Perhaps the
key element of the short story,is employed by authors in order to move the action of the plot
forward with conflicts and actions that develop the story's theme.
Characterization can be direct or indirect:
Direct or explicit characterization...uses another character, narrator or the to tell
the readers or audience about the
subject.
[http://literarydevices.net/characterization]
With indirect or implicit characterization, a character is revealed through one of the
following methods:
- By the thoughts, words, or actions of the
character - By what other characters say about the character
- By the ways in which other characters react to the character
In 's short story ","
one character of the story, the mother, acts as a narrator who directly addresses the reader.
With direct characterization, she describes herself as "a large big-boned woman with rough,
man-working hands" whose "fat keeps me hot" in the frigid weather of winter. She
tells how strong she is. The mother then describes her daughter Dee as lighter-skinned than her
other daughter, Maggie, who has a way of sidling up to people. With more description, the mother
tells the reader,
[When Maggie reads] she stumbles along
good-naturedly but can't see well. She knows she is not bright. Like good looks and money,
quickness passed her by.
When Dee, now calling herself
Wangero, arrives with her boyfriend, Mama describes how Dee appears in a "dress so loud it
hurts my eyes," and she wears gold earrings that hang to her shoulders. The mother also
describes how Dee's "short and stocky" boyfriend looks with "hair...all over his
head a foot long."
The mother states that Dee has hated her home and has
had no interest in her ancestors. As a young girl,
[S]he
washed us in a river of make believe [as a child], burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't
necessarily need to know.... Dee wanted nice things.... She was determined to stare down any
disaster in her efforts.... At sixteen she had a style of her own, and knew what style
was.
- (dialogue, description, and
action)
The mother/narrator reports much of what the other
characters say and do. For example, when the boyfriend of Dee, Hakim-a-barber, sits down to eat,
he informs the mother that
...he didn't eat collards and
pork was unclean....
Dee, now calling herself
Wangero,
...talked a blue streak over the sweet potatoes.
Everything delighted her. Even the fact that we still used the benches her daddy made for the
table when we couldn't afford to buy chairs.
The mother
also reports the actual words of the other characters, such as Dee's reactions to the old
belongings:
"I can use the churn top as a centerpiece
for the alcove table...and I'll think of something artistic to do with the
dasher.""Mama.... Can I have these old quilts?"
When Mama tells Wangero that she has promised the two quilts to
Maggie, she reacts with anger: "Maggie can't appreciate these quilts! ... Maggie would put
them on the bed and in five years they'd be in rags. Less than that!"
Now,
surprisingly, it seems that Dee is interested in her family's history and her heritage, but from
a different perspective.
The mother describes at length how the sisters react
to each other as well as how she herself feels. For example, when Dee asks for the quilts that
were made by hand by the women of the family, Mama looks at Maggie and "something hit me in
the top of my head" as Maggie "looked at her sister with something like fear but she
wasn't mad at her." Then, the mother feels overcome, much as she does in church when
"the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout." She hugs Maggie and pulls
her into the bedroom, grabs the quilts, and "dumped them into Maggie's lap." She tells
Dee, "Take one or two of the others." An angered Dee departs after saying, "You
just don't understand." (Dee's idea of "heritage" is displaying old family
items.)
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