I've always been fascinated by the minor characters in any story. The impact of a character is not dependent on how much time they spend on the stage or on the page. I began with Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings, who of course became a major character in the third part. But in The Two Towers there she was beside the king’s throne,[1] at the edge of the scene, silent. The unhappiness, the trapped nature of her life, the expectations of the unthinking men around her about what a woman's life should be: circumscribed, quiet, hidden away, yet known to be ‘fearless and high-hearted’.[2] But, being female, that has not counted for much, so far. How easy it would have been for the boiling emotion inside her to turn to bitterness and even to betrayal. And yet, it did not, as the story tells us in retrospect.[3] I found her unforgettable.
Minor characters can be interpreted in several ways. They can be interpreted as merely a projection of something about a major character. They can function as a mirror to the major character, reflecting back to them something that they need to know about themselves. They can be the opposite, the complement of the major character. This is especially attractive as a theory where the minor character is a twin, as in the case of Miriam and Antonio in Frederick Buechner’s, Lion Country (1971) — the first of his four novels about the mercurial Leo Bebb. They may be the lodestar, the inspiration by which the main character navigates.[4] They can function as merely the chorus while the main character agonises. They can populate and enrich the narrative landscape. But in a well written book, they will do more. Where they are well drawn, they will have a life of their own which is attractive in the sense of attracting attention, which is plausible, which demands from us attention, understanding, sometimes empathy.
When I read Lion Country,[5] it was to Miriam that my attention was drawn. I don’t mean I found her likeable: I didn’t particularly. Rather I meant that the character seemed to me to have depths and complexities of which I wanted to know more. It had a life. The situation she is in means that she is by definition almost incapable of agency and certainly incapable of action. And, unlike the major characters, her destiny is certain and imminent. There are very few choices (although, not no choices…) for her to make, compared to all the choices with which Antonio is grappling. To that extent, she is the reverse of him. There are so many paths he could take, whereas she has only one, now. Yet, suddenly, in the midst of reflections on literature and Latin A and hell, Antonio’s sparing the life of a fly somehow leads him to remember Miriam at the theatre and her enthusiasm for the ‘Ladies Room’.[6] Why on earth is she so interested in what the toilets look like in public places, I wondered? Antonio simply accepts that it is so, he does not ask her. He is more concerned to wonder how she knows what sofas in brothels look like. A man’s concerns: “Why is my sister acquainted with brothels?”[7] Antonio as narrator relays a man’s perspective. But as a reader, I want to know what in her inner life compels her to look at public toilets. Buechner is somehow able to offer something other than a male character’s point of view, even when the man is speaking.
Miriam’s medical past is told through Antonio’s eyes as he remembers her faith placed in treatment marked in a patch of iodine, in earlier days.[8] As such, it is told through how he experienced watching her hoping against hope. When we meet Miriam as readers, she has accepted the reality of her death and is half-articulating questions about what it might mean. Antonio’s response to her dream of doors is not to engage but to respond brusquely with some Freudian nostrum.[9] For Miriam there has been a journey. And the author invites us to wonder about that journey. How did she come to a place where she accepted her reality? Was it painful? Did she have to reassess her entire worldview? Then there is her reaction to her ex-husband feeling he should visit: compassion and understanding that although she could bear the complex emotions of the encounter, he could not.[10] At the same time, she has a deep need to say farewell to her children. Antonio’s concerns are all about the practicalities. He does not wonder about how she has come to this place. Fair enough: some people manage their grief in practicalities, not emotions. But as a reader, I do wonder. I am engaged with this character.
Miriam is by no means a dying saint. She curses, she has some unpleasant opinions. She snaps at her yawning son, an anger born out of her own fears of death,[11] as Antonio can see. In her dying days, the emotion he sees in her eyes as she lies silent, is anger. For Antonio, towards the end, all she represents physically in her A frame cast is what he imagines she is feeling (‘Let’s get the Hell out of here’).[12] With what we know of Miriam, he is probably right. But this is my point: we know enough of Miriam to be able to make a critical assessment of her brother’s interpretation. Miriam’s final act of defiance to the male world is that she would not have liked the funeral she got as it wasn’t ‘her’.[13] Anyone who has ever been involved with a funeral knows that the most important and difficult task is trying to make the funeral “her” or “him”. No one had the courage to ask her while there was time and Antonio allows Charlie to arrange it. But he still knows she would have wanted a loud, emotional, sad, and celebratory funeral. So, this we know of Miriam and the kind of person she is: she would have wanted noisy sobbing and a lot of drinking. The very final Miriam we encounter is in a dream, rejoicing in being freed from her cast.[14] The idea of being freed from the cast of our weaknesses, the times when we are unkind, the fears which hold us back as well as our bodily ills, beckons us from Miriam’s story.
The narrator of a story will have their own horizon and their own world. The “minor characters” offer us a different horizon. It may be one who can empathise with or one which merely makes us long to understand why they are the way they are. But by offering us the opportunity to walk in their world, we ask questions about our own. A minor character, who nevertheless is believable and capable of creating understanding even if not approval, can offer us a whole new richness in reading.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thank you for reading The Buechner Review. If you would like to receive future articles in your email inbox you can sign up here.
Works cited:
[1] J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (George Allen & Unwin, 1983), p.535.
[2] Ibid., p.546.
[3] Ibid., p.901.
[4] We might consider Arwen in The Lord of the Rings here, serene and accepting her role to watch and wait while Aragorn makes their love possible. That said, Tolkien did in the end give her choices: her own voice, for example, in the ‘Tale of Aragorn and Arwen’.
[5] Frederick Buechner, Lion Country (London: Chatto and Windus, 1971).
[6] Ibid., p.101.
[7] Ibid., p.102.
[8] Ibid., p.13.
[9] Ibid., p.14.
[10] Ibid., p.152.
[11] Ibid., p.170.
[12] Ibid., p.226.
[13] Ibid., p.227.
[14] Ibid., p.237.
Sign up here to receive articles in your inbox
