In fiction , a character or personage , is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel , play , radio or television series , music , film , or video game ). The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, in which case the distinction of a "fictional" versus "real" character may be made. Derived from the Ancient Greek word χαρακτήρ , the English word dates from the Restoration , although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones by Henry Fielding in 1749. From this, the sense of "a part played by an actor " developed. (Before this development, the term dramatis personae , naturalized in English from Latin and meaning "masks of the drama", encapsulated the notion of characters from the literal aspect of masks .) Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theater or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person". In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes. Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase " in character " has been used to describe an effective impersonation by an actor. Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practiced by actors or writers , has been called characterization .
38-598: Detective Inspector G. Lestrade ( / l ɛ ˈ s t r eɪ d / or / l ɛ ˈ s t r ɑː d / ) is a fictional character appearing in the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle . Lestrade's first appearance was in the first Sherlock Holmes story, the 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet . His last appearance is in the 1924 short story " The Adventure of the Three Garridebs ", which
76-566: A Sherlock Holmes (Return) Series of handmade pipes with silverwork . Two Lestrade pipes are in the collection. Fictional character A character who stands as a representative of a particular class or group of people is known as a type. Types include both stock characters and those that are more fully individualized . The characters in Henrik Ibsen 's Hedda Gabler (1891) and August Strindberg 's Miss Julie (1888), for example, are representative of specific positions in
114-685: A character on a real person can use a person they know, a historical figure, a current figure whom they have not met, or themselves, with the latter being either an author-surrogate or an example of self-insertion . The use of a famous person easily identifiable with certain character traits as the base for a principal character is a feature of allegorical works, such as Animal Farm by George Orwell, which portrays Soviet revolutionaries as pigs. Other authors, especially for historical fiction , make use of real people and create fictional stories revolving around their lives, as with The Paris Wife which revolves around Ernest Hemingway . An author can create
152-438: A character using the basic character archetypes which are common to many cultural traditions: the father figure , mother figure, hero , and so on. Some writers make use of archetypes as presented by Carl Jung as the basis for character traits. Generally, when an archetype from some system (such as Jung's) is used, elements of the story also follow the system's expectations in terms of storyline . An author can also create
190-460: A distinction between the individuals represented in tragedy and in comedy arose: tragedy, along with epic poetry , is "a representation of serious people" (1449b9—10), while comedy is "a representation of people who are rather inferior" (1449a32—33). In the Tractatus coislinianus (which may or may not be by Aristotle), Ancient Greek comedy is defined as involving three types of characters:
228-429: A fictional character using generic stock characters , which are generally flat. They tend to be used for supporting or minor characters. However, some authors have used stock characters as the starting point for building richly detailed characters, such as William Shakespeare 's use of the boastful soldier character as the basis for John Falstaff . Some authors create charactonyms for their characters. A charactonym
266-547: A good deal since the days when they had first worked together." By the time of the story " The Adventure of the Six Napoleons ", Lestrade is a regular evening visitor at 221B Baker Street , and "his visits were welcome to Sherlock Holmes" according to Watson. In the same story, Lestrade reveals the high regard in which Holmes is now held by Scotland Yard: "We're not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down to-morrow, there's not
304-572: A man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn't be glad to shake you by the hand". Holmes thanks Lestrade for this comment, and Watson notes that this is one of the few instances when Holmes is visibly moved. In " The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax ", Holmes refers to him as "friend Lestrade". Lestrade's involvement in the investigation in " The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans " suggests he has become one of Scotland Yard's most trusted detectives. He
342-458: Is a "walk-on", a term used by Seymour Chatman for characters that are not fully delineated and individualized; rather they are part of the background or the setting of the narrative. Dynamic characters are those that change over the course of the story, while static characters remain the same throughout. An example of a popular dynamic character in literature is Ebenezer Scrooge , the protagonist of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. At
