By Discourses

Usually the first impression is people’s appearance, and the next is their speech if they have a chance to talk. Unlike appearance, speech is rather dynamic including the intonation, the gestures and the facial expressions. Brooks and Penn Warren argue

that “the use of speech is a rich resource of dramatic presentation” (109). According to Lodge, there are two kinds of discourses in fiction: showing and telling, although showing can indicate the actions that characters make as well. Lodge points out that:

FICTIONAL DISCOURSE constantly alternates between showing us what happened and telling us what happened. The purest form of showing is the quoted speech of characters, in which language exactly mirrors the event (because the event is linguistic). The purest form of telling is authorial summary, in which the conciseness and abstraction of narrator’s language effaces the particularity and individuality of the characters and their actions. (122)

Lodge’s division of showing and telling means the ways in which the author presents a character directly or indirectly. These two ways are both used in fiction:

“showing” is more lively and memorable but length-consuming, whereas “telling” is quicker but less vivid. Usually a writer applies the telling technique more often to

“flat characters”, as they are called by E. M. Forster, particularly the less important ones. On the other hand, “round characters” often have more room to show what they say and what they do since they are the protagonists or at least significant characters.

Of course, the discussion above is a tendency, but not an iron rule; it all depends on the purpose and the effect a writer wants to have.

As mentioned earlier, Lukens and Cline suggest that the ways of characterization can be by appearance, by speech, by other characters’ comments, by the author’s comments and by actions. In this study, “by speech” and “by comments”

are put into one category, “by discourses”. The characterization that Forster describes as “people whose secret lives are visible or might be visible” (70) due to the author’s

comments will be discussed in this section first. Lukens and Cline take The Chocolate War as an example, illustrating how Cormier comments on the protagonist Jerry—as Brother Leon starts his harassment of a student, Bailey, in class, the author Cormier tells the readers about Jerry, that “Jerry’s neck began to hurt. And his lungs burned.

He realized he’d been holding his breath. He gulped air, carefully, not wanting to move a muscle. He wished he was invisible. He wished he wasn’t here in the classroom” (44). This passage about Jerry is introduced by the author Cormier, not Jerry himself. Lukens and Cline call this device “revelation of character by author’s comments”; they argue that “characters, then, come to be known….when the author chooses to be omniscient, by what the author says about them” (12). It is reasonable to assume that the author’s comments occur in a story using the omniscient point of view, like The Chocolate War.

On the other hand, if a story employs the first-person point of view, there will be no author’s comments. In Cormier’s novella Other Bells for Us to Ring, the story is told by the first-person narrator “I”, an eleven-year-old girl Darcy, and uses her point of view to watch the world. The text is examined and it is found that there are hardly any author’s comments. However, some comments indeed seem to belong to the author Cormier, but not the narrator “I”. For example, in the last scene, Darcy’s father finally arrives home from a hospital, and Darcy, the narrator “I” says that “Everyone laughed and I laughed, too, finding out for the first time how close laughing could be to weeping” (149). This philosophical statement is more like the author Cormier’s comment, but it is still possible to be said by a mature teenage girl Darcy. A story with the omniscient point of view seems to allow the author to use more sophisticated words, even more complicated expressions, to describe the characters and the surroundings. In contrast, a story told by the first-person narrator is likely to have simpler vocabulary and more straightforward statements, especially if the narrator is a

child or a teenager. Cart argues that the first-person adolescent voice as narrator is the conventional form in young adult literature. And this device “encourages the colloquial, the declarative, the conversational, and discourages adventurous diction or syntax, imagery, figurative language, rhythmic or aesthetic expression” (252). The impact of different points of view and narrators will be discussed in chapter five.

With respect to characterization by others’ comments, the researcher again takes Jerry in The Chocolate War as an example to make a contrast with the author’s comments. Not only does Cormier give the readers what Jerry thinks and how he feels, other people around Jerry also provide their comments on him. For instance, one day as Jerry waits for a bus at a bus stop, he confronts several strangers. Those strangers call Jerry “sub-human” and “square boy”. They call Jerry “middle-aged at fourteen, fifteen. Already caught in a routine. Wow” (20). Moreover, the first time when Archie heard of Jerry from Obie, he thought of Jerry being a “poor kid, mother’s dead” (14).

