Category Archives: Character Analysis

Creating Troubled Characters

Readers can be drawn to characters with mental troubles. All fictional characters have troubles, of course, since conflict is necessary to good fiction. But today I’m focusing only on characters with mental disorders.

Note: nothing in this post is meant to diminish or glorify the real problem of mental illness. People with such disorders should seek and obtain professional help, and there should be no stigma attached to that.

My purpose is to discuss how an author should portray a fictional character with a mental disorder. Anyone who reads books or watches movies knows that audiences are fascinated by such characters. Troubled characters ratchet up the conflict and drive the plot. They also give readers and viewers a glimpse into the complexities, wonders, and horrors of the human mind.

This week I attended a Zoom lecture by Loriann Oberlin, who writes fiction under the pen-name Lauren Monroe. Unlike me, she is an expert in psychology. Her talk inspired this blogpost, but everything in this post is my interpretation.

In her talk, Ms. Oberlin referenced the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). This book, published by the American Psychiatric Association, discusses disorders such as neurodevelopmental; schizophrenia spectrum; bipolar; depressive; anxiety; obsessive-compulsive; trauma- and stressor-related; dissociative disorders; somatic symptom; feeding and eating; elimination, sleep–wake; disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct; substance-related and addictive; neurocognitive; personality; and paraphilic; as well as conditions such as sexual dysfunctions and gender dysphoria.

Ms. Oberlin stressed the importance of doing your research so you can depict a particular mental disorder correctly. I’d amend that advice just a bit. It’s easy, when conducting research, to go down rabbit holes and research too much. So, learn when to quit doing research and shift to writing your story. If your character’s behavior and speech don’t exactly match some known disorder, don’t worry about it too much. The APA occasionally comes up with new ones.

Here are my suggestions if you wish to create a troubled character:

  1. You should include a backstory explaining the character’s behavior. You needn’t start the story that way, but perhaps work it in as a flashback. Did the disorder spring from one or more events in the character’s childhood?
  2. You need to reveal the character’s symptoms to the reader early and throughout. Remember to show, don’t tell, these symptoms.
  3. Is the troubled character the protagonist? If so, then some sort of change is required in the story. Perhaps the character takes steps to overcome problems caused by the disorder. Or maybe the disorder brings consequences for which the character must suffer. Perhaps the character struggles with the disorder, then finally comes to terms with it.
  4. If a different character is the protagonist, then the troubled character need not change, but your protagonist must change, perhaps by learning to accommodate the troubled character’s disorder.

Here are examples where I’ve used troubled characters in my fiction:

  • In “Ripper’s Ring,” Horace Grott is a loser, barely qualified for his job carting bodies to the morgue in London in 1888. He comes upon the legendary Ring of Gyges that enables its wearer to turn invisible. In time, that new-found ability turns Horace into a serial murderer—Jack the Ripper. The story is partly in Horace’s point of view, and partly in that of the detective tracking him down.
  • In “The Six Hundred Dollar Man,” Sonny Houston is a nice young man with virtually no negative traits, living in the Old West. After being trampled by farm animals, he’s given a steam-powered arm and legs by an inventive doctor. These superhuman abilities change Sonny and he descends into madness. The story is told from the point of view of the doctor, who comes to realize the consequences of his well-meant invention.
  • In “A Tale More True,” no character has a mental disorder, but I cite the story because Ms. Oberlin mentioned how ‘Munchausen Syndrome’ has been renamed ‘factitious disorder imposed on another.’ The famous fictional character Baron Munchausen, the one with such fanciful lies, appears in my story. The attention given to the baron’s tall tales inspires my protagonist, Count Federmann, to make his own trip to the moon.

Now that you’ve read this post, if you do write a story about a character with a mental illness and that story becomes a bestseller, and you’re invited to make speeches and give interviews, don’t forget to thank—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 20, 2021Permalink

Character Analysis — Captain Nemo

Now we’ve come to the last major character in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Let’s study Captain Nemo.

Before we do, I’ll remind you to submit a short story to 20,000 Leagues Remembered, a tribute anthology scheduled for publication on the 150th anniversary of Verne’s marvelous novel. Along with unparalleled word-master, Kelly A. Harmon, I’m co-editing this anthology for Pole to Pole Publishing. The official closing date is April 30, but you should submit early. We’re accepting stories as we go, and this publisher has filled each of its anthologies before the closing date. For more details, and to submit your story, click here.

