Methods of Presenting Character in Selected Short Stories by Hasan Saqr

Abstract

Personality is regarded as one of the most fundamental elements of narrative construction in fictional works, representing the central axis around which events develop and unfold. It plays a vital role in embodying the storyteller's ideas and conveying them effectively to the reader, by virtue of its intrinsic connection to the story's subject matter. The storyteller harnesses the remaining narrative components—time, place, plot, and language—in service of character development, aiming to illuminate its psychological, social, and intellectual facets, whether by focusing on a single central protagonist or employing a network of interacting figures. The examined texts exhibit remarkable diversity in their narrative architecture and in the distribution of characters endowed with distinctive traits, rendering them fertile ground for critical analysis. Such analysis seeks to uncover the techniques through which the storyteller introduces characters and accentuates their general features. A clear plurality of presentation methods emerges: at times, the character is presented directly through self-expression; at others, via third-person or second-person narration; or indirectly through another character who reveals their qualities. This observation corroborates critics' assertions regarding the varied modes of character presentation, which enriches the texts with profound semantic and narrative potential deserving of scholarly attention.