380-598: Is a name that implies the psychological makeup of the person, makes an allegorical allusion, or makes reference to their appearance. For example, Shakespeare has an emotional young male character named Mercutio , John Steinbeck has a kind, sweet character named Candy in Of Mice and Men , and Mervyn Peake has a Machiavellian, manipulative, and murderous villain in Gormenghast named Steerpike . The charactonym can also indicate appearance. For example, François Rabelais gave
418-481: Is included in the collection The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes . Lestrade is a determined but conventional Scotland Yard detective who consults Holmes on many cases, and is the most prominent police character in the series. Lestrade has been played by many actors in adaptations based on the Sherlock Holmes stories in film, television, and other media. Lestrade is also mentioned in the novel The Sign of
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#1732783266630456-490: Is openly rude about Lestrade at times, such as in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" when he tells Lestrade "demurely" that he is unskilled at handling facts, and refers to Lestrade as an imbecile. In The Sign of the Four , Holmes says that being out of his depth is Lestrade's normal state (along with Inspectors Gregson and Athelney Jones). However, Holmes is generally more positive about Lestrade in later stories. In " The Adventure of
494-496: Is possible, therefore, to have stories that do not contain "characters" in Aristotle's sense of the word, since character necessarily involves making the ethical dispositions of those performing the action clear. If, in speeches, the speaker "decides or avoids nothing at all", then those speeches "do not have character" (1450b9—11). Aristotle argues for the primacy of plot ( mythos ) over character ( ethos ). He writes: But
532-658: Is revealed to be G. This initial may have been inspired by the Prefect of Police known only as "G—" in Edgar Allan Poe 's short story " The Purloined Letter " (1845). Despite having an apparently French surname (there is a village named Lestrade-et-Thouels in France and "l'estrade" means "the raised platform" in French), Inspector Lestrade shows no overt French ties. According to Everyman's English Pronouncing Dictionary ,
570-558: Is ten to twelve years older than Holmes. Klinger estimated that Holmes was born in 1854; together with Holstein's theory, this would suggest that Lestrade may have been born between 1842 and 1844. Doyle seems to have acquired Lestrade's name from a fellow student at the University of Edinburgh , Joseph Alexandre Lestrade, who was a Saint Lucian medical student. In " The Adventure of the Cardboard Box ", Lestrade's first initial
608-626: The BBC radio series (1989–1998), as well as in some non-canonical works, including the 2020 film Enola Holmes . Agatha Christie modelled her police detective character Inspector Japp , who appears in the stories featuring private detective Hercule Poirot , after Inspector Lestrade. Similar to Lestrade, Japp is described as "a little, sharp, dark, ferret-faced man" in Christie's 1920 novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles . In her autobiography, Christie stated that she wrote her early Poirot stories "in
646-467: The buffoon ( bômolochus ), the ironist ( eirōn ), and the imposter or boaster ( alazṓn ). All three are central to Aristophanes ' Old Comedy . By the time the Roman comic playwright Plautus wrote his plays two centuries later, the use of characters to define dramatic genres was well established. His Amphitryon begins with a prologue in which Mercury claims that since
684-452: The social relations of class and gender , such that the conflicts between the characters reveal ideological conflicts. The study of a character requires an analysis of its relations with all of the other characters in the work. The individual status of a character is defined through the network of oppositions (proairetic, pragmatic , linguistic , proxemic ) that it forms with the other characters. The relation between characters and
722-465: The Cardboard Box ", Holmes remarks that Lestrade's tenacity "has brought him to the top at Scotland Yard". In The Hound of the Baskervilles , he says that Lestrade is "the best of the professionals" (meaning the professionals employed by Scotland Yard as opposed to himself), and in the same story, Watson observes "from the reverential way in which Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned
760-481: The Four (1890), though he doesn't appear in it. Lestrade mentions his "twenty years' experience" in the police force in A Study in Scarlet . In the story, Holmes says Lestrade is "a well-known detective". It is observed by Holmes that Lestrade and another detective, Tobias Gregson , have an ongoing rivalry, and he identifies the two as "the pick of a bad lot. They are both quick and energetic, but conventional – shockingly so." Holmes regularly allows members of
798-558: The Second Stain ". According to Holmes in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", Lestrade's tracks can be identified due to the "inward twist" of his left foot. His age is not given in the stories. Lestrade works with Holmes as early as A Study in Scarlet (which according to Leslie S. Klinger takes place in 1881) and continues to do so as late as " The Adventure of the Three Garridebs " (which is set in 1902). According to Klinger, L. S. Holstein used this information to conclude that Lestrade
