this is the garden of english i'm tim freitas and today we're going to talk about the complexity that we often can explore in characters in literature so if you want to know the different ways that we can explore the complexity of character stick around and check it out [Applause] [Music] okay when talking about literature especially when we're studying ap literature but literature in general we always want to make sure that we address the complexities that show up in the stories themselves and these complexities show up in settings these complexities show up in symbols these complexities show up in point of view all of the literary elements that are common throughout the literature that we read today what i wanted to do is i wanted to take a few minutes just to focus on the idea of searching for complexities of character and there are three types of character complexities that you will most often see in literature the first two that i give you examples for are the most common the last one not as common in fact it was even kind of hard for me to even think about but they definitely show up and so because of that i wanted to make sure that i just talked about it here gave you guys a couple questions you could ask to actually try to delve into uh identifying these elements of complexity and then we'll just move on so uh the first the the first way that you identify complexity um in characters and literature is realizing that there are three ways to do it okay so we want to look for characters that are complex based on their layers okay we want to look at characters who are complex based on their contradictory nature and we want to look for characters that are complex because they are indeed quite paradoxical okay so because of that we've got three different types of characters that we're looking at and three different types of characters can still help us get to elements of complexity so let's actually start with our first one which is indeed the layered character the layered character is a way to look at characters that are considered static as also being complex now a static character is a character who pretty much maintains the same character throughout an entire work of literature um some of the most common um static characters that i could think of are atticus finch and benvolio and romeo and juliet now just because they're static characters though doesn't mean that we can't look at them in their complexity because they do indeed have layers okay i'm going to focus on benvolio here for my example if you haven't read romeo and juliet you might want to consider just tossing up the spark notes and reading a little bit about benvolio to kind of be familiar with what's going on but it's common it's a common read in high school um and i wouldn't be surprised if you got to it eventually but anyway so when we think about benvolio throughout the entire story of romeo and juliet he pretty much acts the same way and because of that we could say i just had a character he's not very complex he kind of just fits the same role not entirely true however and the reason why is because benvolio although static in being a good guy right exhibits those character traits in multiple ways so what we would want to do here to delve into his complexity as a character even though he does maintain a singular role is to look for the layers of his goodness and all we want to do is we want to ask okay in what different ways do his positive character traits consistently exhibit themselves throughout the story well in the first act and we see actually through this going throughout the whole story itself right we first of all see ben voglio as incredibly incredibly helpful right he jumps in in the middle of act one scene one to help break up a brawl and he ends up getting involved with it because he's just trying to help and sure enough we see that kind of moment coming in where it's like well he seems to be actually trying to maintain the peace we see him trying to maintain the peace in act 3 scene 1 as well and we see those elements of him trying to work things out with romeo throughout the book as well where he's trying to maintain the peace between the families and and things of that nature on top of that benvolio is not only this helpful guy who's trying to maintain the peace we also find out that he's incredibly honest and we know that he's honest because he's the one at the beginning of act one scene one who's asked to recount for the powers that be what actually happened in the fight in act one scene one so we have the helpful benvolio we've got the honest benvolio right and we also realize that benvolio is an extremely good friend particularly to romeo we have benvolio um trying to find out why romeo is upset in act one scene one we see him being by romeo's side through thick and thin throughout the whole story itself and notice that right there we've got three different layers of benvolio we've got the socially helpful benvolio we have the honest benvolio and we have the friend benvolio and we can look at him even though they're all positive and good character traits on those three levels and we could say wow he's a pretty complex guy even if there's not contradictory elements that are involved there so we have a character with some complexity even though he is indeed a bit static now is that the most fun type of character to look at probably not but now what we can do is we can analyze as multiple roles in the story and how they kind of fit in together to drive elements of the plot forward or build relationships with other characters or highlight the character traits of others particularly characters like tybalt who he indeed actually is a foil character too so anyway that's example number one for layered characters in their complexity the next type of complexity that we have is the contradictory complexity and this is when we have characters that seem to have a perception of one way of doing things and then they actually act in a rather hypocritical manner the easiest and best character to think about in literature for this would be holden caufield he spends the entire story blaming everybody else for his problems when really they're his own he spends the entire story saying that everybody else is a phony and he's acting rather phony himself he spends his entire story doing ridiculous things as he's trying to engage into adulthood and the moment his sister is like you know what i agree with you i'm going with you he's like you can't you're just a kid you can't do these things not recognizing that that's also him as well so we look for these types of characters that are contradictory in nature and we say okay where's the complexity there and when we see the contradictions in their actions and in their psyche what we do is we then say okay what is bringing out these contradictions and with someone like holden we need to recognize it's the trauma of not having his