The Fan Club Analysis

Comparison and Contrast of Characterization in Silvia Plath’s, Initiation and Rona Maynard’s, The Fan Club

Every reader has a favorite author; one who creates literature in a way that strikes them emotionally or catches their attention. Each author writes in a unique form, or an author’s style, to introduce literary elements to their writing. A key piece of an author’s overall writing style is how they introduce and develop characters. An author utilizes characterization to describe personal thoughts and appearance by usage of a direct description of the character, another character’s words or opinions of the character being described, or the character’s own words, thoughts, or actions. Characterization is important to an author’s
Silvia Plath describes her main character, Millicent, overall as a plain, shy, brown-haired girl from Lansing High School, looking to revolutionize the way students in her school accept individual personalities by opting out of an invitation to join the “popular” sorority. To highlight these points of Millicent’s character, Plath writes: “What girl at Lansing High would not want to be in her place now? Millicent thought, amused. What girl would not want to be one of the elect, no matter if it did mean five days of initiation before and after school, ending in the climax of Rat Court on Friday night when they made the new girls members?”
At the end of the story, Plath includes Millicent thinking to herself, “How she had proved something to herself by going through everything, even Rat Court, and then deciding not to join the sorority after all. And how she could still be friends with everybody.” These examples of Millicent’s thoughts describe her personality, intentions, and her hopefulness to create acceptance of individuality. Similarly, Rona Maynard includes the thoughts of her main character, Laura, criticizing the exclusive “popular” crowd at her school. To show Laura’s jealousy, Maynard writes, “She [Laura] thought of their identical brown loafers, their plastic purses, their hostile stares as they passed her in the corridors. She didn’t care. They were clods,
In this method of character development, the author describes what the character is like in appearance, personality, or both. Plath brings in a minor character Betsy Johnson, simply by describing her as, “the vivacious blonde secretary of the sorority”. As another example Silvia Plath writes, “She [Louise Fullerton] was another celebrity in high school, pretty and dark and Vice-President of the Student Council.” Similarly, Rona Maynard describes one of her main characters as, “Rachel Horton- alone as always, her too-long skirt billowing over the white, heavy columns of her legs, her freckled face ringed with shapeless black curls.” Both authors use examples like these to present their characters in the narration of the