A Jump Back to Poe.... I'll be quick about it...

In class, we really went through the trouble to think about each character specifically in The Oblong Box. Characterization is very important here because the main character's development and motivation are what drives the story along. Without the narrator, there would essentially be no story due to the fact that the story is driven by his obsession with the other characters and particularly in the oblong box.

While elements of the narrator’s personality aren’t spelled out for us, it is easy to comprehend what kind of a person he is by his actions and internal dialog. We know that he is not a very patient person from the way that he gets irritated with the delay of sailing and from his frustration at not being able to find out what’s in the box. We also know that he is highly critical of other people after he calls the captain stupid and his friend Wyatt a “madman.” Maybe one of the most compelling elements of the narrator’s personality is his ability to assume. He assumes that he knows everything from the get-go. Not once did he question whether he was wrong about his friends trying to pull a fast one over on him or what he believed to be the contents of the box.

I think it was also interesting that the fake wife was the only character to receive a description in the story. I think that this was done as a foreshadowing effect, showing the reader what to focus on without being too dramatic about it. I think that the way that the narrator describes the behaviors of all the characters is a bit of foreshadowing, but the deep comparison of the real wife that the narrator was told about and the fake wife’s actual appearance and disposition are really the shining examples.

We didn’t discuss The Fall of the House of Usher as we did Oblong Box because we were less impressed with this story. However, I wanted to point out that characterization is very apparent in this story as well, but not where you might expect it. I think that the house itself was given more thought as to characterization than any of the actual people in the story. Maybe this would better go under setting, but I really believe that the house became a character of it’s own and that it could be the main focus of characterization study.