Recipe for
a Good Novel: Secondary Characters
By Vitora
Dandin for Mariel.
Rose for Martin. Russa Nodrey for Tammo. The list goes on and on—doesn’t every main
Redwaller have a sidekick? It seems,
also, that secondary characters—usually those that have easily become endeared
to the reader—are killed in the final battles.
Take Finnbarr Galedeep, for instance.
The brave sea otter’s final deed was to destroy the evil Foxwolf Urgan
Nagru, restoring peace to Southsward once more but also losing his life in the
process. This pattern is repeated with
Rockjaw Grang in The Long Patrol,
Boar the Fighter in Mossflower, and
Saro and Bragoon in Loamhedge, among
many others. But why? Why doesn’t Brian Jacques write a tragic,
touching death of a main character? We all know that his skill does not limit his
doing this. So why not a main character?
The answer lies in emotion and development.
A Redwall novel is a journey, the voyage of the main
character—usually a youngster, to represent Jacques’ readers—from immaturity to
maturity. This leaves him or her vital
to the plot; obviously, to kill them off would leave a rather bland and boring
story. For example, Matthias, from the
first page of Redwall, begins his
change from the bumbling Abbey apprentice to the strong, strapping warrior he
is at the conclusion. Judging by the
dialogue at the very beginning, he has already gone through a significant
amount of development—he was recently a whimpering orphan left at Redwall’s
gates instead of an aspiring Brother-in-training.
And look at the part where Matthias is supposedly dead,
swept off the roof by the Sparra king.
Somehow, the dialogue, action and plot movement (or lack thereof,
really) that goes on at Redwall is the most boring and seemingly forced part of
the book. When Matthias is alive, his
actions drive the tale forward, and, since he is quite a dynamic—not to mention
hotheaded—character, he propels a story made exciting by his deeds.
Emotions can be tricky things when writing a novel. From grief to triumph to fear to joy and
beyond, a writer’s first job is to make the audience feel. When a secondary
character is created, the fact that he or she may end up dead at the book’s
conclusion is always at the back of the author’s mind. This prevents a writer from over-emphasizing
the secondary characters—and, in doing so, taking away from the shine of the
main one. It also leaves plenty of room
for deep, rooted traits that capture the reader quickly but need not be
developed much. Arula the molemaid in Salamandastron goes through little
character change compared to her companion Samkim, but she easily conjures up
our affection from the moment we first meet her, eyes downcast in the picture
of youthful regret. Through the novel,
Arula’s character changes only the slightest, but she stays endeared throughout the book.
Secondary characters—quickly liked but easily lost.
It is emotion that kills off the secondary and lets the main
live. Even if we passionately hate the
main character, if he or she were to be killed—dramatic as the death might
be—the story would immediately sputter to a stop. And who, after reading pages upon pages of
tense buildup, ready for the main character to finally show their stuff, would
want to be disappointed by a swift and unsatisfactory end, no matter how
well-written? But still, the author
desires to stir powerful feelings inside their readers’ hearts—that’s how a
novel gets high sales: by causing the reader to wipe away a tear, to laugh
hysterically at a witty line (therefore scaring the nearest bus
passengers). So they choose a secondary
character’s lifeline to cut, and write a dramatic, tear-wrenching death. That emotion is still brought to the surface,
but the main character is still alive; therefore the plot does not die with
them.
Somehow, my favorite characters are always the ones that end
up deceased. I used to wonder why this
was, but looking at the Redwall series—where the answer is fairly clear
compared to some books—I know that it’s just Brian Jacques playing for
pathos. And when I’m through with a
Redwall novel, I usually look back and think, “I suppose that was for the
best.” Because, almost always, out of
all the characters who could have died and who would have made me rush to grab
a tissue instead of slam the book down in frustration, the secondary character
that I loved the most will be the one—never the main one, and always a less
important individual. Some have expressed
their dislike of the “use a few times, and then dispose” type—but secondary
characters, and their deaths, are an important ingredient for a good Redwall
novel, and all other books as well.