Reading Characters Rhetorically

Abstract

This essay updates and extends the model for understanding the concept of character in literary fiction I proposed in Reading People, Reading Plots (1989). That model proposes that character has three simultaneously existing components, the mimetic (character as possible person), thematic (character as representative of a larger group of people and/or a set of ideas), and the synthetic (character as construct within the larger construct of the narrative). The model also specifies that the relations among the components varies from narrative to narrative, depending on the narrative progression. Using Joyce Carol Oates's flash fiction "Widow's First Year" as a test case, I develop three interrelated points: (1) character is a flexible resource that authors can deploy in a diversity of ways; (2) a rhetorical approach to audiences helps clarify the relations among the mimetic, thematic, and synthetic components; and (3) the approach works, with appropriate adjustments, for nonfictional as well as fictional narrative. Along the way, I also suggest how the updated model can address some of the tensions in the nature and functions of character identified by Alex Woloch and John Frow.