Alanna Dailey - The Meaning Behind Flat Characters

The Meaning Behind Flat Characters: required Reading
As Ong discusses characteristics of oral narratives (Ch. 6), he mentions the development of round characters. Oral narratives usually have flat characters. Each character is only known for one trait – i.e. Odysseus is known for his cleverness. Ong states that Freud and the rise of the rise of the introspection and psychoanalysis is a possible reason for the emergence of round characters. To stem off this theory, I began to think of the connotation behind flat characters. Today, if someone were to call a novel’s characters flat, this would not be a compliment. Flat characters are thought of as simple and underdeveloped. Perhaps if this psychological perspective is correct, we view flat characters as bad because we think of them as simple-minded. The characters themselves are not simple-minded, but their creators. Round characters are complex and therefore it takes an intelligent mind to create them.
This perspective could help explain why our society view of oral cultures is negative. Ong recognizes that we still use flat characters today, but these characters are reserved for children who cannot understand round characters yet. Since oral cultural use flat characters, we automatically think, “your mind is like a child and therefore less intelligent than me.” This helps explain why literate, industrialized societies feel superior towards oral cultural. Flat characters does not mean unintelligent in any way, so this understanding could help with tolerance of other cultures.