brother around anymore both of his brothers around anymore it's the trauma of having almost every person in his life in his mind seemingly leave him and not care about him as he's trying to deal with growing up and because of that he's moved to be this kind of hypocrite interestingly enough as a character he's meant to make us introspective because chances are we are the same way a lot of times we hold hypocritical and contradictory ideals for ourselves and then we say other people should be living by those mentalities and we don't even necessarily do it ourselves and it's a lot easier to pick out when we see it in other people so holden's a character that is indeed contradictory and complex at the same time another character that's also that way that also is going to help us segue into the last version of what we're talking about is the narrator of the telltale heart now if you've never actually checked out the video for that telltale heart that actually just uh chimed in here i'm gonna put a link for that right down in the description because the video is super fun it's it's really really well done um and i show it in my class every year just because it's absolutely excellent so click on that link down there whoever produced it i'm super grateful but anyway the narrator and telltale heart fits in this contradictory complexity because as you read right the story you recognize that he is indeed quite mad but he doesn't actually think that he's mad and on top of that he does have these kind of psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies and yet he also experiences guilt so you see these contradictory elements showing themselves he's okay with murdering a guy and he wants to murder a guy he feels like he has to murder a guy then when he does it he's dealing with the guilt that's too much so he's not fully sociopathic and psychopathic but he is at the same time and you're kind of trying to navigate through this complexity and he's got these contrary elements because quite frankly he's extremely brilliant this guy is brilliant he would have got away with the murder of the old man if his guilt didn't get the better of him and he's also terrible because he is indeed a murderer and the reason why he's a great example for bringing us into our paradoxical complexity is because he's almost a paradox he's a little bit more contradictory than paradoxical and because of that though this is how we want to study such things um when we talk about uh this type of a narrator that's contradictory in nature we want to just try to pull out what are the character traits that seemingly contradict that can't match up and therefore what motivates them to act in such a way and then when we start asking these questions we can really pull out the complexities of those characters the last type of character complexity that we should consider is indeed the paradoxical character complexity and the best example that i have of this doesn't actually come from literature it comes from batman and that is indeed victor freeze i think there was an old batman animated series called heart of ice if you haven't seen it make sure that you google search that and try to see a heart of ice because it tells us about the story of a guy who's a villain but he's not actually a villain and because of that as you watch this you really empathize with him and what he's doing just for the sake of the love that he has with his wife and it seems as though you're doing the wrong thing but you're doing the right thing at the same time because you care so much about your wife um and that and that's what you're holding on to in this world and because of that you've got all of these seemingly contradictory feelings but they're not actually contradictions and that's what a paradox is i mean think about it a paradox is something that seems to contradict itself but it doesn't actually contradict itself and in doing so it does contradict itself but it's not a contradiction did you catch that let me give you an example if i were to say this statement is false well if the statement were actually false that means that the statement were true but if the statement were true it would actually make the statement false because the statement is false itself and because of that we've got this kind of circular thing going on here and it's like what is going on yeah that gets incredibly complex mr freeze is incredibly complex like that right another character that also kind of goes that route of that almost paradoxical complexity is this guy right here the joker right so batman helps us with that a lot okay because we have to see how his brilliance actually matches his maniacal nature and it we can't tell if he's actually being brilliant even if he planned things or if it's actually just madness and because we can't work those things out it could seemingly be both at the same time or it could be neither at the same time it becomes indeed quite a paradox so anyway i want you to think about paradoxical characters in literature the ones that i thought of that show up in literature the most are typically from monotheistic uh religious traditions uh most characters of god and the major religions uh have this uh character trait of being entirely loving which also then makes them entirely merciful but also entirely in need of being um righteous because of their desire for justice and at that point it's how does being all merciful and also demanding justice actually correlate so if you study characters uh the characters of the major monotheistic uh religions right you're going to see that paradoxical elements show up it's not a contradiction because they can and do indeed work but it's really complex to figure out and that's the nature of studying such things so anyway as we think about character and as we think about complexity you've got a lot to look into in your characters even if they're static throughout stories so i hope that this was helpful for you and if it was i'm going to ask that you click like and subscribe you can follow the garden of english on instagram you can actually like us on facebook now too you can also support us by picking up some merch we've got posters just like the ones that are behind me we've got other posters too by the way um and we also sell t-shirts as well and those are great ways to support the garden of english as always though these videos are also free so as long as this is helping you out um i'm gonna ask that you help me out in one last way and that is if you could think of a paradoxical character and a piece of literature that you've read put it down in the comments please enlighten me to some better examples or some easier examples from common literature as well uh and that would be uh quite excellent so i could actually put those in the conversation the next time somebody asks anyway you all have a great day and we'll see you next time on the garden of [Music] england you