My Critical Essays

Vera Natura

When we enter a bookshop, we tend to go over to the new, shining bookshelf rather than one that is old and musty. However, what if I tell you that we need to visit the old bookshelf more frequently, as that's where we learn the absolute truth of humanity. The bookshelf is a scope into societies own complexion. Increasingly in our image-conscious and social media-saturated world, people become obsessively self-absorbed in the pursuit of flawless perfection. In doing so, they tend to polarise the rest of us, making us feel inadequate and insignificant in comparison, or just frustrated and bored with this ridiculous quest. Either way, the glorification of flawless characters are insufferable, as are the one-dimensional falsehood we accept too quickly as one of our kind, both in person and in literature. I hereby call for Vera Natura, where character creation exists in its logical form rather than the facade the human faculty fabricate. Flawless characters are unnatural and a figment of a self-obsessed imagination, whereas flawed characters are authentic and a truer representation of reality.

Many well-respected stories have one thing in common; a character full of fallibilities. Nevertheless, it is not only about respect; it is about our readers having the inability to put the story down. To have the need to find out what this character is going to do next. And, to do this is to write a story with a character full of vices. Full of deception. Full of so much corruption, readers feel nothing but loathing towards them—someone like Dorian Gray, one of Oscar Wilde's well-known characters. Regarded as one of the most flawed characters in literature, he uses his charm and looks to indulge in every pleasure and every 'sin' due to vanity, leading to his inevitable ruin. Alternatively, even Narcissus, who was known for his looks, fell to the hands of narcissism and killed himself because he could not have the object of his desires, himself. These two characters are not only vain and conceited, but they are also a page-turner.

I remember as a child, my father always liked to remind me, "Greed for a lack of better word, is good." It was his mantra. My father was an interesting man; others called him rapacious, but I never liked calling him that, so I always resided in calling him "unconventional". I was always told he was willing to do anything to get what he wanted, even going as far as stabbing my mother in the back, metaphorically, mind you. His mantra always seemed to get him into trouble, yet that gave him the best stories to tell at the dinner table. Every night, we would sit down, and he'd say to me how his day was, a new fable constantly rolling off his tongue. I was never unamused.

Why have our stories become so mundane? Must we become the writers? Because I've been eminently let down.

So, dear writers, why are you playing it safe now? Is it because we live in a politically correct world? Or is it because creativity has diminished?

All I truly know is that writers are now shaping characters to be incredibly dreadful, even if it is unbeknownst to them. We walk up to the bookshelf and see that they have reprinted Tintin. The cover, all new and alluring, yet when we flip through the pages, it's all one dimensional, just a static protagonist saving the day. A hero. It is utter bullshit. We leave all these complex and 'evil' characters to collect dust on the shelf because we perceive literature to teach us lessons. So we read books that we can learn to be 'pure' from. Yet, what would you call the story of Cain and Abel? Was it not written to teach us right from wrong? Yes. However, the enrapturing tale of the two brothers teaches us that evil is written into the psyche of humanity. Why, do you ask? Because they were the first two sons of Adam and Eve, there were no other influences but themselves.

The old bookshelf is once again ignored. I do not think we fully understand the complexities that is humanity. We need to have the best and worst in us reflected through literature to differentiate between 'honest' and 'villainous' and decide who we want to be, rather than being dictated with false, insufferable versions of idealised characters. Let us think of the story of Medusa, who was cursed by Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, because she was envious of the woman's beauty. The vanity and jealousy of Aphrodite show us the true face of humanity as one of envy. Would life not just be a bore without intricacies of human nature. Without our choice of who we want to be?

Let us wipe the gathering dust off the books and crack them open and allow me to ask you, why shouldn't we indulge in flawed, faulty characters?