Chapter 16 Introduce characters

A few minutes later, Sally arrived by herself. "Dear Frieze, am I too late?" "It's only half an hour, I think," Fritz said slowly, his lordly smile on the arrival of the possession. "Miss Boris, may I introduce Mr. Ashwood? Everyone calls him Chris." "No," I said, "I've only been called Chris in my life by Frieze." Sally laughed loudly.She was wearing a black silk dress, a small shawl on her shoulders, and a small hat that looked like a servant's head. "Honey, can I use your phone?" "Okay, let's go fight." Fritz stopped my line of sight.

"Chris, let's go into the next room. I'll show you something," He obviously wanted to hear my first impressions of his new acquaintance, Sally. "For heaven's sake, don't leave me with this man!" cried Sally. "Otherwise he'd seduce me on the phone. He's just too passionate a man." As she dialed, I noticed that her nails were painted emerald green, an unfortunate choice because the color instead drew attention to her hands, which were sooty and dirty as a little girl's.Her complexion was as dark as Fritz's sister; her face was long and thin, heavily powdered, and as white as a dead man's face; her eyes were brown and large, and if they were darker Just enough to match the color of her hair and eyebrows.

"Wei——," she whispered, her shiny cherry lips pursed as if to kiss the microphone: "Ist Dass Du, mein Liebling?" (Is that you, dear?) She opened her mouth sweetly He smiled, looking very stupid.Fritz and I sat watching her from afar, like watching a performance in a theatre. Christopher Ashwood, Farewell to Berlin (1939) Character is the most important factor in a novel. Of course, this sentence is not without controversy.Other narrative genres, such as the epic, and other media, such as film, can tell stories as well.But the great tradition of the European novel is unrivaled in the richness of its means and in the depth of psychological excavation when it comes to portraying the nature of its characters.Still, the question of characters is perhaps the trickiest aspect of the art of fiction, especially when discussed in technical terms.Part of the reason is that there are too many types of characters, and there are various ways to express them: main characters, secondary characters, monotonous characters, multi-faceted characters; some characters are portrayed from the heart, such as Virginia Woolguan's " Mrs. Dalloway; some characters are described in terms of appearance, observed by others, such as Christopher Ashwood's Sally Boris.

The storyline of "Farewell to Berlin" is fictional, and it was originally intended to be a light-hearted read, but it was later adapted into the stage play and film "I Am a Camera" and then into the stage and film musical "Cabare", both quite successful.In this way, Sally Boris has been active in the minds of contemporary people for quite some time.At first glance, it is difficult for us to understand that a character like her should have achieved such mythical status.She wasn't particularly beautiful, nor intelligent, nor gifted as an entertainer; she was vain, cynical, and sexually greedy.But on the surface, she is innocent, delicate and fragile, and lovable.She loves to put on airs, but the reality of life is cruel to her.There is always a distance between pretense and reality, and a comic effect is created from it.Her story takes place in Weimar Berlin before the Nazis came to power, which makes it all the more interesting and allegorical.She lived in a squalid rented house and dreamed of instant success and fame.The protectors changed one after another, and none of them were serious.She flatters and flatters her, and tries to coax her everywhere, but her methods are clumsy, and people can often see through them at a glance.She was a symbol of the self-deception and ignorance of that doomed society.

In older stories, the easiest way to introduce characters is to describe their appearance and then conclude conclusively.The description of Dorothea Brooke in the first chapter of George Eliot's Middlemarch is typical of this approach: Miss Brooke's natural beauty was enhanced by her coarse dresses.Her hands and wrists were slender and well-proportioned, and her sleeves would have stood out without ornament, like a saint by an Italian painter; her form, her gestures, and her manners had a dignity added to them by the simplicity of their attire.Her dress, if compared with the provincial style, has something more evocative, reminiscent of the language of the Bible—or the language of the older poets in today's papers.She was often said to be brilliant, but always added that her sister was more sensible than she.

Descriptions like this can go on for pages of grandeur, but this is a more patient, more laid-back culture than ours.Modern writers often let the relevant information of the characters emerge automatically, and use actions and speech to reflect or rather convey the relevant situations of the characters from multiple angles.No matter which method is used, all descriptions in the novel are highly selective, and the basic rhetorical technique is exemplification, that is, using parts to represent the whole.Both George Eliot and Christopher Ashwood focused on the heroine's face and hands to reflect the appearance of the characters, leaving the rest to the reader's imagination.It would take many pages, perhaps a whole book, to describe Dorothea and Sally Boris in their entirety, physically and psychologically.

Clothing has always been an index of characters, which can reflect their class and life style.This is especially true of a display character like Sally.Her black silk attire (worn for afternoon visits) suggests that she is attention-grabbing, showing off (the shawl), provocative (the footman's hat is rich in meaning, reminiscent of many cues throughout the book, such as sexual paradox psychology, sexual deviance, transvestism, etc.).These traits are quickly reinforced by her mannerisms—borrowing the telephone to let two men know that her sex appeal has recently conquered a new one—which also gives the narrator the opportunity to look at Sally's hands and face. As a description, this is also the meaning of Henry James' "situational approach". He has always tried his best to achieve the goal of "dramatic! Dramatic!".James was thinking of the stage play, and Ashwood belonged to the first generation of novelists who grew up with the movies.The influence of cinema can be seen everywhere.When the narrator of "Farewell to Berlin" says "I am a camera," he is referring to the film camera. It really compares her to a character in a painting.Sally's display is dynamic.It couldn't be easier if the sequence had been broken down into several cinematic scenes: Sally's appearance in black silk, the two men's quick exchange of glances—Sally's green fingernails were in focus as she dialed a phone number—as she and her lover The call focuses on her incongruous, clownish make-up and affected expression—two snapshots of two male onlookers fascinated by the parody.

Undoubtedly, this also explains from one aspect why the story of Sally Boris was easily put on the screen.But as far as this quotation is concerned, there are places that are purely literary. —When I mention her name, the first thing I think of is the green-painted nails on her stained hands.Her green nails can be reflected in the movie, but not the narrator's ironic remark of "unfortunate choice".Unfortunate choices are what happened to Sally Boris in her life.You can see the smoke stains and stains, but only the narrator observes that her hands are as dirty as a little girl's." Sally Boris is such a memorable character precisely because of her superficial sophistication, It's naive.