Characterization

I'm kind of disappointed with myself for not coming up with a title for this post better than the name of the English assignment I'm putting up, but nothing came to me. We have just been assigned what may very well become my favorite english project of all time. My teacher had pulled several random names from a phone book, and we got to choose one and create a character based on that name. The next day she handed us a list of quotes both amusing and serious that she had heard throughout her life and we were to come up with a person based on one of those as well. At the end of the project, the class will compile their compositions and we'll give a name to the town where all these fine people live. I actually ended up not using the name I originally chose for the one or the quote I chose for the other, but she doesn't mind as long as our creations are well-crafted.


First up is Naomi Brookmeyer. She is actually a mish-mash of at least ten of my friends and relatives, which I didn't notice until after I was done writing it. Here she is:

Naomi Brookmeyer awoke to the sound of her red-eared slider, Gershwin, knocking against the side of his aquarium/terrarium in petition for some breakfast. She swung her lanky, five-foot-nine, one-hundred-and-nineteen-pound figure out from underneath a tie-dyed comforter, planted feet with purple-painted toenails on a brightly hued shag rug next to the futon, and tripped over a well-worn denim bean bag as she clumsily made her way across the tiny, cluttered apartment bedroom and through the bead curtain that spanned the doorway. Rubbing the sleep from large hazel eyes and pushing strands of straight, shoulder length, light brown hair behind her ears she searched the fridge in the single-habitant apartment’s multi-purpose room that served as entryway, living room, and kitchen. She walked over to Gershwin’s home by the half-light provided by a lava lamp and a night light that let out pinpoints of light in the configuration of Ursa Minor, her favorite constellation. Only jumping a little when her sleek, lithe ferret named Linnaeus leapt onto her narrow shoulders from a nearby bookcase and fondly nuzzled her cheek, she gingerly lifted the screen from the turtle’s case and placed the leafy green within easy reach of the hungry reptile. After replacing Gershwin’s screen and stroking Linnaeus’ fur, she glanced towards the fish tank in the corner and, even in the dim light, her fear was confirmed. John Lennon, a minnow with an extra fin, was floating belly up like his deformed predecessors, Rachel Carson and Persephone, had within the past month. Her rescue mission for the mutated fish from the chemical choked run-off pond behind the apartment complex hadn’t fared too well so far. The twenty-one-year-old woman sighed and made a mental note to conduct a funeral for the ill-fated fish before interring him in the compost pile she had started next to the building’s trash bin. She flipped the light switch on and off several times with no effect before remembering that she had unplugged all her lamps. Someone had told her that unplugging your light conserved even more energy than leaving them off, and she believed it wholeheartedly. Giving up on the futile act of flipping the switch, she rolled hand-woven bamboo curtains away from her apartment’s two windows and suddenly noticed how late it was. She chided herself for staying up so late working on her term paper about the relationship between global warming and world peace and began tunneling through a heap of laundry on a quest for her Tidy Paws Pet Store uniform. With an exclamation of joy she darted into her bathroom (the third and final room of her living quarters), shrugged into her work clothes, applied a dash of mascara, and swept her hair into a bun precariously secured with a pair of chopsticks. She checked on Dalí and Emerson, hermit crabs, and swung her vibrantly hued patchwork purse onto her shoulder and headed out the door. Halfway down the stairs from her second story apartment she realized she had forgotten shoes. She half ran, half fell back up the steps and grabbed the first pair of shoes she saw, her mud-speckled hiking boots. Later when she sat down at the pet store to pull on her shoes she would discover she had neglected to bring socks, but for the moment she speed-walked the two blocks to her hob in her bare feet and pondered things like what she would add to her tofu soup for dinner or the lamentable fact that the customers she sold precious animals to couldn’t possibly love or care for them like they deserved of understand them the way that she, Naomi Brookmeyer did.

And next we have Claude Witherspoon (I'm not completely satisfied with his first name, any suggestions?). The writing style I used for Naomi fits the description of the assignment better, but I like the way the author interacts with the reader when describing Claude.

A pudgy, solemn-looking man of medium stature clad in garments that had probably seen better days strode proudly through the town square. His name was Claude Witherspoon, and believe me, he made sure you knew it. Though he was unemployed and seventy-two years of age, he carried himself with a dignity that somehow seemed to fit, perhaps because of its irony. You see, Claude had a gift. It was a gift that only a handful of the town’s more superstitious women gave any credence to (and even them only reluctantly), but a gift nonetheless if you asked him. He was an expert in the prediction of calamities. Of course, his predictions were very rarely destined to be fulfilled within the next decade, but he also had an uncanny knack for predicting that anvil-shaped clouds would bring storms, and that terminally ill persons would die. Some grumbled that he never predicted anything in between because he couldn’t really foresee further than the end of his nose and wouldn’t chance an unfulfilled prophesy before the end of his life, but he scoffed at these silly criticisms and continued to foretell doom, gloom, and despair. After all, who can control what the future chooses to reveal?

I hope you've enjoyed my character sketches. I hope to make more. If anyone can think of a random name or quirk, I could try to create an identity for it.