Grotesque Characters

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Brittany Luckey
Mr. Clements
American Literature
21 March 2013
Grotesque Characters What is a grotesque character? In literature, a character or location that is irregular, extravagant or fantastic in form. When used as a device, the purpose is often in the style of expressionism, making the grotesque a parody of human qualities or a distorted reflection of a familiar place. In many ways grotesque characters have some kind of problem in society, and example would be a veteran who lost a limb in war and trying to fit back into society, or anything that we see as not normal in our society. Characters in this particular subject can be deformed, obsessed, or in our terms just not normal or right. Another definition of a grotesque …show more content…

They normally have problems such as obsession, missing limbs, mental illnesses, or just not right in physical appearance. They stand out from other characters in a story, because of how they look or how they act. They are also known as outliers. Grotesque characters face many problems in society or wherever they live, because people judge them for how they look or how they act. How does this story characterization add or subtract from the story? These types of characters give the story a mix of fear, abnormality, and it causes the reader to want to keep reading, and not put the book down. They can subtract from a story by having a book full of grotesque characters and the book becomes less interesting to a reader, because there is nothing happening except a group full of deformed and disfigured people. They give a book something to talk about and allow a reader to understand why they have been outcast, or why they have certain obsessions. They bring out some qualities a lot of authors don’t write about, and that makes the book just that much more entertaining. Who is a good example of supporting grotesque characters? An example from Malcom Griffith about grotesque characters “For example, he uses vague guidelines such as “the open-ended nature of grotesque” without prior explanation of which way the grotesque is open-ended (Griffith 49). What Griffith lacks in cohesion of a definition, he tries to make up for in

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