Action is character, FS Fitzgerald

Résumé du document

In real life, what we do is supposed to reflect our personality. What we are - to the others - is first and foremost what we do and what we look like : we are judged by the others through the prism of our physical appearance and of our own behavior. Doing something "reprehensible" according to "them" means we'll end up labeled because of the precise act we just committed, impacting on the relationship we'll then keep with these people. By stating, in one of his Journals, that "action is character" F. Scott Fitzgerald, seems to imply that in literature too, what the characters in a book do, reveal who they are. But is that true? Can we generalize and apply to literature a truth valid in "real life"? We'll see that it can be tempting to conclude that Fitzgerald has a point, since it seems quite obvious that in books action is character. We'll then go back more seriously on the implications of such a conclusion.

Extraits

[...] It is also true of Nicole. Let's consider the shopping scene with Rosemary towards the end of XII: Nicole's frantic behaviour she buys heaps of clothes and useless things and almost forgets her taxi (and then say goodbye to Rosemary). This has very much to do with her own personnality : impulsive and schizophrenic.(p.66). Not to mention her most famous breakdown on the bathroom marking the return of schizophrenia as a predominant disease and the beginning of the end of Dick and Nicole's golden couple. [...]

[...] Actions taken individually or the global one the sum of action of one character? There, we have to conclude that character's action must be analyzed as a whole if we want to infer from them character's individualities. It is only once (s)he finishes the book that the reader should draw a conclusion on the characters in regard to their “global accumulated behaviour. For instance, In Tender is the night where there is a clear evolution of the main characters talking about metamorphosis would be better here one would be very mistaken to judge Dick only from his early actions since he behaves brilliantly, admirably (successful doctor, nice wife, two kids, great parties ) and consider his few drinking “episodes” which become recurrent only later in the book as rare misbehaviour episodes, not tarnishing his reputation at all. [...]

[...] Brett's sayings reveals her frank, mocking style : you have a hell of a biblical name, Jake (p.19), that's the way she also behaves towards Jake : she knows love between them is impossible because of the latter's impotence and her own too-strong appetite for sex and she's not afraid to let him know that. (p.51). Jack seems an intelligent and very quiet man in life because the dialogue renders it this way. Actually Jake's character is all defined by what he will never do : make love to Brett. Therefore non-committed “action are also character”. but what is action for a character ? [...]

[...] Thus, it has to be specified here that, action will be taken in a broad sense, including “gestures” and real “actions” reported in descriptions but also actions contained in dialogue : because talking is an action obviously ! Keeping silent is also one. All this will help us in arguing that yes, action is character: character's identities can be drawn thanks to their action. In Tender is the night, right from the beginning, the reader knows that Rosemary is in love with Dick since she tells it to her mother directly. [...]

[...] This can mislead us in our interpretation of the character's action, depending on affinities they have in the novel. For instance, at the beginning of tender is the night, the story is sometimes told from Rosemary's point of view, and she's not neutral at all. Thus we can only draw “portrayals according to the reader is never provided with raw action, he has to imagine them. Due to the special dimension of the literature universe, the reader has no clue what the characters are for real it is not as in movies . [...]