Sketching Characters

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Falling Down: The adventures of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world

Think of a few literary characters or movie characters who made an indelible mark on you. Ask yourself, why do I remember these particular characters when I've forgotten so many others? What makes these characters, but not others, memorable?

Probably, you will identify certain characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and even views of the world. The characters you admire will probably have acted honorably, valorously, heroically. Those you recall, perhaps with a shudder, feeling fear, disgust, or horror, as evil or dangerous probably strike you as contemptible or loathsome because of, paradoxically, their characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views. While the admirable characters support others, the contemptible are usually interested in serving only themselves. More specifically, though, how are characters sketched by writers?

Most are collections of personality traits. These traits are then implied through the characters' actions, or behavior, including the words they speak, that is, through dialogue. In movies and, more than ever before, in novels, behavior is the means by which personality traits, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views are shown.

In the thriller Falling Down (1993), William Foster, an unemployed engineer, sees society as “falling down” right before his eyes. While the movie leaves no doubt that society is, in fact, in a state of partial collapse, it is also true that Foster himself is “falling down.” He's lost his job. His marriage has ended in divorce. His ex-wife, Beth, has been awarded sole custody of their daughter Adele, and has secured a restraining order against Foster, who has a penchant to act aggressively, even violently, toward others, including, apparently, Beth herself. Foster has lied to his mother, with whom he stays, telling her that he is still employed. In fact, he carries an empty briefcase around town, wearing out shoe leather as he wanders more or less aimlessly until he conceives of the idea of visiting Adele on her birthday, despite the restraining order that has been issued against him and Beth's clear demands that he avoid contact with her and Adele.

Throughout the film, as Foster encounters escalating example after example of the increasingly extreme societal decline he is convinced has overtaken life in Los Angeles and, perhaps the United States as well, he himself collapses further and further psychologically and he reacts to the instances of social decline with more and more extreme behavior, ratcheting up his aggression and violence, revealing himself to be a truly unstable and dangerous man.

In the film, social decline is reflected by other types of decline as well—declines in technology, in government, in civility, in business relations, in attitudes regarding racial and gender equality, and in class privilege.

Heavy traffic

On a terribly hot day, the air conditioner in Foster's car won't work. He abandons the vehicle, leaving it in a traffic jam, and sets off on foot across the city.

My rights as a consumer

Wanting change to call his ex-wife, he asks for, but is refused, change for a dollar. He is told that he must buy something first. He reacts by breaking up the proprietor's merchandise and ranting about his greed. Foster also takes issue with the owner's pronunciation of “five” as “”fie,” insulting him by telling him that, as an immigrant, he should have “the grace to learn the language,” especially after all the money the United States has given the store owner's country.

Territorial dispute

Next, he encounters two Latin street thugs who try to rob him. Foster uses a baseball bat to beat them into retreat and picks up a gun one of them drops. Later, these thugs, accompanied by other gang members, spray bullets at Foster during a drive by, missing their target but wounding several innocent bystanders. When they wreck, Foster takes their cache of guns, shooting the diver in the leg.

Ganging up on D-Fens

At a park, Foster is accosted by an aggressive panhandler after he sees rude people shoving others as they storm a bus that has stopped to pick up passengers, a billboard decrying child abuse, and alcoholics openly drinking in public. He flings his briefcase at the panhandler, telling him he can have it. Inside, the angry panhandler finds nothing but a sandwich and an apple—the lunch Foster's mother had packed for him.

 Late for breakfast

Foster's attempt to order breakfast a few minutes after a fast-food restaurant has changed to its lunch menu elicits sarcastic, condescending remarks from the server and the restaurant's manager. Foster responds by shooting an automatic rifle into the ceiling and terrifying both the staff and the diners, before leaving. Although, once he resorts to gunfire, the manager fills Foster's breakfast order, he leaves the food behind, saying the fries are limp and cold and the hamburger looks nothing like the one shown in the oversize photograph that advertises it.

