English Writing Teacher

Where a character is introduced in a story—the location—is important.  Either the character can be introduced in a familiar place—home, classroom, school bus, soccer field—or in an unfamiliar place.  Each has its advantages.

Consider ways to help readers remember characters’ names.

Today let’s look at situations where the character is introduced in an unfamiliar setting—as a fish out of water.  How does a rural Minnesotan behave in tony Long Island in the Jazz Age?  How does a wealthy aristocratic landowner behave in the presence of a quick-witted, irreverent young woman?  Are they exhilarated?  Panicky?  Do they accept the values of their new locations?  Or do they find those values and those who live by them repugnant?

In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narrator, Nick, has grown up in Minnesota, but he has decided to work in Manhattan.  He has dinner with an old classmate and a distant cousin, thinking he will feel at home with them on Long Island, but he doesn’t.  They have changed.  The man has become a racist, controlling aristocrat, and the woman an empty-headed little fool.  They introduce Nick to a beautiful athlete.  He learns she cheats.  For a while they date and he accepts her morality, but ultimately, he can’t stomach it.  Nick meets a gambler who offers him a job.  Nick turns it down.  By the novel’s end, Nick realizes he doesn’t belong in New York, and he returns to the Midwest and its values.

What is the advantage of having Nick, the newcomer, narrate Gatsby?  Nick is seeing 1920s Long Island and Manhattan society for the first time.  We are right there with him, piggybacked on Nick’s shoulders, experiencing his raw reactions.  Like Nick, we are shocked by the behavior of Tom, Daisy, Jordan and Gatsby.  Nick can’t accept “this is just the way things are.”  He wants a world of clear morality where people are responsible for their actions, not careless.  Because we are in Nick’s head, so do we.

Another fish-out-of-water character is Fitzwilliam Darcy when he meets Lizzy Bennet early in Pride and Prejudice.  At the village assembly, Darcy dances with none of the local girls, including Lizzy.  He says they are unfamiliar.  As the book progresses, Darcy, an extremely wealthy man, is teased by Lizzy when he is used to being deferred to.   He doesn’t know how to respond.  When he can no longer ignore his attraction to Lizzy and he proposes, he is bewildered and angered when she says no.  Who is she—a poor man’s daughter—to turn down one of the wealthiest men in Britain?  Gradually, Darcy and Lizzy reconcile, and at novel’s end, marry.  Darcy accepts Lizzy’s family and their baggage, but at a distance, as he heads to his estate with his bride, where, presumably, Lizzy will be the fish-out-of-water.

Why does Jane Austen make Darcy the outsider?  Pride and Prejudice is a satire.  Many of those being ridiculed in the book are from the landowning class (Darcy), the aristocracy (Darcy’s aunt), and the clergy.  The observer of the satire is Lizzy, the character with the keenest sense of humor. Darcy is arrogant, so we, who identify with Lizzy, chuckle when Darcy’s hot air is pricked.  Many early scenes set up for later ironic ones:  Darcy, who won’t dance with Lizzy, is later turned down by Lizzy as a dance partner; Darcy, who insults Lizzy’s family while proposing, is himself insulted by Lizzy’s in her refusal; Darcy, who is able to protect his younger sister from an imprudent elopement—and to protect himself, too, from scandal—cannot protect Lizzy’s younger sister from an elopement with the same scoundrel, and cannot protect Lizzy from the tawdry association.

Usually, when we start to read a novel, we are outsiders to the world of the novelist.  We haven’t lived in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920s Long Island nor in Jane Austen’s early 19^th century Britain.  But that is one of the attractions of novels.  We can immerse ourselves in an unfamiliar time and place, know it well, and then leave—like Nick does in Gatsby—or commit—like Darcy does in Pride and Prejudice.