Section 4 Summary and Analysis

Note: The division between the two examinations of the subject of "People" is the author's.

"People," continued. Forster begins this lecture with a brief explanation of its content, a consideration of how the characters in a novel relate "to other aspects ... to a plot, a moral, their fellow characters, atmosphere, etc." He speaks of how characters (like those in the novels of Jane Austen, for example) function in exactly that way, as part of a sum of the novel's parts. He also speaks wittily of how characters in novels often develop lives of their own and therefore, because those lives parallel those of human beings, can occasionally derail the novelist's narrative intent. This situation, Forster contends, can be managed by the employment of two methods of working: using different kinds of characters, and defining different points of view for them.

In...