Regarding Captain Nemo, I’ll restrict this analysis to what we know from the 20,000 Leagues novel and disregard information provided later in The Mysterious Island as well as later adaptations.

When readers first encounter Nemo, they learn he appears self-confident, energetic, and courageous. He is tall, of indeterminate age, and has wide-set eyes. He says, “To you, I’m simply Captain Nemo,” adding a rank to the name “no one” by which Odysseus (another sea captain) fooled the Cyclops.

In subsequent chapters, Pierre Aronnax learns Nemo is a highly intelligent scientist and engineer, has divorced entirely from the land and all nations, and is immensely wealthy. Later, Aronnax discovers Nemo cares deeply for a dying crewman and buries him on the seafloor. He assists a stricken pearl diver off the coast of India, saying he “lives in the land of the oppressed, and I am to this day, and will be until my last breath, a native of that same land!”

Nemo provides a huge sum of gold to a Grecian diver, apparently to aid in the uprising of Crete against Ottoman rule. Aronnax sees a set of paintings in Nemo’s cabin, all portraits of historical revolutionaries. Using the Nautilus’ ram, Nemo slaughters a pod of sperm whales to save some baleen whales. He then attacks and sinks a ship whose nationality is unknown to Aronnax. Following this act of destruction, Aronnax spies Nemo kneeling and weeping before a portrait of a woman and two children.

The Captain combines several opposing characteristics and sentiments:

  • He claims to support the downtrodden, yet he designed the Nautilus with a distinct two-class system, and treats Aronnax as an upper-class gentleman, in contrast to the way he treats Conseil, Land, and his own crew.
  • He financially supports freedom-seeking revolutionaries, and his Mobilis in Mobili motto implies a love of freedom, yet all who enter his Nautilus are confined aboard forever.
  • At the outset, Nemo declares, “I’m not what you term a civilized man! I’ve severed all ties with society, for reasons that I alone have the right to appreciate. Therefore I obey none of its regulations…” yet he plants a flag at the South Pole just as any imperialistic conqueror from a land nation might.

It’s well-known that Verne initially gave Nemo a detailed back-story with a former nationality and a traumatic past to explain his motivations, but his publisher urged him to delete all that. We’re left with an unexplained mystery, a Byronic Leonardo da Vinci, a marauding scientist, a sea hermit, a gentleman savage.

Like Captain Ahab, Nemo suffers from a troubled past that leads him on an obsessive oceanic quest, resulting in madness. Unlike Ahab, the cause is not as evident as a bitten-off leg, but resides only in his mind. His motives remain as invisibly submerged as his submarine.  

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these recent blogposts about the four main figures in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This one completes the quartet of character analyses by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 26, 2020Permalink

Character Analysis — Pierre Aronnax

Having analyzed Conseil and Ned Land in recent blogposts, I’ll turn my attention today to the narrator of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Pierre Aronnax.

First, don’t forget to submit your best short story to the upcoming anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered, my tribute to Verne’s undersea masterpiece on its sesquicentennial. I’m co-editing this book, along with editor and award-winning author Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. We’ll officially close for submissions on April 30, but I encourage you to submit well before then. We accept stories as we go, and every previous anthology from this publisher has filled up before its closing date. See this site for guidelines and to submit your story.

Pierre Aronnax, forty years of age, was an Assistant Professor at the Paris Museum of Natural History. He’d written a definitive book on sea creatures, titled The Mysteries of the Great Ocean Depths. Aronnax had been visiting the Nebraska Badlands and was in New York when he received an invitation to join the crew of the frigate USS Abraham Lincoln on its mission to hunt down the reported ‘sea monster.’

Of the three men taken aboard the Nautilus, only Aronnax is given a tour and introduced to most of the wonders aboard. Captain Nemo treats him as an approximate equal, a gentleman, while he treats the rest of his crew, and both Conseil and Ned Land, as lower-class commoners. To our modern sensibilities, this sounds absurd, but to Verne’s class-conscious readers it must have seemed understandable, even natural.

