Character Growth: Laugh With Them
Funny self-deprecation by a protagonist may teach a lesson in a palatable way.
Characters will likely need to grow, learn something, or change in some way for readers to feel justified in having read a story.
One way to illustrate this necessary growth is to allow the character to poke fun at themselves about that change. This can be especially effective when a character’s change might feel like a moral stance by the author.
This is because when a character uses self-deprecating humor, it invites the reader to laugh with that character rather than feel attacked or confronted by whatever message about society the author is attempting to convey.
Edgar Allan Poe does precisely this in his not-so-short story “The Spectacles.” I describe it that way because, before the story was reprinted, Poe himself wrote, “We have to apologize for the insufficient variety of the present number. We were not aware of the great length of ‘The Spectacles’ until too late to remedy the evil.”
“The Spectacles”
The story follows a 22-year-old narrator experiencing love at first sight with a woman he spots at a distance in a theater despite his own admission that he needs glasses but refuses to wear them because he thinks glasses are unflattering. We follow the narrator’s obsessive attempts to court this woman, who he continues to describe as beautiful despite not being able to fully see her.
Eventually, the woman agrees to marry him only if he wears glasses following the abrupt nuptials. With glasses on, he notices two singificant things.
The woman is in her eighties and, oh ….
She’s his estranged great-great-grandmother.
However, it turns out that while attempting to court her, the great-great-grandmother finds out who the narrator is and only pretends to marry him as a way of teaching him a lesson about the dangers of vanity and rushing into love. Both of which are the morals that Poe appears to be conveying to the reader.
Character Growth: Laugh With Them
One of the keys to humor highlighting the change within the character is Poe having the narrator explain his reason for not wearing glasses.
I am five feet eleven. My hair is black and curling. My nose is sufficiently good. My eyes are large and gray; and although, in fact they are weak a very inconvenient degree, still no defect in this regard would be suspected from their appearance. The weakness itself, however, has always much annoyed me, and I have resorted to every remedy -- short of wearing glasses. Being youthful and good-looking, I naturally dislike these, and have resolutely refused to employ them. I know nothing, indeed, which so disfigures the countenance of a young person, or so impresses every feature with an air of demureness, if not altogether of sanctimoniousness and of age.
This sets up the ability for the narrator to grow. Without this explanation, the reader would question the narrator’s reason for not wishing to wear glasses.
Also, it’s important to note that Poe kind of mocks the narrator here, but stops short of doing so throughout the story. Instead of using mockery against his own character to sell readers on the dangers of vanity, Poe has the narrator see the error of his ways through experience and allows the narrator to make fun of himself. This tactic is likely much more desirable for readers because they’re not being lectured to or watching an author bully the narrator. Instead, readers are invited to laugh with the character and share in the growth.
Here are the final words of the story that contain the self-deprecating humor that illustrates the narrator’s change.
Nevertheless, I am not the husband of my great, great, grandmother; and this is a reflection which affords me infinite relief, -- but I am the husband of Madame Lalande -- of Madame Stephanie Lalande -- with whom my good old relative, besides making me her sole heir when she dies -- if she ever does -- has been at the trouble of concocting me a match. In conclusion: I am done forever with billets doux and am never to be met without spectacles.
As mentioned above, humor, in this instance, maintains the benefit of providing a lesson to readers without making them feel as though the author is dictating how one should live. Instead, the change that occurs is joked about by the person who has experienced that change, which invites us to participate in the joke and feel as though we also learned something through a shared experience.
Overall, this is a wonderful tool for authors to use when attempting to illustrate a change in a character that might contain a specific moral stance.