How Do Authors Help Create Characters That You Are Able to Identify With?

Identity is the factors that shape an individual and makes him unique. A person’s identity also helps make others relate to him. A part of identity that is easy to relate to is the kinds of choices that a person makes. By describing characters that have to make decisions that will affect their identity, authors can create life-like characters that readers are able to identify with. Two short stories and one poem were read in class that included characters making choices or facing problems that would change them forever. The books are “Brother Dear” by Bernice Friensen and “Just Lather, That’s All” by Hernando Téllez; the poem is “Richard Cory” by E. A. Robinson. The authors used two ways to make their characters’ choices identified easier by the reader. The first is to create a common situation that many people have had to experience and the second is to invoke strong feelings in a character’s decision in order to stir up feelings within a reader’s heart.

There are often arguments going on between the generation gap of today. An author can use this as a way to connect his characters to his readers. Adults and teenagers have different views about progressing through life and their views cause disputes such as the one in “Brother Dear”. In this story, the middle son of the family, Greg, is forced into an educational career by a father who “did what his father wanted him to do”. (p. 7) Greg’s father wanted to go to law school when he was a kid but his own father made him run the family tractor business instead. Now that he is unable to pursue his dream career, Greg’s dad wants Greg to follow a path that he thinks will guarantee a successful future. On the other hand, Greg has other plans for his own future such as “going tree planting this summer” (p. 6). A fight like this one between father and son is something that parents and their children will face when the time comes for a child to move away and start his own life. Having to go through such an argument before, both parents and children reading “Brother Dear” will be able to understand the emotional frustration in Greg’s father and the defiance in Greg. This will lead to a connection to the characters, completing the author’s goal to make character easily identified with by the audience. If the difficulties faced by the characters are similar to ones of the reader, there is a path laid out for the reader to reach out and see the identity of the character.

Unfortunately, there is a vast amount of books that do not contain characters that will be making decisions that are similar to the readers of today. How can an author like Hernando Téllez or a poet like E. A. Robinson help readers identify with characters that are spies or suicidal, rich men? It is very unlikely the readers are in a situation similar to those characters so the authors must find another way to stimulate a reader’s feeling: by causing strong emotions that a reader can connect with. Most people know the feelings present during a moment of decision and an author can further generate such sentiments by creating characters that have to deal with serious problems that evoke many feelings. Téllez’s story, set during a revolution in Central America, features a man “who is secretly a rebel,” but is “also a conscientious barber, and proud of the preciseness of [his] profession” (p. 2). When his enemy, Captain Torres, enters the barbershop and asks for a shave, the man is forced to choose between being “the avenger of us all” (p. 4) by killing the captain with a razor or to just “perform [his] work honourably” (p. 5). Throughout the entire story, the barber works up a sweat as he debates on which choice to take. It is very unlikely for the reader of this story to be a rebel as well, but the reader would have had to make a hard choice some time in his life that would require as much thought as the barber. The feelings of frustration, fear and nervousness of the barber can then be felt by the audience even though the audience isn’t plotting a murder. The same goes to the readers who are trying to identify themselves with Robinson’s character Richard Cory, “a gentleman from sole to crown” (line 3) who “went home and put a bullet through his head” (line 12). Once again, it is highly unlikely that the people reading this poem would feel suicidal event though they were “rich-yes, richer than a king” (line 9). There is more to Richard Cory than meets the eye. Inside that man, there must have been very strong emotions of pain that were kept hidden until he could not take it any longer. Everyone has a secret and the burning desire to get off whatever is on one’s chest is definitely a strong sentiment that most readers can relate with. The situations of the character and the reader may not necessarily the same but same emotions being produced by both creates an understanding of the character for the reader.

Authors have to create characters that have some similarities to the readers or else the readers cannot find a way to identify themselves with them. Making choices is an everyday, identity-changing event that people go through so it is a good candidate for paving a road into a reader’s heart. Either the choices or the emotions created by the characters aid the audience in understanding the lives of those in literature.