The Lawsuit: Examining the Characters
Casey Oram
4 March 2011
English 1020
Essay 1
The Lawsuit: Examining the Characters
The definition of a lawsuit is a civil action brought in court in which a plaintiff demands another person, known as the defendant, pay this person equitable resolve (dictionary.com). In other words they want payment for being wronged in the past. If the case is found to be legitimate and proven justifiable, the defendant pays the plaintiff the awarded compensation. This brings us to the story, The Lawsuit, by Naguib Mahfouz. This tale is about a son being sued by his father’s widow demanding maintenance be paid to her some twenty years after the father’s death. Several of the individuals in this story serve very little purpose. These characters, known as flat characters, are used in a fictional role, in which they do not experience considerable change or growth throughout the course of the story (Wiehardt). Other characters, called round characters, supply the story with an individual who encounters controversy and is changed by it in some way (Wiehardt). They tend to play a larger role and are more fully described in the creative writing helping the story take shape. The round characters justify their roles to the reader by being complex and showing change throughout the course of the story. They help the story tell its tale, offering details.
One of the flat or static characters in this short story is the sisters, only briefly mentioned during the announcement of the new marriage and again when the father died. They did not seem to serve as main characters and were not affected much in this story, possibly because they had moved into their own homes and did not live with the other family members. The mother, another of the flat characters, seemed content about the current new arrangement. She appears to be wise about how the new young bride will devastate the rest of the family by stating, “We’ll end up without a bean”. The mother is
4 March 2011
English 1020
Essay 1
The Lawsuit: Examining the Characters
The definition of a lawsuit is a civil action brought in court in which a plaintiff demands another person, known as the defendant, pay this person equitable resolve (dictionary.com). In other words they want payment for being wronged in the past. If the case is found to be legitimate and proven justifiable, the defendant pays the plaintiff the awarded compensation. This brings us to the story, The Lawsuit, by Naguib Mahfouz. This tale is about a son being sued by his father’s widow demanding maintenance be paid to her some twenty years after the father’s death. Several of the individuals in this story serve very little purpose. These characters, known as flat characters, are used in a fictional role, in which they do not experience considerable change or growth throughout the course of the story (Wiehardt). Other characters, called round characters, supply the story with an individual who encounters controversy and is changed by it in some way (Wiehardt). They tend to play a larger role and are more fully described in the creative writing helping the story take shape. The round characters justify their roles to the reader by being complex and showing change throughout the course of the story. They help the story tell its tale, offering details.
One of the flat or static characters in this short story is the sisters, only briefly mentioned during the announcement of the new marriage and again when the father died. They did not seem to serve as main characters and were not affected much in this story, possibly because they had moved into their own homes and did not live with the other family members. The mother, another of the flat characters, seemed content about the current new arrangement. She appears to be wise about how the new young bride will devastate the rest of the family by stating, “We’ll end up without a bean”. The mother is
Cited: Wiehardt, Ginny. About.com, Fiction Writing. Web. 22 Feb. 2011. Dictionary.com. 2011. Web. 22 Feb. 2011. Kennedy, X.J. and Dana Gioia, eds. Literature: An Introduction to fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eleventh Edition. New York: Longman, 2010. Print. Mahfouz, Naguib. The Lawsuit. Eds. X.J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia. Print.