Not economically viableVisiting a swat meet to buy a birthday present for Adele, Foster observes a young black man in a business suit lamenting a bank's refusal to grant him a loan, crying to passersby, as he is being arrested, “I'm not economically viable.” He catches Foster's eye. “Remember me,” he says, and Foster nods.

Out of order

When he attempts to make a telephone call to Beth, a man rants at him from outside the telephone booth, demanding that he hurry. Foster reacts by shooting up the booth with an automatic rifle. “I think it's out of order,” he tells the terrified man.

Nick's back room: "I'm with you"

In an army surplus store, which Foster visits to buy a pair of boots to replace his worn shoes, he encounters the store's sexist, racist neo-Nazi proprietor, who insults a female detective and a gay couple before turning on Foster, when Foster denies being “just like” him, and attempts to hold Foster at gunpoint until the police he plans to summon arrive. Foster manages to kill the neo-Nazi befolatere continuing his trip across town.

Something to fix

Suspecting road work is not needed but is underway simply to waste taxpayers' money by providing work for the city's department of transportation workers, Foster uses a rocket-propelled grenade launcher he has taken from the street thugs to destroy a tunnel in order to give them some actual work to do.

Passing through

At a gold course, he shoots a golf cart after a golfer challenges his presence on the course, claiming that the links belong solely to him and the other members of the country club upon whose property Foster trespasses. The irate golfer's nitroglycerin pills are aboard the cart, which coasts downhill, into a lake, leaving the golfer, who has a heart attack when Foster shoots at the cart, to die “wearing [his] funny little hat.”

Obsolete; like it was before

After climbing a wall that surrounds an exclusive estate, Foster briefly kidnaps the caretaker, his wife, and their young daughter, as he hides from a helicopter flying over the area. When he learns that the estate is owned by a plastic surgeon, Foster says “the system” has betrayed him, rewarding the plastic surgeon, whose work, he implies, is merely aesthetic, rather than rewarding him, an engineer whose work in the defense industry protects America. When he realizes he has frightened the girl, he leaves the family, resuming his trek, now that the helicopter has left the area.

Officer down and the pier: all points converge

Finally, toward the end of the movie, after shooting Detective Sandra Torres, Foster holds his wife at gunpoint, intending, Sergeant Prendergast says, to shoot them.

End Credits

In addition to showing Foster's personality—his traits, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world view—as he reacts to various incidents which confirm his belief that society is “falling down,” even as his own psyche collapses, the film shows how inappropriate, unnecessary, and dangerous his reactions are by contrasting them with another character who encounters similar problems as those which face Foster. Using a foil, a character whose behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world view strongly contrasts with those of another, opposing character, is a tried and true means of characterization which Falling Down uses to good effect.

Prendergast is Foster's foil. Foster has “lost” a daughter; Prendergast has lost one through the girl's death. Foster's marriage has ended in divorce. Prendergast's wife, Amanda, suffers from anxiety, which makes her feel the need to control her environment and to order both her own and Prendergast's lives. Foster has been fired from his job. Despite less-than-ideal working conditions, Prendergast wants to remain on the Los Angeles Police Department's force, but Amanda wants him to retire to Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Both Foster and Prendergast see a collapse of social traditions, organizations, institutions, and mores, but—and here is the chief difference between these men who, to a large degree, live rather parallel lives—Foster feels cheated by “the system” and wants what he considers to be his due, whereas Prendergast is content to prop up society and to help to protect and defend it against its threats, including Foster himself. The use of Prendergast as Foster's foil more sharply defines the characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views of both the unemployed defense engineer and the detective.

Such techniques of characterization are widely used as time-tested ways of sketching characters because they are effective. By showing characters react to a variety of situations and incidents and by contrasting these reactions with those of another character who is the opposite in his or her characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views, writers create indelible characters who stand out as memorable individuals. Such an approach can be, and is, used in all genres of fiction, both on the page and on the soundstage.

Note: The subheadings are from the "Scene Index" for the film, as provided on its DVD release.

