective And subjective(comprehension of the prototype by the author). As a result, lit. X. appears as a “new reality”, artistically “created” by a person, reflecting a real person. type, ideologically clarifies it. It is the conceptuality of lit. The image of a person distinguishes the concept of X in literary studies from the meaning of this term in psychology, philosophy, and sociology.
The idea of X. literary hero created through external and internal. "gestures" of the character, his appearance ( Portrait), copyright and other characteristics, place and role of the character in development plot. The relationship within the literary work of H. and circumstances is composed by the artist. situation. IN real life man and the broadly understood environment are inseparable, therefore the adequacy of the X. and the circumstances in the world of the work is the most essential requirement of realism. Contradictions between a person and society, between classes or departments.
2 .Character in realistic literature. Social conditioning of character-type. Man and thing.
Character in realistic literature. Social conditioning of character-type.
The reconstruction of individual X. as a historically unique relationship between the individual and the environment became a critical discovery. 19th century realism Realistic in practice. liters, the self-developing X. is constantly present - an incomplete and incomplete, “fluid” individuality, determined by its continuous interaction with historically specific circumstances, but at the same time - “itself to myselflaw”(A.A. Block) and therefore sometimes comes into conflict with the original. the author's intention.
B realistic. Literature 19-20 centuries. X. embody different, sometimes opposing, author's concepts of human personality. In O. Balzac, G. Flaubert, E. Zola, the fundamental basis of individuality is universal human nature, understood in the spirit of anthropology, and its “fluidity” is explained by the incompleteness of externality. environmental influences on the fundamental principle, the measure of which “measures” the individual’s individuality. In F. M. Dostoevsky or A. P. Chekhov, individuality is perceived against the background of the determinism of circumstances as measure personal self-determination, when the X. of the hero remains an inexhaustible focus of individual possibilities. L.N. Tolstoy has a different meaning of “incompleteness” of X.: need"It's clear express the fluidity of man, what he, one and the same then the villain, That angel, That sage, That idiot, That strongman, that most powerless being” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 53, p. 187), is explained by the desire to discover in individuality, alienated from others of people societies, living conditions, universal, generic, “full man”.
Man and thing.
In a literary work, a thing appears as an element of the conventional, artistic world. And unlike reality, the boundaries between things and people can be fluid. Russians folk tales give many examples of humanizing things. This tradition is continued by Russian and foreign literature.
One of the most important functions of a thing in literature is characterological. Gogol’s works show the intimate connection between things and their owners; it is not for nothing that Chichikov examines homes in such detail in “ Dead souls" Things can line up in a sequential row. But one detail can characterize a character (a jar with the inscription “laceberry” prepared by Fenechka in Fathers and Sons); against the background of literary tradition, the absence of things can also become significant.
Things often become signs, symbols of a person’s experiences (Block. About valor, about exploits...)
The generalization that the character contains is usually called character (from Greek character - sign, distinctive feature) or type (from Greek typos - imprint, imprint). By character we mean socially significant features, manifested with sufficient clarity in the behavior and state of mind of people; highest degree characteristics - type.
Creating literary hero, the writer usually endows it with one character or another: one-sided or multi-sided, integral or contradictory, static or developing, respectful or contempt, etc.
In the stories of A.P. Chekhov's "Death of an Official" and "The Thick and the Thin" Chervyakov and the "thin" as images are unique; we meet the first in the theater, "at the height of bliss", the second - at the station, "laden" with his luggage; the first is endowed with a surname and position, the second - name and rank; the plots of the works and their denouement are different. But the stories are interchangeable when discussing the theme of veneration in Chekhov, so similar are the characters’ characters: both act stereotypically, not noticing the comedy of their voluntary servility, which only brings them harm. The characters are reduced to a comic discrepancy between behavior characters and an ethical norm unknown to them; as a result, Chervyakov’s death causes laughter: it is “the death of an official,” a comic hero.
Concepts character And type are close to each other and are often used interchangeably. However, there is still a difference: the type is associated with the significance of artistic generalization, a high degree of universal in character. Characters, especially in the work of one writer, are often variations, the development of one type. Writers return to the type they discovered, finding new facets in it, achieving aesthetic perfection of the image.
The type, first of all, expresses the generic mass principle. In character, the emphasis is, on the contrary, on individuality. The type expresses one quality or property; it is psychologically one-sided. Character is dialectical, contradictory, psychologically complex, multifaceted. The type is always static, devoid of mobility, and does not change. The character is dynamic, capable of self-development. For example, Tatyana Larina and Anna Karenina, who behave completely differently than the author intended. Type exists outside of time. The character is viewed against the background historical era, interacts with her.
