Contrasting characters

contrasting characters assist in the growth of plot into the complete story. Often they appear for contrast as emphasizing foils. If the main characters are unusual in some way, the developing characters may be commonplace, ordinary, so that what is unusual may be made to stand out the more distinctly. If the main characters are disreputable, their wickedness will be accentuated by contrast with the good. Piney and The Innocent are thus introduced in The Outcasts of Poker Flat. They exist for "utmost emphasis. " Bret Harte's story is the stronger for their presence. Thus it is through all the range of possible contrasts. The one character may serve as a background for the other, sometimes emphasizing, sometimes merely measuring the other. Thus does one view the highest lights and the deepest shadows. Yet characters rarely exist for contrast alone. The rule of greatest economy of means requires also that they be woven into the structure in other ways. As well as serving for "utmost emphasis" Piney and her lover are the means of supplying provisions to the outcasts. In Henry James' The Madonna of the Future, over against the man with the noble but never attained ideal is set the artist with no soul, whose only look is downward, whose only work is to make caricatures of life. At the end, the artist with the unattained ideals is still the great man. The other is himself hardly more than a caricature. The incident in which he flaunts his wares is more than a character contrast; it is

mood giving. It utters a note of hopelessness, of despair. Already one feels that the artist with an ideal has failed utterly and completely. His, indeed, has been the luxury of cherishing alone an ideal without the pain of striving to attain it. It is a pessimistic story, as all stories of lost opportunities must be, and the man of the caricatures enforces its impression of utter barrenness. The more purposes a single character can be made to serve and serve naturally, the fewer the characters that will be necessary, and the stronger the story. Contrasting characters can frequently be thus used.