Evolutionary Fiction

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

According to the theory of evolution, species survive by adapting to their environment. For biologists—until recently, at least—the environment has been pretty much synonymous with the external, natural world. (More recently, a branch of psychology, evolutionary psychology, has suggested that certain mental processes and personality traits may have survived because they helped the human species to adapt to their physical environment and, therefore, to survive.)

Human beings differ from lower animals in several important ways, one of which is their possession not only of consciousness, but also of self-awareness, of consciousness of oneself as a self. Men, women, and children, in other words, live in two environments, that of the natural world without and that of the subjective world within, the world of beliefs, emotions, reason, will, and values.

In evolutionary fiction, a story begins when one or more changes in one or both of these worlds occur(s), disturbing the protagonist's equilibrium (his or her emotional balance, or calmness of mind), causing him or her to adapt to the environmental change(s) and thereby regain his or her equilibrium: in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Dorothy Gale becomes dissatisfied with her family life (a change in the inner world of her emotions); as a result, she runs away from home (seeks to adapt to the change in her emotions); she develops independence by acting autonomously, dousing the Wicked Witch of the West with water, thus melting her adversary (adaptation); having come to appreciate her home as a result of her experiences in Oz (adaptation), she returns to her family and friends, whom she'd left behind in Kansas. Dorothy's adaptations to the change in her inner world (her emotions) changes her: she recovers her equilibrium because she changes (i. e., adapts to her environment). In The Wizard of Oz, emotion drives Dorothy to act.

The external world can also introduce change to which the protagonist must adapt. In Backcountry (2015), Jenn and her boyfriend, Alex, leave their home in the city, driving to a national park in Canada. Their arrival introduces them to a different environment, a forest, with different challenges than those with which they are familiar. (Alex has some experience in camping, but his many mistakes show that he is by no means the master woodsman he believes himself to be.) Among the challenges the couple face are those of an intrusive and aggressive stranger, Brad; mountainous and forested terrain; and a bear. Alex does not adequately adapt, so he does not survive the couple's ordeal. Ironically, Jenn, who knows less than Alex about camping, but who has better judgment and makes better decisions, does adapt to the challenges of their new environment, and lives. (Alex's many errors of judgment are identified in my post, “Backcountry: A Study in the Cause and Effects of Poor Judgment”). In short, Jenn's intelligence and common sense prevail, while Alex's smug self-confidence and overestimation of his knowledge and abilities fail.

A similar “test” of mental processes and personality traits occurs in the 1993 thriller, Falling Down, with William Foster failing to adapt to the changes in his environments, both internal and external, and Sergeant Prendergast succeeding in doing so in regard to his own, similar challenges. Foster's marriage has ended in divorce; Prendergast's marriage is on life support. Both men encounter hostility, unfairness, and social decadence. They have both lost children, Foster to his wife in their divorce, Prendergast to death. Because he cannot adapt to the challenges these changes introduce into his life, Foster is killed, while Prendergast, who does adapt to similar challenges in his own life, survives.

With these examples in mind, we can construct the formula that is typical of evolutionary narratives:

1. A change in the protagonist's environment, internal, external, or both, occurs.
2. Experiencing disequilibrium as a result of the change(s), the protagonist successfully adapts to the change(s) (comedy) or fails to do so (tragedy).
3. As a result of the success or failure of his or her attempt to adapt, the protagonist survives or perishes, respectively.

Perishing can, but need not, be literal. A protagonist can “perish” figuratively: he or she can go to prison, lose his or her family or friends, go bankrupt, become disabled, lose dignity or respect, and so forth.

In evolutionary fiction, stories become “laboratories” of sorts in which beliefs, emotions, reason, will, and values are “tested” by changes in the external environment, the internal environment, or both environments. Thus, evolutionary narratives suggest the relative survivability strength of various subjective processes and personality traits, whether the stimuli (challenges) are imposed from within or from without the character him- or herself, thereby underscoring the fact that people are both subjects and objects simultaneously. Ironically, then, evolutionary fiction seems to support the idea that human beings occupy a dualistic world that is both matter and “spirit,” that we are ghosts in machines.

In future posts, we will apply the formula for evolutionary fiction to several horror narratives that appear as short stories, novels, or motion pictures.