Tag Archives: character development

March 1, 2022 · 12:44 am

“The Passion According to G. H.” by Clarice Lispector

Lispector’s novel The Passion According to G. H. was a peculiar, eerie, and illuminating read. The plots of the novels we have read in this class have been rich with events, details, characters, and so on. I enjoyed Lispector’s story because of its simplicity. Despite describing uninteresting events and portraying very few characters, the author is able to show the significance of a spiritual journey through G.H.’s thoughts. The stream of consciousness makes it very easy to feel engaged in the narration and the honesty with which the main character expresses her reflections gives a bit of lightheartedness to the book. One thing that made me realize how captivating G.H.’s reflections were to me was the structure of the different chapters. The fact that every chapter starts with the last sentence from the previous chapter almost felt like a brief pause in the main character’s thoughts, like a deep breath before a speech.

G.H.’s spiritual awakening was initially hard for me to grasp, but by the end of the book, I understood the message that Lispector was trying to convey. The main character’s development from being imprisoned in her superficial life to gaining a broad understanding of the universe reminded me of The Shrouded Woman and Bonjour Tristesse. We have seen characters that – due to situations they find themselves in – start a process of change towards a deeper perception of the world. In this case, though, what sparked G.H.’s development was a very uninfluential situation. She finds herself in a “room [that] was the portrait of an empty stomach” (43) and the act of killing a cockroach is enough to send her into a deep psychological crisis. This is was makes this character distinctive from the ones in the other novels. Although the reader doesn’t get to know a lot about her life, it seems like her spiritual awakening had been long-awaited.

Lastly, I liked the parallels that the author creates in the story. The way in which the death of the cockroach is connected to G.H.’s passivity when she goes through an abortion shows how shaking the event is for her. Killing the bug – which would usually be considered an insignificant act – makes the main character realize things about herself and her past that change her. Similarly, the parallel between the silence in the maid’s room and her past relationships tells the reader a lot about the weight of G.H.’s realizations.

My question for the class is: why does the author choose a seemingly insignificant situation to be the trigger of the main character’s spiritual journey?

– Bianca

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February 14, 2022 · 9:42 pm

“Bonjour Tristesse” by Françoise Sagan

I found Bonjour Tristesse to be a very engaging yet melancholic novel. The decadent mood that Françoise Sagan creates by portraying the French upper class in the first half of the 20th century is almost dreamy. One of the things that I found most interesting about the story is Cécile’s character development and how it is shaped by the adult women in her life. Overall, the role of female characters in the story and their impact on the main character is impressive for a book published at that time, so that’s what I will focus on in my post.

Cécile is a very entertaining main character. She seems to be very mature for her age mentally but her father’s tendency to spoil her leads her to engage in immature behavior. The coming-of-age nature of the story allows the reader to see Cécile changing substantially due to the circumstances she goes through. At the beginning of the novel, the main character lives her frivolous life carelessly, indulging in her privileged life thanks to the superficiality of her father and, probably, to the absence of a mother figure. She says “I am not ashamed of indulging in these pleasures. In fact I just take them for granted” (19) In part 1, Cécile acts like a spoiled seventeen-year-old but she doesn’t seem to have any bad intentions. 

After Anne and Raymond get married, though, we start seeing her manipulative and morally questionable side. Her mean childish behaviors reach a peak when she splits up the couple and hurts Anne’s feelings so badly she has to run away. Right after Anne’s escape, however, we see her realizing what the consequences of her actions have led to. Cécile starts feeling guilty about what she has done and beings to feel that her conduct can influence others. After fighting with Anne, she says: “for the first time I realized that I had hurt a living, sensitive creature, not just a personality.” (135)

It is interesting to observe how Anne – an older, more intelligent, and successful woman – has an impact on Cécile’s character that goes way beyond Elsa’s. While Elsa is described as one of the many young mistresses that Raymond gets together with, Anne is presented as a more sophisticated woman who appears to be more serious about her relationship with Cécile’s father. I think the author might have created this juxtaposition to show the importance of a mother figure in the lives of adolescent girls. Anne is the only character in the novel who is able to change Cécile’s stubborn attitudes, and, in my opinion, that is because of Anne’s connection to the main character’s mother and her overall motherly attitudes.

My question for the class is: can Anne’s influence on Cécile’s character development be attributed to her presence as a mother figure in the story?

– Bianca

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February 7, 2022 · 5:56 pm

“Agostino” by Alberto Moravia

Moravia’s short coming-of-age novel Agostino was a very interesting yet slightly bizarre read. I had previously read another one of Moravia’s novels, Gli Indifferenti, in high school. Although I read Gli Indifferenti in Italian, I found many similarities between the two novels, and the overall mood conveyed by Moravia was the same in my experience. Moravia’s realism when writing stories about a few characters and their internal development is captivating but easy to misinterpret. In other words, it is easy to get weirded out by some aspects of Moravia’s stories. However, the message beyond the events he narrates is often meaningful and teaches the reader about personal growth, family, sexuality, and society.

Moravia’s characters are often passive to their lives, alienated by society, and overall overwhelmed by the discomfort they feel around others. Agostino fits this description perfectly well. Throughout the whole novel, the thirteen-year-old boy is in a state of unease caused by his transition from adolescence to adulthood. Seeing his mother in her new relationship, discovering about sexuality, entering a friend group that doesn’t respect him, and being the victim of Saro’s pedophilic attitudes are events that add to the main character’s distress. As readers, we see Agostino being the subject of these uncomfortable events but also being unable to react. It’s as though the main character was trapped in an imaginary prison and couldn’t properly react to what happens around him. This is very similar to the behaviors of the characters in Gli Indifferenti. It’s almost as if Moravia’s goal was to show us how frustrating it is to not take control of one’s life through his characters. Everything that remains unsaid throughout the novel is almost louder than what actually is being said. When Berto and the other boys make fun of his mom, “Agostino [wants] to say, “Don’t talk about my mother.” But he [is] so confused by the swarm of sensations and dark memories aroused in him by the question that he [is] left speechless.” (17). His inability to act is discouraging for the reader who is aware of everything that happens in the main character’s head. Even when he is overwhelmed by the embarrassment of discovering some of the worst aspects of sexuality, the main character doesn’t express his frustration. He is an object of life, not a subject if that makes sense.

After writing these reflections on the main character and his development/role in the novel, my question for the class is the following. Does Moravia portray Agostino as a passive character as a way to show the importance of taking charge when needed? Or does he simply paint a picture of an awkward thirteen-year-old without any instructive purpose?

– Bianca

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