How do Minor Characters Influence Major Characters?

The most memorable parts of a story can many different things: the point of view, characters, setting, symbolism or theme. All of these elements together play a critical role in the overall success of the story. The characters present within the imaginary world play the most critical part, as they are trying to navigate this fictional world. Their humanity connects to the reader’s humanity. Main characters can have a big presence in a story, but it is notable that often minor characters impact major characters. The relationship between characters in “The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brian and “everything that Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor demonstrates the influence that minor character can have. Most notably, in the two stories, the death of minor characters causes the major characters to have to go through significant change or transformation. Ted Lavender helps Jimmy in “The Things They Carried,” and Julian’s mom helps Julian in “Everything that Rises Must Converge” through their deaths: this forces Jimmy and Julian to build more realistic beliefs, and force them to better face reality—though Jimmy does this in a faster and clearer way that Julian.
Jimmy and Ted Lavender are the most important characters in “The Things They Carried,” and Julian’s mom and Julian are the most important characters in “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” According to Norton, there a few pieces of evidence that makes a person in a story qualify as a character. The character’s name, appearance, actions, thoughts, and the narrator’s comments on the character all have to be mentioned in the story. Therefore, we can conclude that Jimmy and Ted Lavender, Julian and his mother are all defined technically as characters because we know their names, appearances, actions and thoughts.
Jimmy has an imaginary relationship with Martha, but it is only the death of Ted Lavender that forces him to get in better touch with reality. Set during the Vietnam War, “The Things The Carried” shows contrast between the things the soldiers carried physically, and what they carried in their minds and hearts. The main character, first lieutenant Jimmy Cross, is genuinely in love with Martha, a woman back home in America. She writes to him, but is not in love with him, and very obviously does not express any romantic feelings for him. Thus, when Jimmy is away during the war, thinking of Martha is a form of escapism for him, as he engages in these fantasies that Martha loves him back. In order to further this fantasy, Jimmy carries a “good-luck charm from Martha” with him in order to feel closer to this imagining. In contrast, Jimmy also carries all the weapons of this very real, very dangerous world that he is living in. One day, outside of Than Khe, Ted Lavender, a minor character who lives in constant fear of the dangers around him, gets shot and dies. When that happens, Jimmy finally realizes where he is, who he is, the fact that Martha is a woman who does not love him, and becomes forcibly in touch with reality.
Julian, who lies to himself about his beliefs on race and racism, only begins to realize what real racism is when his mother dies. In the Flannery O’Connor’s story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” at first glance, the main character Julian looks alike a levelheaded person who does not have any tendencies towards racism nor discrimination. However, the reader soon realizes that he is an imbalanced person who only wishes to not appear racist to distinguish himself from his mother, a minor character in the story, who is an elderly, white, racist woman. Even though Julian does not consider himself to be racist, he thinks, “he might make friends with some… Negro professor or lawyer.” This shows that he is still a very close-minded person who does not view black people as autonomous individuals. One day, when Julian and his mom are riding a bus, and he argues with his mother about her racist ideologies. Julian’s mother is firm in her beliefs that her son, a white man, is above all black people. When a black woman and her son get on the bus, Julian’s mother attempts to give the son a penny, a clearly condescending gesture. This angers the black young man’s mother and she strikes Julian’s mom. In the end, Julian’s mom’s face [is] fiercely distorted,” and she dies. At this point, readers can infer that Julian is going to transform himself into a more realistic, less self-deluding person, and be more liberated in “the world of guilt and sorrow.”
Looking closely at the plot of each story and the character types defined by Norton, we can conclude the type of characters each of them are. In the O’Brien’s story, Jimmy Cross is a major character, both round and dynamic. Ted Lavender is a minor, flat and static character that is always fearful and does not experience any change. In the short story by Flannery O’Connor, Julian is also a major character and a round character who, “seems to have psychological complexity” (Norton, 220). However, he is not completely dynamic because he does not go through any transformation in the story. Julian’s mom is comparable to Ted Lavender: she is a minor, flat and static character who is racist from the start to the end of the story.
Initially, one might say that Jimmy and Julian are very similar characters, but on closer inspection, they have many differences. While they both experience transformation, they are different in the ways their changes manifest. Jimmy changes himself right after the death of Ted Lavender. One day after Lavender died, Jimmy “burned Martha’s letters […] and the two photographs.” “No more fantasies, he told himself.” With the sudden death of his friend, Jimmy blames himself, and is able to better connect to the realities of the war. He recognizes that “he was a soldier after all.” He put this lesson into action immediately. Eventually, Jimmy becomes a person who is better connected to reality. On the other hand, Julian does not seem to experience much change in the story. O’Connor deliberately makes this story open-ended, so we can only guess that there is a strong likelihood that Julian will view the world and himself more realistically and discover the truths of the racism in his own heart. It seems as though after she dies, “the tide of darkness seemed to sweep [Julian] back to her [and opens the] entry into the world of guilt and sorrow.” This suggests that Julian will go through some sort of transformation, but the reader cannot be exactly sure how or in what ways he will engage in these changes, and how his new personality will be shaped. O’Connor is very intentional with the ambiguity of the ending and forcing the reader to wonder about what happened. It’s possible that after the death of his mother, he becomes more segregated and out of touch with humanity. Likewise, it is equally possible that the death of his mother causes him to look at the flaws in racist thinking and correct his mindset. By not giving the reader a concrete ending, O’Connor focuses on the transformation that has occurred, and emphasizes the change that is underway, even if we can’t be sure what it is exactly.
It is important to ask oneself why these differences in transformation between Jimmy and Julian exist at all. Why is it that only Jimmy is able to change instantly, whereas Julian’s character has a murkier more uncertain component of change? At first glance, the differences might seem to only exist because they are different stories: different authors will have different components and aspects present in different stories. However, if one examines the characters a bit closer, the answer becomes more apparent. The world of delusion that Jimmy has is centered on his personal life: Jimmy only had to find out one new piece of information, that Martha did not love him, and that was enough of the truth that he needed to change how he conducted himself in the world. However, the delusional and self-deceptive world that Julian has constructed is connected with major social issues, such as race, justice, and history. Julian’s inner world orbited around racism and the time the story took place was a very turbulent time in America for race relations. Hence, it was difficult for Julian to create a correct perspective of racism. For Julian to transform his perspective would have required him to make a much bigger internal and mental shift. Such a big change isn’t impossible; it just takes more time because there are more aspects to realign, rethink and reorganize. Despite these differences, both Jimmy and Julian are strongly impacted by the death of minor characters in each short story. These deaths cause them both to change: with Jimmy the change is instant and apparent. However, with Julian, the change is more implied and gradual and not possible to pinpoint exactly. However, both short stories demonstrate the profound influence that minor characters can have on the lives and mindsets of major characters.