Some have theorized Verne was playing with the word ‘arrogant’ in giving the Professor his surname, but I disagree. I don’t believe Verne thought of Aronnax as arrogant or intended him to appear that way to readers. The Professor was a Nineteenth Century gentleman-scholar and behaved that way. Though he may seem arrogant to us, it is unlikely Verne would have foreseen our modern sensibilities and named his character accordingly.

I’ve mentioned before that Conseil served as the imaginative voice of Verne. I think Aronnax and Nemo together represent what Verne aspired to be. Verne would have loved to be a scientific scholar like Aronnax and an engineer like Nemo.

That said, Aronnax is a disappointing character. He enjoys being free to examine undersea life from within a submarine, while ignoring that he’s trapped aboard. He admires the scientific and engineering genius of Nemo while choosing to ignore warning signs of the Captain’s insanity. Aronnax knows he must someday try to leave the submarine, but would prefer that date be well in the future. In short, he’s there to observe and to marvel for us, not to act in any daring way.

Modern writers can understand Verne’s dilemma. To pull off his undersea novel with all its various travels and adventures, Verne needed at least one character who was content to remain in an iron prison for the duration. Aronnax is that character, but he comes off as too trusting and too slow to act. He is carried along by events rather than causing things to happen. These aren’t traits we like to see in a main character.

In a way, we can think of Verne’s Aronnax as an unreliable narrator. The Professor gives us accurate information on the Nautilus, Nemo’s scientific and engineering prowess, and the many fish they see and places they visit. But he ignores and then rejects Ned Land’s opinion about Nemo and the Canadian’s plans for escape. Only in the end do we (and Aronnax) see that Ned was right all along.

I suppose you can guess the next 20,000 Leagues character to be analyzed by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 19, 2020Permalink

Character Analysis — Ned Land

Today we’ll consider the character Ned Land in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Before doing so, I’d like to remind you to submit a short story to Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered, an anthology I’m co-editing along with the creative and capable Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. We’re open for submissions and accepting stories as we go, and this publisher’s previous anthologies have all filled up before their closing dates. Therefore, don’t wait until the official closing date of April 30. Submit your story here.

Turning now to Ned Land, Verne introduces him as a Canadian harpooner from Quebec assigned to the frigate USS Abraham Lincoln to assist the crew in hunting a menacing sea creature.

Verne has fun with this character’s name. In French editions, it is rendered as “Land,” the same as in English translations, not the French word for land, “terre.” Verne’s audience would have had to know the English word to get his pun. Ned is a man of the sea named for the land, who craves to escape from under the sea and eat food of the land.

Between Professor Aronnax and Ned Land, readers come to understand two opposing ways of dealing with their imprisonment aboard the Nautilus. The pair are opposites, with Aronnax’s servant Conseil serving as the median. On several spectra, the two men occupy extreme ends.

Ned Land is the ‘physical’ to Aronnax’s ‘intellectual.’ Land is often depicted as taking action, while Aronnax observes and deliberates. It is Ned who throws the harpoon, who assaults a steward, who goes ashore and shoots birds and kangaroos, who grabs the electrified railing, who kills a shark, who harpoons a dugong, and who joins in the attack on the giant squid, who tries to signal a nearby ship, and who arranges their escape from the Nautilus.

Further, Ned Land acts without thinking, while Aronnax thinks without acting. Often, Ned acts impulsively, sometimes with a bad result but sometimes heroically. Aronnax suffers from ‘paralysis by analysis,’ knowing what he should do, but not doing anything about it.

Land represents the common man in contrast to Aronnax, the upper-class gentleman. Aronnax eats with Nemo and bunks in a room next to the Captain’s. Ned bunks and eats with Conseil in the midships area reserved for the crew. Ned speaks plainly, occasionally joking, while Aronnax speaks like a professor throughout.

The last facet of their contrast is what I’d term the ‘man of nature’ vs. the civilized man. Ned’s comfort zone is the out-of-doors, in the wild, killing and preparing his own dinner. For his part, Aronnax would be lost without his servant and is more at home in drawing rooms and eating gourmet food. Here, most of Verne’s audience would identify closer with the professor, but nonetheless be fascinated by the harpooner.