But gradually Archie changes his comments on Jerry. Finally he considers Jerry

“touched off the fireworks” (232). It shows that different characters’ comments can be varied, even on the same person; the comments from the same character are also changeable as time passes. Other characters’ comments are less authoritative than the author’s comments. The readers hardly doubt the truth of the author’s words, whereas they seldom give full credit to other characters’ comments because they are so different, even contradictory sometimes. However, other characters’ comments make a story more unpredictable and more ambiguous, and more fun, of course.

The researcher argues that the author’s comments belong to “telling” category, and other characters’ comments should belong to “showing” category because they

“exactly mirror the event”. Lodge mentions that “showing is the quoted speech of characters” (122). Another showing technique in fiction is using “conversation”, or

“speech” as it is called by Lukens and Cline. Different people in fiction have different

vocabulary, intonation, tones and so on. Brooks and Penn Warren argue that “the laconic soldier, the querulous charwoman, the shy convent-school girl….all have their own vocabularies and their ways of putting words together. An author, in order to be convincing, must have his characters speak ‘in character,’ and his normal way of presenting an unusual character is to give us the flavour of his dialect and idiom”

(109). Lodge also claims that “at the simplest level there is the alternation of the narrator’s voice with the voices of the characters, rendered in their own specific accents and idioms of class, region, occupation, gender, etc” (128).

Among these different characters, it is regarded that speaking like a psychopath is quite challenging. In We all Fall Down, there is a madman named the Avenger (his real name is Mickey). When he kidnaps sixteen-year-old Jane, Jane tells him:

“You were eleven a long time ago, Mickey. When you killed that bully.

That was bad. But you are not eleven anymore. And I am not a bully. I’m Jane Jerome and you’re Mickey Stallings.…”

“I’m…” He was at a loss now for words, frowning, his mouth open, pink tongue fluttering against his lips, his eyes flickering to her chest and away.

“You killed your grandfather,” she said. “The Avenger didn’t do it. You did. Mickey Stallings. What would your mother say if she knew? Your mother would be mad at you, would punish you.”

“No,” he cried. “No.”

“Yes.” Straining against the ropes that held her, cheeks stiff with caked vomit, hair failing across her eyes, wrist chafed, eyes searing. “Yes, yes, yes.” Each syllable erupting out of her fear and her determination and her

desperation. “You killed your grandfather…your grandfather who loved you.”

“No,” he cried again. Anguished, the word like a howling in the air…noooooooooo…drawn out…echoing in the dusty shed…terror and tears in the word…nooooooo…and pain and futility…noooooooo….(178-179)

The conversation above not only demonstrates the female protagonist Jane’s courage and intelligence, but also shows how sick the Avenger is. For a writer, to reveal an abnormal character’s personality by conversation is more powerful than by direct comments on such a character. However, if an author wants the readers to believe in such a character in fiction, s/he must give the character a credible performance; in this case, a convincing dialogue. As a result, a writer must observe more different people in the real world, listening to and imitating their speech, and transforming it into her/his own words. There is another example to show how a conversation presents a character’s personality and keeps the story going. In Cormier’s final fiction The Rag and Bone Shop, which is full of dialogues between two protagonists, a boy Jason and an interrogator Trent, and has been called a

“two-person show” by Campbell, one conversation reveals how Trent tries to influence and even manipulate Jason to admit to the crime Jason did not commit:

“She was a pretty little thing, wasn’t she?” Trent asked. Purposely suggestive.

“Kind of.”

“Did you ever think of showing her some affection?”

“Like what?”

“Touching her, perhaps. Kissing her.”

The boy’s eyes widened in surprise, his mouth twisting in revulsion.

Hands feet, body, all spasmodic in protest. Not defensive in anyway.

Everything asserting his innocence.

Which Trent had to be quick to acknowledge. (117)

．．．．．．．．

“Look, it’s understandable. You didn’t want to hurt her, did you?”

“No, I—”

“Those things happen. You lose your temper, you get upset, things happen fast, you didn’t mean to do it but things got out of hand. There was a rock nearby—”…. (125)

The interrogation is twenty-nine pages long, almost one-fifth of this book. In this conversation, the readers see the vulnerability of Jason and the craftiness of Trent.

Via dialogues, the story reaches the climax in which Jason finally makes a false confession of killing that girl, as well as the characterization of both protagonists (or Jason the protagonist, and Trent the antagonist).