What Is Characterization?
- Melchior Antoine
- 13 hours ago
- 3 min read
Characterization refers to the process of a writer delineating the personality of a character in a story through description, dialogue, or action. It plays a fundamental role in deciding whether or not a story works or whether or not we sympathize with a character. There are various ways in which a character can be depicted.
The trajectory that a character goes through is referred to as a character arc, and it determines whether or not a character changes or transforms. A character who is portrayed as growing or changing is referred to as a round character. One who doesn’t change at all is referred to as a flat character. In addition, there is indirect vs. direct characterization.
Indirect characterization describes a characterization technique where the personality of a character is revealed through character action or behavior, dialogue, and other people’s reactions to that character. On the other hand, direct characterization involves direct statements by the author or another character through whom the author speaks. In this article, we discuss characterization using examples from the play Hamlet.
Characterization Examples from Hamlet
Let’s take the example of King Claudius in Hamlet as an example of characterization. He is a villainous figure. He murders his own brother, King Hamlet, because he covets that brother’s throne and wife, Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude.
Hamlet uncovers the fact that he committed the murder through an ingenious plan which included Hamlet putting on a farce of play that mimicked the manner of his father’s death in the famous scene called the Mousetrap Scene. Claudius’ reaction to the play proves to Hamlet that he is the murderer. We also see King Claudius confessing in a soliloquy, proving to us the audience that he is also guilty.
During his prayer, we also see a kind of indirect characterization of the man. He feels remorse and shame at killing his own brother, and he is even moved to prayer. This would have made him sympathetic; however, his speech reveals that he is unwilling to change:
Oh, my offense is rank! It smells to heaven.
It has the primal eldest curse upon't -
A brother's murder. . . .
My fault is past. – But, oh, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn — ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?
That cannot be, since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder:
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
King Claudius, even as he expresses remorse, admits that he has no intention of giving up the fruits of his villainy, namely — “My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.” So, he is portrayed as a thorough villain, who understands the immorality of his crime and the process of redemption: giving up everything he gained as a result of committing murder.
Nonetheless, his ambition and lust for power outweigh whatever sense of remorse he may have. Immediately after this scene, he comes up with a failed plot to murder Hamlet, the son of the man he has already murdered. We can describe King Claudius as a flat character who is incapable of change.
This is in contrast to the protagonist of the play, Prince Hamlet, a round character, who has to grow and change radically throughout the course of the story. Hamlet begins as a morose, suicidal, and self-centered man who believes that he has been personally wronged by his uncle and mother who quickly marry after his father dies.
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His transformation begins when he finds out that his father, the rightful king, has been murdered. The wrong done is not simply against Hamlet but against the entire body politic. The murder of King Hamlet has led to a moral rot or in other words “There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.”
Hamlet has to slowly and painfully grow from the self-centered son who feels personally wronged to the prince charged with the responsibility of ridding the land of the moral rot that King Claudius represents. The suicidal ideation we encountered in the beginning of the play is replaced with a sense of self-sacrifice by the end of the play, when Hamlet ends up killing Claudius and appointing Frotinbas as the new king of Denmark before he himself dies.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2025, October 31). What Is Characterization? EminentEdit. |