Character
Literary character is considered to be the image of a person, which is outlined with completeness and individual certainty. It is through character that a certain type of behavior is revealed, often one that is inherent in a certain historical time and social consciousness.
Also, through character, the author reveals his moral and aesthetic concept of human existence. Character is spoken of as organic unity general and individual, that is, character expresses both individual traits and those inherent to the public. In a broader sense, character is an artistically created personality, but one that reflects the actual human type.
To create a certain character in a literary work, there is a whole system of elements. These are external gestures and internal ones: speech and thoughts. The appearance, place and role of the hero in the development of the plot also forms a certain type of character. Character may also contain contradictions that are already embodied in artistic conflicts. The contradictions may be part of a certain nature.
Speech and action as ways to create character
One of the main ways to create character in literary works are speech And act. The linguistic form of expression of the character of the hero is inherent in almost all literary works; it is thanks to this method that readers can fully understand the subtleties of the character of the literary hero and his inner world.
Without speech, it is quite difficult to create a certain character. For a genre such as drama, speech characters performs one of the most important characterological functions.
Deed is one of the brightest forms of expression literary character. The hero's actions, his decisions and choices tell us about his nature and the character that the author wanted to express in him. Actions sometimes have great importance, than speech for a final understanding of the character of a literary hero.
Being born new personality receives the gift of a unique character. Human nature can consist of traits inherited from parents, or it can manifest itself in a completely different, unexpected quality.
Nature not only determines behavioral reactions, it specifically influences the manner of communication, attitude towards others and oneself, and towards work. A person's character traits create a certain worldview in an individual.
A person’s behavioral reactions depend on character
These two definitions create confusion, because both of them are involved in the formation of personality and behavioral reactions. In fact, character and temperament are heterogeneous:
- Character is formed from a list of certain acquired qualities of a person’s mental make-up.
- Temperament is a biological quality. Psychologists distinguish four types of it: choleric, melancholic, sanguine and phlegmatic.
Having the same temperament, individuals can have absolutely different character. But temperament has an important influence on the development of nature - smoothing or exacerbating it. Also, human nature directly affects temperament.
What is character
Psychologists, speaking about character, mean a certain combination of individual traits that are persistent in their expression. These traits have the maximum impact on the behavioral line of the individual in diverse relationships:
- among people;
- in the work team;
- to one's own personality;
- to the surrounding reality;
- to physical and mental labor.
The word "character" Greek origin, it means “to mint.” This definition was introduced into everyday use by the natural scientist Ancient Greece, philosopher Theophrastus. Such a word really, very accurately defines the nature of an individual.
Theophrastus was the first to coin the term "character" The character seems to be drawn as a unique drawing; it gives birth to a unique stamp, which is worn by the individual in a single copy.
To put it simply, character is a set, a combination of stable individual mental characteristics.
How to understand nature
To understand what kind of nature an individual has, you need to analyze all his actions. It is behavioral reactions that determine examples of character and characterize personality.
But such a judgment is often subjective. A person does not always react the way his intuition tells him. Actions are influenced by upbringing life experience, customs of the environment where the person lives.
But you can understand what kind of character a person has. Observing and analyzing for a long time actions of a certain person, it is possible to identify individual, especially stable traits. If a person is completely different situations behaves the same way, showing similar reactions, makes the same decision - this indicates the presence of a certain nature in him.
Knowing which character traits are manifested and predominant in an individual, one can predict how he will manifest himself in a given situation.
Character and its traits
A character trait is an important part of a personality; it is a stable quality that determines the interaction between a person and the surrounding reality. This is the defining method of resolving emerging situations, therefore psychologists consider a personality trait as a predictable personal behavior.
Variety of characters A person acquires characteristics of character throughout his entire life; it is impossible to classify individual traits of nature as innate and characterological. To analyze and assess a personality, a psychologist not only determines the totality of individual characteristics, but also identifies their distinctive features.
It is character traits that are defined as primary in the study and compilation of psychological characteristics personality.
But, when defining and assessing a person, studying behavioral traits in social terms, the psychologist also uses knowledge of the meaningful orientation of nature. It is defined in:
- strength-weakness;
- breadth-narrowness;
- static-dynamic;
- integrity-contradiction;
- integrity-fragmentation.
Such nuances make up the overall full description a certain person.
