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Chapter 13: Building Character with Objects and Possessions
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A character can be used as an object by some characters – making use of
another person as a means to an end is the great evil that overtakes many of
the characters in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novels and those of Henry James, as
well as too many crime novels to mention!
In Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Osmond is a collector who surrounds
himself with precious objects. He doesn’t love Isabel, but uses her as
if she were another object for his collection. Objects can also represent traits
that characters want to get rid of but can’t (a common motif in fairy stories).
In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1880), the painting becomes
uglier and more corrupted, while the increasingly sinful Dorian Gray himself
remains handsome and young, unchanged by time. When his conscience hits,
he stabs the portrait and so kills himself.
Write a scene from your story in which a character tries to get rid of an object
she possesses, something that stands in for an aspect of herself. Make sure
that getting rid of the object is much more difficult than it appears. Write
about the object returning to the person in some unexpected way.
In an old Persian tale, a wealthy miser, Abu
Kasem, has a revolting pair of ancient slippers
that he’s too mean to replace. One day at the
baths he finds a magnificent pair of slippers and
thinks they’ve been left for him. The owner of
the slippers is a magistrate and recognises the
old pair that Abu Kasem leaves behind in their
place. Angrily, he gives the miser a hefty fine.
Abu Kasem decides to get rid of the old slippers.
First he throws them into the lake, but
they end up being caught in the fishermen’s
nets and damaging them, so the fish escape.
They’re instantly recognised as the miser’s
and thrown back through his window, where
they break some of his favourite glassware.
Abu Kasem slips up
Abu Kasem then decides to bury the slippers in
the garden, but is spotted by a neighbour who
thinks he must be burying treasure. This is illegal
in Islamic culture, because wealth should
be kept in circulation to benefit everyone, so
he is fined again. Time and again he tries to rid
himself of the slippers, but everyone recognises
them and returns them to him. In the end he’s
left impoverished with the revolting slippers his
only remaining possession.
The moral of the story is that you can’t easily
rid yourself of aspects of your personality that
you don’t like, and that these traits can easily
be your undoing.