The day after New Year's, (while hoping to catch a second day of the Twilight Zone marathon) I instead watched a few minutes of Stephen King's miniseries The Stand. Even though my knowledge of Stephen King relates solely to half-watching a couple of his movies, I immediately recognized his cast of characters: the small town sheriff, the man who hears voices, the mute/blind/deaf adolescent, etc. My first impulse was to be frustrated, because characters are not interesting if they are predictably assembled. I was wrong in this assumption.
In the beginning of Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I was not surprised that Toru Okada took making a pot of spaghetti so seriously, or that he ironed his shirts when he was frustrated, or that his pet cat was missing. The Murakami narrator is always slightly compulsive, has few familial attachments, and is generally willing to follow the path that his life is taking.
The same is true for John Irving, who writes often of orphans or children with a single parent. His stories are set in Vienna or New Hampshire, and his narrators are usually authors. So before I begin one of his novels, I have certain expectations for a story of wrestlers, affairs, prostitutes, and circuses.
So, am I playing it safe by reading the same handful of authors that I know that I love? My initial reaction for Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca was, "wow, this is just like Jane Eyre!" Resolution for the New Year? Discover a few new authors :)
With respect to stock characters in fiction, I think it depends highly on what direction the author chooses to develop them in. Stock characters that remain so, and act predictably, are boring. You can predict how they'll react and there's no sense of engagement with the story.
ReplyDeleteStock characters who develop into full-fledged people, though are different. Those can serve as points of identification; as recognizable examples of real-world people who become entwined in the story.
I think the heart of the matter comes down to predictability. If the characters continue to act the same throughout the story, at some point we can simply infer the rest and stop reading. If they become more than just a collection of archetypes, however, there is potential for an engaging work of fiction.