Other major elements of the short story are character and character development. Characters are the people (usually, anyway) involved in the events of a story.
Protagonist, a term that I have used several times already in this introduction, refers to the central character of a story. Most stories focus on one character, though there may be many characters involved in the story. The antagonist, on the other hand, is the character we find opposed to the protagonist. The antagonist is the source of conflict and is often used as a foil to the protagonist, highlighting their characteristics by displaying opposite traits. We often refer to the protagonist as the hero of the story, though we should be careful doing that. A hero refers to a character who displays admirable attributes such as strength, bravery, and moral rectitude. A villain, on the other hand, opposes the hero and acts as his foil by displaying opposite traits. It is easy to assume that the protagonist will be a hero and the antagonist will be a villain, but that is often not the case. Poe’s Montresor, while he is the protagonist of the story, is no hero. He is much closer to a villain in his character, though he does not act as a foil for a hero. Fortunato is no villain, though he does act as a foil for Montresor, accentuating his cunning through his own gullibility and ineptitude. We may consider Montresor an antihero, or a protagonist who lacks traditional heroic qualities and may even have serious character flaws.
Heroes and villains tend to be flat characters, meaning they are under-developed characters who largely represent one dominant character trait, such as a hero who represents honesty and a villain who represents deceit. Most short stories include round characters, or complex characters who have a variety of personality traits, some of which may even conflict. A round character, for example, may succumb to greed or envy and steal something at one point in the story only to suffer guilt about the theft later. They may take a brave action only to subsequently feel fearful. In Hurston’s “Spunk” (1925), for example, Spunk is known for his bravery, but he is also superstitious, and his belief in spirits causes him great fear and eventually leads to his death. Round characters feel more realistic because, like real people, they are complicated and often experience internal conflict.
Another aspect of character development to consider is whether characters change over the course of the story. A character who experiences no essential change from the story’s beginning to its end is classified as a static character. Many characters will remain static throughout a story, and often even the protagonist remains unchanged. Both Montresor and Fortunato, though they are round characters, inhabit the story without ever changing and, therefore, remain in a state of stasis.
A character who does change over the course of a story is called a dynamic character. When a character changes in some way, it often indicates an important point in the story, and we should examine that change when attempting to understand the story’s possible meaning. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” (1846), the titular character, who begins as a happy man, loses faith in Puritan society over the course of the story and dies a miserable wretch. Often a character will undergo an epiphany, a sudden realization that leaves them changed. Miss Brill is utterly changed when she hears the young couple discussing her. Mansfield subtly demonstrates the change this epiphany evokes in Miss Brill by her deviation from the end of her usual Sunday routine.
"Key Components of Short Stories" by Travis Rozier and Margaret Sullivan from Beyond the Pages: An Introduction to Literature Copyright © 2024 by Claire Carly-Miles, Sarah LeMire, Kathy Christie Anders, Nicole Hagstrom-Schmidt, R. Paul Cooper, and Matt McKinney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
"What is a Protagonist?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers. Authored by: OSU School of Writing, Literature and Film. Located at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5nZzak4TFk. License: Other. License Terms: Standard YouTube License
"What is a Foil?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers. Authored by: OSU School of Writing, Literature and Film. Located at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqXQ4L2oC9Q. License: Other. License Terms: Standard YouTube License
"What is a Flat Character vs. a Round Character?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers. Authored by: OSU School of Writing, Literature and Film. Located at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPIBTgPlK5c. License: Other. License Terms: Standard YouTube License