List of personality traits
Human nature is a complex combination of unique traits, formed in unique system. This order includes the most striking, stable personal qualities, revealed in gradations of human-society relationships:
| Relationship system | Inherent Traits of an Individual | |
| Pros | Cons | |
| To self | Pickiness | Condescension |
| Self-criticism | Narcissism | |
| Meekness | Boastfulness | |
| Altruism | Egocentrism | |
| To the people around you | Sociability | Closedness |
| Complacency | Callousness | |
| Sincerity | Deceit | |
| Justice | Injustice | |
| Community | Individualism | |
| Sensitivity | Callousness | |
| Courtesy | Shamelessness | |
| To work | Organization | Laxity |
| Mandatory | Cluelessness | |
| Performance | Sloppiness | |
| Enterprise | Inertia | |
| Hard work | Laziness | |
| To items | Economy | Wastefulness |
| Thoroughness | Negligence | |
| Neatness | Negligence | |
In addition to the character traits included by psychologists in the gradation of relationships (as a separate category), manifestations of nature in the moral, temperamental, cognitive and sthenic spheres were highlighted:
- moral: humanity, toughness, sincerity, good nature, patriotism, impartiality, responsiveness;
- temperamental: passion, sensuality, romance, liveliness, receptivity; passion, frivolity;
- intellectual (cognitive): analytical, flexible, inquisitive, resourceful, efficient, critical, thoughtful;
- sthenic (volitional): categoricalness, persistence, obstinacy, stubbornness, determination, timidity, courage, independence.
Many leading psychologists are inclined to believe that some personality traits should be divided into two categories:
- Productive (motivational). Such traits push a person to perform certain actions and actions. These are goal-traits.
- Instrumental. Giving personality during any activity individuality and method (manner) of action. These are methods-traits.
Gradation of character traits according to Allport
Allport's theory
Famous American psychologist Gordon Allport, expert and developer of gradations personal characteristics individual, personality traits were divided into three classes:
Dominant. Such traits most clearly reveal the behavioral form: actions, activities of a certain person. These include: kindness, selfishness, greed, secrecy, gentleness, modesty, greed.
Ordinary. They manifest themselves equally in all numerous areas of human life. These are: humanity, honesty, generosity, arrogance, altruism, egocentrism, cordiality, openness.
Secondary. These nuances do not have a particular impact on behavioral reactions. These are not dominant behaviors. These include musicality, poetry, diligence, and diligence.
A strong relationship is formed between a person’s existing personality traits. This pattern forms the final character of the individual.
But any existing structure has its own hierarchy. The human warehouse was no exception. This nuance is traced in Allport's proposed gradation structure, where minor traits can be suppressed by dominant ones. But in order to predict an individual’s actions, it is necessary to focus on the entire set of personality traits.
What is typicality and individuality?
The manifestation of the nature of each person always reflects the individual and typical. This is a harmonious union personal qualities, because the typical serves as the basis for identifying the individual.
What's happened typical character . When a person has a certain set of traits that are the same (common) for specific group people - such a warehouse is called typical. It is like a mirror, reflecting the accepted and habitual conditions of existence of a particular group.
Also typical features depend on the warehouse (a certain type of nature). They are also a condition for the emergence of a behavioral type of character into the category of which a person is “recorded.”
Having understood exactly what characteristics are inherent in a given personality, a person can create an average (typical) psychological picture and assign a certain type of temperament. For example:
| Positive | Negative |
| Choleric | |
| Activity | Incontinence |
| Energy | Hot temper |
| Sociability | Aggressiveness |
| Determination | Irritability |
| Initiative | Rudeness in communication |
| Impulsiveness | Unstable behavior |
| Phlegmatic person | |
| Perseverance | Low activity |
| Performance | Slowness |
| Calm | Inactivity |
| Consistency | Unsociability |
| Reliability | Individualism |
| Integrity | Laziness |
| Sanguine | |
| Sociability | Aversion to monotony |
| Activity | Superficiality |
| Goodwill | Lack of persistence |
| Adaptability | Poor perseverance |
| Cheerfulness | frivolity |
| Courage | Recklessness in actions |
| Resourcefulness | Inability to concentrate |
| Melancholic | |
| Sensitivity | Closedness |
| Impressionability | Low activity |
| Performance | Unsociability |
| Restraint | Vulnerability |
| Cordiality | Shyness |
| Accuracy | Poor performance |
Such typical character traits, corresponding to a certain temperament, are observed in each (to one degree or another) representative of the group.
Individual manifestation. Relationships between individuals always have an evaluative characteristic; they are manifested in a rich variety of behavioral reactions. For manifestation individual traits The individual is greatly influenced by emerging circumstances, the formed worldview and a certain environment.
This characteristic is reflected in the vividness of the individual's various typical features. They vary in intensity and develop individually for each individual.
Some typical traits manifest themselves so powerfully in a person that they become not just individual, but unique.
In this case, typicality develops, by definition, into individuality. This personality classification helps to identify the negative characteristics of an individual that prevent them from expressing themselves and achieving a certain position in society.
Working on yourself, analyzing and correcting shortcomings in own character, each person creates the life to which he strives.