Flawed to the Bone

pinterest: wordcrafter

In a comment on my last post, on sappy and sentimental straw men, Writer4Christ asked if I could pull together a list of books with characters who have "good flaws."  That turn of phrase makes me laugh a little, but at any rate, I thought this would be an enjoyable exercise.

A caveat (of which I have many) before I begin: this is a list of books I've read where the protagonists have excellently glaring flaws.  However, those flaws go hand in hand with the characters themselves; they cannot be divorced from one another.  And just as we ought not try to put asunder what the author has joined together, as authors we should not try joining together what should stay asunder!  We can't throw darts at a dartboard of character flaws in order to choose which ones our protagonist should have.  These grow out of the person himself, and develop with him; they must be intrinsically a part of him.

There's my caveat.  Now we can move on to fun stuff.

north and south

In talking of flawed characters, my mind flew immediately to Mr. Thornton of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South.  Not surprising, since he is one of my favorite characters ever.  But anyhow, those of you who have either seen the film or read the novel will understand immediately how he represents my point.  His flaws are obvious: pride, a sharp tongue and quick temper, and perhaps overmuch ambition.  They reveal themselves in ways that hurt a number of people, especially the workers in his cotton mill, for they make him nigh oblivious to their suffering.  He is no saint, and his flaws are no mere trifles; they have keen effects on those around him.

With flaws like those, he could easily become odious to the reader.  Gaskell pulled it off, however, by balancing these elements of his personality with other, equally critical ones.  He is a hard worker, glad to break his back in support of his family; he loves ardently; and he is not lacking in compassion, though he shows it harshly.  He is certainly a conflicted personality, but it all comes together to create someone who is very real and very much a hero in his own way.

sherlock holmes

Another obvious choice!  Who doesn't think of Holmes when flaws are mentioned?  There are few elements of his personality that don't constitute flaws.  He is arrogant, rude, selfish, oblivious, manipulative, verbally abusive (sometimes), and a drug-addict.  He's not exactly the spitting image of a hero.  And again, these things are not whitewashed - they're out in the open for all readers to see.  We really ought to hate him.  But most of us don't, and for some crazy reason he so endeared himself to readers that there were riots and protests when Conan Doyle attempted to kill him off.  For he is also brilliant, witty, at times kindhearted, and even occasionally just plain wrong.

the chronicles of narnia

Of the Pevensie children, Edmund and Lucy are by far the most thoroughly developed and the best-loved.  Edmund is a very flawed personality: he went and betrayed his siblings, after all, and was just an all-around brat who needed a good swat on the rear end.  But we love his redemption, and even the natural roughness of his personality toward a character like Eustace Clarence Scrubb is attractive.  (Because Eustace "almost deserved it.")  Lucy is not as obviously flawed, but she still has her weaknesses - her jealousy of Susan, for instance, which pops up in The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader.'  

a tale of two cities

Um, Sydney Carton.  Need I really say any more?  Even more than Thornton, even more than Holmes, Carton represents an anti-hero.  He's a drunkard and a ne'er-do-well, just the sort of Dickens character you are meant to loathe.  But instead you pity him for being, it would appear, incapable of change - for being chained to his vices - for his unrequited love.  And then you're blown away by the ending, sob over him, and love him for his nobility.  End of story.

the count of monte cristo

Here you have a main character bent on revenge, obsessed with the idea of being sent by God to bring evildoers to justice, ruining people's lives left and right.  He has so many flaws, there are very few bits of gem left in the whole lump.  If you dig around a bit, though, you find that he is capable of some form of compassion toward those he considers innocent (does that even count?), and of immense generosity - no stinginess there!  I am actually hard-pressed to think of anything else.  Please call back at a later date.

the thief

The first flaw in the hero of Megan Whalen Turner's series is self-evident: he's a bit light-fingered.  He also lies and swears, so you could call him light-tongued as well.  He is horrendously proud, often sullen, frequently bitter toward both the gods and the people around him.  Actually, he's very flawed indeed and makes the reader want to hit him upside the head.  He's also in love, and it's unrequited - both things that tend to make the reader soft-hearted.  In addition, he is incredibly loyal and at once brave and oddly fearful.  He is a well-blended mishmash of traits, and one of my favorite things about The Thief and The Queen of Attolia. 

howl's moving castle

I almost forgot this gem, and that would be a heinous crime.  How can you leave Wizard Howl out of a mix like this?   He is talented, but on the other hand, he's a coward and what another character calls a "slitherer-outer": he won't face any danger if he can help it.  He's also quite heartless and has a habit of making girls fall in love with him, then leaving them in tears.  But that's not his fault, now is it?  And his wit (ever a popular trait), his humor, and his character development make him loveable despite these things.

