One of the major purposes of stories throughout humankind’s history has been to pass knowledge/morals between each other. And these morals are often the backbone of a story. As such, even in more recent times storytellers use their writings as a way to convey a message of advice. However, the need for this advice would not be represented correctly if the means through which it was represented, a story, was not realistic, which includes the characters themselves. This method of developing characters to make them seem more “real” could be said to be what is known as complex characterization.
Science of Storytelling
First, let us understand what are considered as signs of a character’s realism. These are what define a person as “complex” in a story: changes in the character due to experiences, variety of traits and different sides to their personality, possible conflict in the character, displays a full range of emotions, has an impact in the story.
What is a Complex Character?
Unsurprisingly, one of the major aspects of complexity is the act of learning. It is one of the few things that makes a human, human. As said earlier, one of the main purposes of stories were/are to spread knowledge, showing humanity’s continuous focus to learn. That is what makes the human race so wise: “A wise man knows a wise man knows nothin’ ” (Royce da 5’9”). Similarly, authors develop their characteristics by showing change through experience, adapting to situations like how Sourdi accepts and adapts to her new life of being married. And to complement this, Nea adapts and learns of Sourdi’s new opinion and acceptance of the marriage. Not only does Nea accept Sourdi’s new stance, but Nea also realizes the limiting nature of how much power one human has, in sense of having “no magical powers.” As shown, with learning sometimes comes changes in character or/and behavior. Another such example would be in the play Oedipus where the king Oedipus is shown to be narcissistic/very arrogant, possibly due the fame after solving the Sphinx’s riddle after no one else could. This development is then developed even further when Oedipus realizes that following his curiosity had led him astray by leading him to destiny. Oedipus realizes how his current mannerism is not flawless, dimming down his arrogance. The whole story only starts because of Oedipus learning about his destiny, changing his path and actions to take caution to avoid his destiny. This really reflects the realistic world in which there are many changes occurring continuously since life is continuous.
The other major aspect of a complex character is the rounded personality and various traits. This means that a person has some skill in many fields and also has multiple attributes and emotions, such as kind, caring, hot-headed, etc. This shows a 3-D character of a person, meaning he/she has multiple sides to his personality, showing in-depth complex combinations of emotions, like the dejection and satisfaction of Oedipus when he finds out the truth. Similarly, while Oedipus is shown to be overly arrogant, he maintains his pride and his desire for justice by taking his own two eyes. This is a strict contrast to the childish desire that he has to unearth a mystery. And he realizes this as a flaw later in the story, leading to the next point of having an internal conflict, regretting his steadfast attitude for everything. An internal conflict is basically an easy way of identifying the inner thought processes or atleast identifying the possession of inner thought - one of the main ways humans develop themselves and change themselves. And an internal conflict is exactly what Nea has when she tries to defend her sister from sexual harassment but then is told off by her sister who she defended. Nea is so caring as to stab the man who was harassing Sourdi (quite the opposite of caring). And soon, her sister, Sourdi also has to face the question of whether to acclimate her soon to be married life or run away, and chooses to courageously follow her disciplines and marry. As such, it could be said that in the path of Sourdi and Nea are complementary, each providing reasons and causes of change in each, developing each other.
This combination of writing choices by authors, making characters more realistic and whole relatable and visualizable. This allows for a connection to be drawn between the readers and the characters as a real world meeting or actual person that existed. Summing all of it up, the message conveyed by the story to have actual impact in the “real world.”
