Ernest Hemingway And William Faulkner: Character Analysis

The ability of an author to create an image and understanding of the characters within their stories is what can separate many average authors from the great ones. Both Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner are notorious authors that are famous for their own styles of character development among many other admirable achievements. Just as we judge the character of the people we know in our own lives by the actions they make and the tings they say, authors use the actions and dialogue to create a personality for each of their characters. However, this does not mean that every single character within a story needs to have their entire back story laid out for the reader, but rather that some characters may need to have a bit of their personality …show more content…
Foremost, Faulkner 's use of an omniscient narrator is a game changer unto itself because it allows Faulkner to dive into greater detail about the thinking process and mindset of his characters. It is much clearer from the beginning of his stories to what most characters are going to be like. The readers may still be left guessing what the characters will do next, but there is a much better understanding of each characters ' personality, much more so than in some of Hemingway 's works. This is also encouraged by the fact that there are, on average, much more narrative dialogue than there is character dialogue. While Hemingway relies on the characters to introduce themselves via dialogue, Faulkner relies on the narrator to introduce a character via narrative monologues. There is also a much more traditional feel to Faulkner 's method of character development where he tries to answer any potential questions that a reader may have when in comes to understanding certain actions of characters. While Hemingway leaves you in the dark, Faulkner tries to show the reader as much light as possible. Its as if Faulkner 's style is the “yin” to Hemingway 's “yang”. You appreciate each of their styles more after recognizing the other style because is just as good but for the opposite …show more content…
He purposefully paints a vague portrait of the characters and relies on the reader to come up with their own images and ideas about them with minimal influence. Hemingway seems so confident that the small amount of contextual details that he provides about the characters and the stories in general will be enough that all readers will be able to pick up on his message. I, personally, feel that some of the most powerful characterizations come from the characters actions because actions always speak louder than words. If, for example, a character says they are not scared of heights, but when they approach the edge of a tall building their knees start to shake under themselves. Clearly the act of the character 's knees shaking supersedes their statement that they are not scared. Hemingway 's style is the embodiment of the saying “actions speak louder than words”, while Faulkner relies of the words of a narrator to speak louder than the actions that they are describing. This is not to say that Faulkner 's style is not credible, he truly is a gifted writer, but rather that Hemingway has found a way to create just as much, or even more, ethos within his stories while somehow using less