For amusement's sake, I'll do a run-through of the most glaring flaws in all these characters.  Pride; excessive ambition; arrogance; rudeness; selfishness; drug-addiction (!); manipulation; betrayal; jealousy; drunkenness; idleness; hypocrisy; hatred; thievery; lying; bitterness; swearing; cowardice; and heartlessness.  Not the marks of heroes, we would think, and yet borne by heroes.  They are the marks, or some of the marks, of fallen men and women - and that includes those who are saved and being saved, but who are not yet "confirmed in righteousness."  There are still flaws that go down to the bone.

Burning the Straw Men

pinterest: the soldier's cross

Back in October, inspired negatively by a book I was perusing at the time, I scribbled a post about some of the most flagrant stereotypes applied to women in novels.  I don't believe it would be playing fair if after that, I didn't do something of the same for male characters.  I haven't seen this as commonly in modern books (probably because I don't read many of them), though it does crop up quite a bit in the more "sensational," romanticized literature of the 1800s.  However, I know many of Scribbles' readers, as well as myself, garner more inspiration from that era than from our own, so I think it still worthwhile to address the issue.

A plague that afflicts many male characters is one I've seen in several older books, and unfortunately, it seems to crop up most in books by Christian authors.  It might come from the writers being women; it might have grown out of the Progressive movements in the late 19th Century - I'm not sure.  Certainly one book I found guilty of it was written a long while before that.  So, without further ado,

the straw man

These are characters who, though men, act like women and are portrayed as something like feminine angels (and not the powerful angels of reality, either).  They are extremely good.  They are also extreme milktoasts.  They are as emotional as women, though I've found that the authors try to get away with this by calling them "manly tears" - protesting too much, mayhap?  You can't picture them going into battle, or fighting with everything they've got for something they love, or overturning money-changing tables in a temple.

The moral compasses of these straw men never waver.  They have no real struggles with anything so terrible as hatred; certainly not anything like drink (gasp!) or a foul mouth (oh noez!).  What "struggles" they do have are sanitized and even glorified to make the characters look even better: they might love another person too much, or be too sacrificial, or too trusting, or what have you.  But sin?  Oh, goodness, no, mustn't have that!

Caveats are in order.  Most of you know that I'm all for characters who, like the prince in fairytales, represent virtue in its purest form.  I'm all for them because those characters are true: they represent valor and honor and truth, all powerful and masculine virtues.  They've got backbone.  They are good, but that does not necessitate their being wimps.  In fact, it rules out their being wimps: there is no virtue in milktoasts.

This doesn't mean there can be no cowardly lions in our stories, only that it ought not be portrayed as a mark of piety and goodness.  My character Justin King from Wordcrafter is one of my own favorites, and yet he is also naturally the weakest.  His insecurities make him unwilling to stand for much of anything; he lacks conviction, and Agent Coulson has informed us what happens to men of that stamp.  You can't pretend that Justin's retiring personality and half-developed backbone is a good thing, while Ethan Prince's blood-and-fire impulsiveness is evil - and yet, by the Law of Straw Men, I suppose that's what you would say. 

The Straw Man reveals itself in different forms, some much more innocuous than this, and is quite apt to creep into our stories when we're not looking.  I prefer writing male main characters, and yet I make these kinds of mistakes in the rough draft and have to get them ironed out by my father-and-beta-reader; in particular, it seems my characters have a tendency to be pacifists.  Not to say they won't fight, but when it comes down to killing someone, my heart fails me.  I put myself in their proverbial boots and find war and killing so ugly that I usually take the easy way out, and have to correct myself later on to be more in keeping with the character.  I kick myself for it whenever it happens, but ho hum!  One of these days I'll get it the first time around.

do you find any straw men in your rough drafts?