Ernest Hemmingway once said “When writing a novel, a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.” This quote to me exemplifies the importance for an author to create lifelike characters that are not static and are instead dynamic, moving, changing. In Rick Bass’s short story Antlers all three of the main characters can be seen as almost living people who share a genuine connection between their environment and between each other. Bass shows the connection that the three main characters have through their characterization. The main characters in the short story go through characterization by their reactions to the other main characters as well as their environment itself shaping them and changing them.
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When she is first introduced she can be seen as somewhat cruel, as she jumps from man to man in the valley. This also gives her a sense of vulnerability because the audience can see that she is obviously searching for something but is apparently unable to find what she wants/needs. From there she is once again painted with a sense of cruelty as the narrator describes both her leaving him and what she says in the bar. He describes her leaving him as, “When she left, I did not think I would ever eat again, drink again. It felt like my heart had been torn from my chest, like my lungs were on fire; every breath burned.” At the bar she is describing cattle when she says, "That's what cattle are for," she'd say. "Cattle are like city people. Cattle expect, even deserve, what they've got coming.” These two incidents are actually related as one can make a connection between what she says about cattle and what she thinks about the men that she dates. She thinks that they deserve what they get because they expect/should expect the relationship to end. She ends with once again being painted in a more positive, vulnerable light as later in the novel she says to the narrator, "I've got to go somewhere," she said. "I hate being alone. I can't stand to be alone." These strict contrasting between vulnerable and cruel shows her as neither good or evil but is undeniably dynamic as a
When she is first introduced she can be seen as somewhat cruel, as she jumps from man to man in the valley. This also gives her a sense of vulnerability because the audience can see that she is obviously searching for something but is apparently unable to find what she wants/needs. From there she is once again painted with a sense of cruelty as the narrator describes both her leaving him and what she says in the bar. He describes her leaving him as, “When she left, I did not think I would ever eat again, drink again. It felt like my heart had been torn from my chest, like my lungs were on fire; every breath burned.” At the bar she is describing cattle when she says, "That's what cattle are for," she'd say. "Cattle are like city people. Cattle expect, even deserve, what they've got coming.” These two incidents are actually related as one can make a connection between what she says about cattle and what she thinks about the men that she dates. She thinks that they deserve what they get because they expect/should expect the relationship to end. She ends with once again being painted in a more positive, vulnerable light as later in the novel she says to the narrator, "I've got to go somewhere," she said. "I hate being alone. I can't stand to be alone." These strict contrasting between vulnerable and cruel shows her as neither good or evil but is undeniably dynamic as a