Character arc (character development)

In narrative fiction, a character arc is the authorial technique of guiding a story's protagonist along a transformative journey that results in profound changes to his or her inner state. Various models have been developed to define and explain the narrative mechanisms authors use to build effective character arcs. One of the most commonly cited such examples presents the character arc as a resolution of the tension between a character's outer goal, conscious desire, or want and his or her inner goal, unconscious desire, or need. Another is the so-called "hero's journey," first identified by the American mythologist Joseph Campbell, which codifies the standard steps that drive an initially ordinary character's rise to heroic, world-changing status.

Heroic protagonists typically follow paths that lead to the acquisition of key skills or insights that facilitate positive growth and/or the attainment of an elevated position. By contrast, tragic protagonists often become corrupted or experience a loss of virtue, often leading to a downfall from a lofty position to a lower one. However, these notions are generalizations, and there are many well-known stories that illustrate exceptions to these principles.

Background

One of the earliest endeavors to explain how characters function in stories was forwarded by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in Poetics, his celebrated work of dramatic theory. Aristotle uses the term ethos to describe character, and he considers ethos one of the central and most fundamental aspects of an effective fictional narrative.

Aristotle identifies three main conditions that must be met, in his view, for a dramatic protagonist to satisfy an audience. First, he believes that a well-crafted plot should not result in a good and virtuous main character falling from a state of happiness to a state of misery. Similarly, he believes that an evil or unscrupulous main character should not ascend from a state of misery to a state of happiness. Finally, he also believes that an audience will not pity a particularly immoral protagonist's fall from happiness to misery. Arcs are implied by all three of these ethos conditions.

Aristotelian concepts of ethos can be seen in the highly influential works of the English dramatist William Shakespeare. In his tragedies, Shakespeare also made prominent use of a characterization technique known as the "tragic flaw," in which he imbues the protagonist with a fundamental shortcoming that he or she must overcome to achieve his or her objective. Hamlet is often used as a quintessential example: the title character is plagued by indecision, and thus does not take prompt enough action to avenge his father's death—a flaw that leads to his downfall.

The rise of the novel as a storytelling medium brought about the development of literary genres, which introduced a far broader range of character types to the narrative form. This, in turn, created a myriad of new paths for character arcs to follow, creating a level of diversity and complexity that pushed prevailing notions of the character arc beyond the relatively basic and straightforward presentations seen in the foundational works of the Western canon.

Overview

Modern notions of the character arc are largely driven by the core concept of change. By the end of the story, the protagonist is a different person than he or she was at the beginning of the story, and this fundamental shift is always a result of the story's plot events. Thus, the protagonist's character arc and the story's plot are interdependent on each other.

In literary fiction, character arcs take many forms but can generally be categorized as either positive or negative. Positive arcs result in desirable changes that make a character stronger or wiser in some key way, enabling him or her to succeed on some crucial level in the face of major adversity. Negative arcs challenge or corrupt a character's cherished positive virtues, guiding his or her path of inner change along a line that leads to the adoption of immoral or seditious values, often (but not always) to the character's ultimate detriment.

Film and television narratives draw heavily on these approaches, but typical plots in these mediums tend to place a premium on the protagonist's active pursuit of a specific objective. Thus, it is in film and television that the distinction between a character's outer goal, conscious desire, or want and his or her inner goal, unconscious desire, or need tends to be presented with the greatest degree of clarity. The classic 1942 film Casablanca provides an oft-cited example. The film's protagonist, the initially self-preserving and cynical Rick Blaine, wants to reunite with his lost love Ilsa Lund. Presented with the opportunity to do so, Rick ultimately chooses to let Ilsa go, as she is an inspirational figure to Victor Laszlo, a key figure in the World War II–era European underground. Laszlo's revolutionary work ultimately proves to be more important to Rick than his own selfish desires.

Character arcs can also be used to subvert audience expectations. In such instances, the elements of a standard character arc are reconfigured in innovative ways to relay author insights or commentaries on society and/or the human condition. One famous example is the 1999 paranormal thriller The Sixth Sense, in which a surprising twist in the final scene of the film forces the audience to completely reconsider the arc of the story's protagonist in an unexpected yet narratively satisfying new way.

While character arcs are most closely associated with protagonists, it is also very common for antagonists, major supporting characters, and even minor characters to undergo similar shifts in their inner emotional or psychological states. This is tied to a prevailing notion in literary theory that the events of a fictional story must have a profound impact on the characters that populate it in order for the tale to effectively engage an audience. Nevertheless, some stories challenge traditional notions of the character arc by presenting characters who do not undergo a significant change. Even in such cases, authors tend to import arcs in other ways; for instance, plot events may bring sweeping changes to the nature of the world or society a character occupies, while the character remains fundamentally unchanged. As an example, the Academy Award–winning 1982 biopic Gandhi presents the title character as an unchanged constant whose unrelenting commitment to nonviolent opposition of British rule in India ultimately proves pivotal to India's future achievement of self-governing independence.

Bibliography

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