Given their differing viewpoints, it’s no wonder Aronnax sees the Nautilus as a vessel of underwater exploration, while Land sees only a prison. Aronnax sees Captain Nemo as a rational engineer and scientist, while Land sees him as an insane pirate and jailer.

Although the two share the same goal, leaving the Nautilus, they differ on timeframe and method. Aronnax would like to leave someday, after persuading a captain he sees as reasonable. Land wants to get off the submarine immediately, by force if necessary.

Verne resolves this conflict in a draw. The trio departs the Nautilus far later than Ned would have liked, after spending seven months aboard. However, they must sneak off the ship without the Captain’s permission, during an emergency, and with Ned guiding.

Ned Land, then, is the perfect ‘friendly opposition’ to Pierre Aronnax, giving the novel dramatic tension throughout. Have you ever known someone like Ned Land (except for his harpooner occupation, of course)? A few like him have been known to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 12, 2020Permalink

Character Analysis — Conseil

This post begins a short series discussing major characters from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I’ll start with Conseil.

First, a reminder. Along with the esteemed and talented Kelly A. Harmon, I will be co-editing Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered, an anthology of short stories honoring Verne’s novel. Submissions open this Friday, January 10. Although submissions are scheduled to close on April 30, Pole to Pole Publishing accepts stories on the fly, so once the anthology is filled, later stories get rejected. Submit early; all their anthologies have closed before the advertised closing date. See all the details here.

Now, to Conseil. The book’s narrator, Professor Pierre Aronnax, introduces him this way: “Conseil was my manservant. A devoted lad who went with me on all my journeys; a gallant Flemish boy whom I genuinely liked and who returned the compliment; a born stoic, punctilious on principle, habitually hardworking, rarely startled by life’s surprises, very skillful with his hands, efficient in his every duty, and despite his having a name that means “counsel,” never giving advice—not even the unsolicited kind!”

Well, this is mostly true. At thirty years old, Conseil is hardly a lad or boy. Also, that last sentence is doubly ironic. ‘Conseil’ means ‘counsel’ or ‘advice’ in French, and though Aronnax thinks his servant never gives advice, he often does so.

Aronnax goes on to mention Conseil’s habit of referring to his master in the third person. Although we often see Conseil beginning a sentence with, “If Master pleases…” or “If Master will permit me…” this, also, turns out to be a rule broken on occasion.

Conseil’s first characteristic mentioned by Aronnax is devotion, and in this, Conseil is consistent. The servant jumps into the ocean when his master falls in, and helps to keep him afloat. Conseil agrees to don a diving suit when Aronnax does so, and accompanies him on every excursion.

The utterly loyal servant became a stereotypical character in Verne’s novels, most notably with Passepartout in Around the World in Eighty Days, and Nebuchadnezzar (Neb) in The Mysterious Island. In each case, Verne has literary purposes for these characters, such as representing the “common man” to whom the genius explains certain scientific phenomena, or to dramatically play off some other character’s eccentricity, or simply to keep conversations going.

In 20,000 Leagues, Conseil serves as an intermediary between Aronnax and Ned Land. Conseil may be devoted to his master, and shares the professor’s interest in sea creatures, but he is, like Land, a common man and spends a lot of time with the Canadian harpooner. It is Conseil who must explain to Aronnax why Ned Land behaves the way he does.

The servant also becomes the calming influence on all actions in the novel. Whenever Aronnax becomes overly excited or afraid or alarmed, Conseil grounds him and helps him relax. Conseil also attempts to sooth the impetuous Ned Land, but with less effective results.

In a couple of scenes, Conseil becomes the imaginative voice of Verne himself. Early on, Conseil laments “the drawback in not having one universal language,” a cause for which Verne was an enthusiast. Later, when they reach the central Mediterranean, Conseil considers the possibility of a volcanic upheaval closing off that sea from the Atlantic. This foreshadows, in a way, Verne’s later novel Invasion of the Sea.

Conseil serves yet one more purpose in the novel. He is Verne’s tribute to his friend Jacques-Francoise Conseil, who is said to have built a submarine craft in 1858.

Watch this space for more character analyses from—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

January 5, 2020Permalink