Four teens. Drinking and driving. A mountain road. Steep, winding curves. Night. A figure bolts across the road, illuminated for a horrifying moment in the headlights of the teens’ car. In an instant of irresponsible behavior, the lives of the four occupants of the automobile, Barry William Cox (Ryan Phillippe), Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), are changed forever, for they have killed a man.
Such is the beginning of the nightmare, I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Faced with the loss of a promising football career (Barry), law school (Julie), and a trip to New York City (Helen and Ray), the teens follow the counsel of the alpha male of their group, Barry The Sociopath, who recommends that they dispose of the evidence by dumping the corpse of the man they’ve killed into a nearby lake. Although the others, especially Julie, are reluctant to do so, preferring to report the accident to the police, they ultimately follow Barry’s lead, adding obstruction of justice (and leaving the scene of an accident) to the crime of manslaughter and (for Barry) driving while intoxicated. Because Julie shows more tenacity in her desire to do the right thing, she becomes the film’s stereotypical final girl, the female character who survives the carnage unleashed by the antagonist and who may (or may not) turn out to be the death of the monster. (In I Know What You Did Last Summer, whether she survives is unclear, as the last scene has the killer burst through her shower stall, and the movie ends without a resolution to this last-minute home invasion.)
In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman tells his son Biff, “Spite is the word of your undoing.” Willy is wrong about this, as he is wrong about so much of everything else, of course, but he is right about something, too. In fiction, the character often succeeds or fails because of one character trait, or flaw. Sometimes, this flaw is hubris, or overweening pride. Other times, it may be poor judgment or timidity. In fact, the fatal flaw can be any character trait that is grave enough to tempt fate, annoy the gods, or inspire vengeance on the part of a wronged third party. In I Know What You Did Last Summer, the fatal flaw is irresponsibility.
The teens drive drunk at night along a winding mountain road. That’s irresponsible! They opt to dispose of the victim’s body rather than to notify the authorities. That’s irresponsible! When Helen loses the tiara that she’s won in her county’s beauty contest, Barry dives into the lake to retrieve it so that it cannot be linked to the victim’s remains once they are discovered (as they will be, once the gases from the body’s decomposition cause it to float to the surface, where it will be beached or found by boaters, fishermen, or swimmers). When he does so, Barry sees the body’s eyes open, a clear indication that the man whom they’d presumed to be dead is still alive. Nevertheless, he leaves him to drown. That’s irresponsible! (It’s also a conscienceless act that makes Barry ripe for an especially brutal act of retribution.)
Without concern for whether the theory is true or not, writers base their characterization of the dramatic personae who people their stories upon the trait theory of personality, which, in one way or another, contends that human personality is made up of a collection of qualities that differs from one individual to another. These traits, in turn, more or less determine behavior. The idea is as ancient as the theory of the four humors, which suggests that people do what they do on the basis of whether one or another of four body fluids, or humors, happens to overwhelm the other three:
Such is the beginning of the nightmare, I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Faced with the loss of a promising football career (Barry), law school (Julie), and a trip to New York City (Helen and Ray), the teens follow the counsel of the alpha male of their group, Barry The Sociopath, who recommends that they dispose of the evidence by dumping the corpse of the man they’ve killed into a nearby lake. Although the others, especially Julie, are reluctant to do so, preferring to report the accident to the police, they ultimately follow Barry’s lead, adding obstruction of justice (and leaving the scene of an accident) to the crime of manslaughter and (for Barry) driving while intoxicated. Because Julie shows more tenacity in her desire to do the right thing, she becomes the film’s stereotypical final girl, the female character who survives the carnage unleashed by the antagonist and who may (or may not) turn out to be the death of the monster. (In I Know What You Did Last Summer, whether she survives is unclear, as the last scene has the killer burst through her shower stall, and the movie ends without a resolution to this last-minute home invasion.)
In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman tells his son Biff, “Spite is the word of your undoing.” Willy is wrong about this, as he is wrong about so much of everything else, of course, but he is right about something, too. In fiction, the character often succeeds or fails because of one character trait, or flaw. Sometimes, this flaw is hubris, or overweening pride. Other times, it may be poor judgment or timidity. In fact, the fatal flaw can be any character trait that is grave enough to tempt fate, annoy the gods, or inspire vengeance on the part of a wronged third party. In I Know What You Did Last Summer, the fatal flaw is irresponsibility.
The teens drive drunk at night along a winding mountain road. That’s irresponsible! They opt to dispose of the victim’s body rather than to notify the authorities. That’s irresponsible! When Helen loses the tiara that she’s won in her county’s beauty contest, Barry dives into the lake to retrieve it so that it cannot be linked to the victim’s remains once they are discovered (as they will be, once the gases from the body’s decomposition cause it to float to the surface, where it will be beached or found by boaters, fishermen, or swimmers). When he does so, Barry sees the body’s eyes open, a clear indication that the man whom they’d presumed to be dead is still alive. Nevertheless, he leaves him to drown. That’s irresponsible! (It’s also a conscienceless act that makes Barry ripe for an especially brutal act of retribution.)
Without concern for whether the theory is true or not, writers base their characterization of the dramatic personae who people their stories upon the trait theory of personality, which, in one way or another, contends that human personality is made up of a collection of qualities that differs from one individual to another. These traits, in turn, more or less determine behavior. The idea is as ancient as the theory of the four humors, which suggests that people do what they do on the basis of whether one or another of four body fluids, or humors, happens to overwhelm the other three:
- Black bile = pessimism, sleeplessness, irritability
- Blood = courage, hope, passion
- Phlegm = calmness, unemotional demeanor
- Yellow bile =angry disposition
Ancient and medieval philosophers and writers were masters at developing character sketches of stereotypical moral (and later, literary) stereotypes. An early practitioner of the process was Aristotle’s student Theophrastus, whose method was to use personification to describe the character trait. Here is his description, by way of personification, of the trait of stupidity:
You may define Stupidity as a slowness of mind in word or deed. But the Stupid Man is one who, sitting at his counters, and having made all his calculations and worked out his sum, asks one who sits by him how much it comes to. When any one has a suit against him, and he has come to the day when the cause must be decided, he forgets it and walks out into his field. Often also when he sits to see a play, the rest go out and he is left, fallen asleep in the theatre. The same man, having eaten too much, will go out in the night to relieve himself, and fall over the neighbor’s dog, who bites him. The same man, having hidden away what he has received, is always searching for it, and never finds it. And when it is announced to him that one of his intimate friends is dead, and he is asked to the funeral, then, with a face set to sadness and tears, he says, "Good luck to it!" When he receives money owing to him he calls in witnesses, and in midwinter he scolds his man for not having gathered cucumbers. To train his boys for wrestling he makes them race till they are tired. Cooking his own lentils in the field, he throws salt twice into the pot and makes them uneatable. When it rains he says, "How sweet I find this water of the stars." And when some one asks, "How many have passed the gates of death?" [proverbial phrase for a great number] answers, "As many, I hope, as will be enough for you and me" (Morley).This method may be regarded as a bit laborious (and as unnecessary) today, but it shows the effectiveness of the use of the trait theory of personality to envision and develop fictional characters.
The next post will explain how to take this process a step further, exploiting it to its fullest extent, and the aspiring writer will see how he or she can make even flat, static characters seem as lifelike as one’s own Aunt Martha or the pesky neighbor next door, Gladys Kravitz.
Source cited
Morley, ed., Henry. Character Writings of the 17th Century. London: University College, 1891.