Characterisation

Abstract

The depth of characterisation in the novel varies. Verloc and Winnie are conceived in terms of a fairly limited palette but, because they are placed in a number of different situations in the narrative and viewed from a range of perspectives, they acquire a certain depth. At the other extreme, there are portraits which are intentionally conceived by the author as caricatures. Figures such as Karl Yundt or Sir Ethelred exist in two dimensions only. A number of other characters — Winnie’s mother, the Assistant Commissioner and Michaelis’s patroness — are not even given a personal name, as if a simple designation defines sufficiently their essence and function. This kind of implicit reduction of human beings to the status of the barest kind of nomenclature is also expressed through the epithets attached repeatedly to the revolutionary characters: Michaelis, the ‘ticket-of-leave apostle’, or Ossipon, ‘the robust anarchist’, or Karl Yundt, ‘the terrorist’, are descriptions which quickly take on the ring of withering scorn.