I’ve read this a lot.
Flawed characters. We’re all about flawed characters these days. We want them flawed, filleted and flaming.
But what’s “flawed”?
Honest to goodness I’mnotmakingthisup, I read the equation of fat and/or old = flawed. Rly? Gee whiz. Being >;Size 6 is not flawed. Jeezus, people. Eating children and torturing animals? Yeah, now that’s flawed.
When we’re still selling (or not) books by their dumb and misrepresenting cover art, flaws in characters has come to be anything but fashion-magazine cover “normal”.
A protagonist who is conflicted, undecided, growing, changing. Is this flawed?
A protagonist who is larger than a Size 6 or older than 35. Is this flawed?
A protagonist who curses, embarrasses themselves, or is petty. Flawed?
If these characteristics describe a flawed person, then …wait. I’m flawed.
The Perfect Hero character is boring. We can all agree on that nowadays, yes? We’ve torn down that pedestal and replaced it with something a bit more down to earth, something a little more, ummm…like you or me, no?
We’ve gone from “Golly, I sure wish I were more like this character, bad-ass fighter, seventeen, and a smart-ass,” to “Hey. I totally can’t identify with this weird person in this book. I sure wish there were more characters that were a little bit more like me.”
One of the roles of literature in culture is to hold up that mirror so we can inspect ourselves. I think that by cataloguing these normal, real-person characteristics as flaws, we also equate them with cruelty and evil, which are by no means the same.
Are we still viewing normal character aspects as bizarre enough to be dubbed as flawed? Hummm…
What’s that mirror showing us?
yes. this! thank you!
i’m all about flawed characters, antiheroes, etc. and “flawed” is such a vague term! for me, characterization is what the character does, how they react to things. characterization rarely has anything to do with what the person physically looks like (unless they are a cyborg or are missing a limb, or something that actually comes up in the plot).
in my mind, flawed doesn’t imply anything physical, like age or size or health. but that word is so darn vague that I can certainly see it being applied to those types of attributes.
I need to stop using the word flawed, and start using the word conflicted.
Flawed can imply far too much, and maybe conflicted is a little more narrow. and I feel conflicted a lot. I might not be quite as conflicted as the person in a book who would rather stab someone than speak to them, but sometimes it takes a lot for me to be professional and mature and polite to someone who is making my life hell when I’d rather just scream at them for an hour. I can’t imagine I’m the only grown up to whom “think before you speak!” applies.
Yes, I think we started out using the word “flawed” to indicate a character that is not the knight in shining armor from the victorian age. But, gosh that word sure is big. I was stunned to see this reference to physical aspects, but that writer/commenter is right. It is a big word.
I’ve decided to use the word “interesting”. =) Characters who are especially physically attractive, morally just, and athletic are really, really dull.
I think that, as humans, each of us is intrinsically flawed.
Acceptable behaviors and attributes change from generation to generation, gender and generational roles change, For that matter, terms like “law-abiding” “up-standing” and “conscientious” shift to include wildly disparate sub-sets of the population.
For instance, a “fine, upstanding, law-abiding, conscientious” Mayan Priest would be breaking major laws and taboos in Modern America by exhibiting behaviors which were acceptable and admired in his own society. A Colonial slave owner was doing nothing wrong by HIS standards, but not by ours. Two hundred years in the future, people will undoubtedly look back on us in disgust/horror at something we accept as normal.
So, I think it has to be a choice by the author – to present characters as idealized, Jungian Archetypes – or to present people as they are. Neither choice is right or wrong, but reflective of societal norms at the time the piece was written. Victorian society seems to have been very black and white. Idealized characters were provided so that people could “improve themselves” by following the examples of “good”, or reacting to the punishment of “bad” behaviors.
Modern authors seem to tend more toward “realistic” characters. I think this is a reflection of our current society. We accept much different behaviors and attitudes than some of the generations that have gone before us. Taboos are being challenged and overturned, sexual norms are being widened to reflect what is going on in the “real world” – as it exists today.
I appreciate you bringing up the whole context thing in relation to what is flawed character or thinking. Excellent point.
For me, a flawed character is a character portrayed as human with human characteristics (who possess both virtues and flaws), as opposed to perfect-like or idealized characters that may populate romance books. Using the word flawed to describe a character in a review should not equate evil, nor should it refer to physical beauty, size, age, etc. That’s a rather superficial use of the word when used in the context of a review.
I’m not sure Flawed is the right word either.
I just finished The Steel Remains (thanks for that suggestion by the way) and the three protagonists of the story all clearly had issues fitting in to the society that they were a part of. I don’t really see it as the characters were flawed, the societies seemed to be, but they themselves were just doing what seemed right based on their history and preferences.
It was just interesting to see them all having to deal with going back to living in societal standards when it was clear that none of them were happy doing so.
Hum. Normal people in a broken world. That’s awesome, Grant! You win the prize for the day. Thanks for the cool idea, I’m going to think about that some more.
I’m glad to hear that you enjoyed those books.