Pick one of your favourites among the characters from your published fiction stories or a character which is an interesting example from your published fiction. What makes this character one of your favourites or an interesting example of your fiction?
It occurs to me that all the main characters in my novels are suitably detached variations of, well, me! The most fully developed, I think, is George J. George, who appears in my sixth novel, Absent: the English Teacher.
All these quasi-autobiographical characters have in common the seeming contradiction of being European Africans, who suffer varying degrees of alienation, the most common being that they feel dislodged from both cultures. This sometimes results in mixed feelings of guilt and indignation.
Apart from George, I have treated these losers with little sympathy, satirizing them unmercifully. George is also satirized, but only in the first half of the novel. Once he destroys what is left of his identity, and leaves town with his charge, the orphaned little black girl, the genre changes, I hope, into tragi-comedy.
This emerging sympathy for my anachronistic white protagonists may have something to do with political developments in Zimbabwe since about the year 2000. You don’t kick a man when he’s well and truly down.
What kind(s) of character do you consider this character primarily to be, or how would you describe this character?
Physically and morally weak, but kind-hearted; artless; not very materialistic. George is a middle-aged, single, school teacher who, after a series of misadventures, ends up working as a ‘houseboy’ for a nouveau riche black family. This role reversal lends itself to some curious situations. It brings George down to the very nadir of his existence – a necessary situation for the process of (possible) redemption to begin.
What is a character from a published fiction story by another author you would compare this character to and why are they similar?
Perhaps Paul in Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall, but only up to a point. They are similar because of the school setting, the stints in prison, the Satirical treatment.
To what extent did you use any pre-existing character formula, template, paradigm, character design, archetype, or theory or principles of making or analysing character in planning, writing, and refining this character?
My writing comes out of my sub-conscious world. There is very little planning. That is one reason why my novels are so short – novellas, really. So I don’t really know how to answer this question except to acknowledge a debt to my favourite prose writer, Charles Dickens.
How would you describe the first chapter, scene or section of this story in one paragraph?
The opening paragraph of the novel might just do it: “When George J. George mistook his white Ford Escort for the moon, he knew that his time was up. He would turn his face to the evening star and, guided by the nests of whitebrowed sparrow-weavers, keep walking. Would he walk alone?”
The evening star is in the west; the nests of sparrow-weavers face west; George is going west!
Pick one of your published stories. How would you describe the introduction of the main character, or one of the main characters, in this story?
The story I’ve chosen is “The Weight Loser”. The character’s name is Dutch Willy, and he’s a typical Rhodie (recalcitrant white Zimbabwean). He decides that the only way he can lose his massive beer-belly – “it flowed over his belt like excited bread dough” - is to spend some time in one of Zimbabwe’s notorious prisons. He achieves this by insulting the President, in a public place.
What makes this an effective character introduction for this story?
The ironic humour. There is absolutely nothing funny about imprisonment in Zimbabwe. It’s a veritable death sentence.
What major changes does this character go through, or what major challenges does the character encounter and how does the character respond to them?
His dreadful time in prison might just have been worth it if he had achieved his aim but, as the narrator records, at the end: “I noticed that the process had been partially successful. He was as thin as a rake, but his paunch – his Rhodesian Front – had refused to capitulate and was, by contrast, larger than ever”.
How would you describe the most important minor characters in this story and the changes in their character, or the challenges they encounter and how they respond to them?
The story is too short for any development of minor characters; consequently they are caricatures or flat characters. The most important would be the bullet-headed CIO operatives who arrest DutchWilly after urinating on him.
What does the story gain from the minor characters?
Fear. As I write, SW Radio Africa has published a 2008 list containing countrywide addresses of over 76 offices and buildings from which the notorious Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) work. In these offices they torture and sometimes kill perceived enemies of the state.
To what extent would you describe the characters in this story as typical or atypical of characters in your fiction stories?
Fairly typical, I’d say. Satire, parody, pastiche… can be effective ways of writing in a country where the rule of law has collapsed, and the security forces are partisan, to say nothing of corruption. What did Alexander Pope say: ”Those who are ashamed of nothing else are so of being ridiculous.”
http://www.weaverpresszimbabwe.com/the-authors/17-john-eppel.html
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