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#1732783266630836-587: The Sherlock Holmes tradition—eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp". A search engine , the Inspector Lestrade, is used by MacIntosh, a "fast, lightweight meta searcher." "The Inspector Lestrade Award" is a rising term among message boards for a person who is "almost correct." It has shown up on zdnet and "Bad Astronomy and the Universe Today" forum. The Peterson Pipes company has
874-452: The action of the story shifts historically, often miming shifts in society and its ideas about human individuality, self-determination , and the social order . In fiction writing , authors create dynamic characters using various methods. Sometimes characters are conjured up from imagination; in other instances, they are created by amplifying the character trait of a real person into a new fictional creation. An author or creator basing
912-453: The characters, but they include the characters for the sake of their actions" (1450a15-23). Aristotle suggests that works were distinguished in the first instance according to the nature of the person who created them: "the grander people represented fine actions, i.e. those of fine persons" by producing "hymns and praise-poems", while "ordinary people represented those of inferior ones" by "composing invectives" (1448b20—1449a5). On this basis,
950-609: The detective whom Dr. Watson described unflatteringly as sallow, rat-faced, and dark-eyed and whom Holmes saw as quick and energetic but wholly conventional, lacking in imagination, and normally out of his depth – the best of a bad lot who had reached the top in the CID by bulldog tenacity. Inspector Lestrade is described as "a little sallow rat-faced, dark-eyed fellow" in A Study in Scarlet . In " The Boscombe Valley Mystery ", Watson describes Lestrade as "a lean, ferret-like man, furtive and sly-looking", and also says, "In spite of
988-586: The earliest surviving work of dramatic theory , Poetics ( c. 335 BCE ), the Classical Greek philosopher Aristotle states that character ( ethos ) is one of six qualitative parts of Athenian tragedy and one of the three objects that it represents (1450a12). He understands character not to denote a fictional person, but the quality of the person acting in the story and reacting to its situations (1450a5). He defines character as "that which reveals decision , of whatever sort" (1450b8). It
1026-517: The light brown dustcoat and leather-leggings which he wore in deference to his rustic surroundings, I had no difficulty in recognising Lestrade, of Scotland Yard." Watson states that Lestrade is "as wiry, as dapper, and as ferret-like as ever" in " The Adventure of the Cardboard Box ". He is described as "a small, wiry bulldog of a man" in The Hound of the Baskervilles , and there is a description of him as having "bulldog features" in " The Adventure of
1064-406: The most important of these is the structure of the incidents. For (i) tragedy is a representation not of human beings but of action and life. Happiness and unhappiness lie in action, and the end [of life] is a sort of action, not a quality; people are of a certain sort according to their characters, but happy or the opposite according to their actions. So [the actors] do not act in order to represent
1102-642: The name Gargantua to a giant and the huge whale in Pinocchio (1940) is named Monstro . In his book Aspects of the Novel , E. M. Forster defined two basic types of characters, their qualities, functions, and importance for the development of the novel: flat characters and round characters. Flat characters are two-dimensional, in that they are relatively uncomplicated. By contrast, round characters are complex figures with many different characteristics, that undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise
1140-589: The name Lestrade can be pronounced either "Le'strayed" (rhyming with "trade") or "Le'strahd" /ləˈstrɑːd/ . In The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes , Leslie S. Klinger writes that there is no consensus among scholars on the pronunciation of "Lestrade". The original French pronunciation of the name would have been close to "Le'strahd". However, according to the book The Sherlock Holmes Miscellany by Roger Johnson and Jean Upton (Holmesian scholars and members of The Baker Street Irregulars ), Arthur Conan Doyle's daughter Dame Jean Conan Doyle stated that her father pronounced
1178-500: The name with a long a sound (as "Le'strayed"). The pronunciation of Lestrade as "Le'strahd" has been used in multiple adaptations such as the 1939–1946 film series , the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes , and the television series Sherlock (2010–2017). The pronunciation of the name as "Le'strayed" has also been used in multiple canonical adaptations, including the 1931–1937 film series , the Granada television series (1984–1994), and
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1216-406: The narrative structure, unlike core characters, for which any significant conflict must be traced during a considerable time, which is often seen as an unjustified waste of resources. There may also be a continuing or recurring guest character. Sometimes a guest or minor character may gain unanticipated popularity and turn into a regular or main one; this is known as a breakout character . In
1254-459: The play contains kings and gods, it cannot be a comedy and must be a tragicomedy . [...] is first used in English to denote 'a personality in a novel or a play' in 1749 ( The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary , s.v.). Its use as 'the sum of the qualities which constitute an individual' is a mC17 development. The modern literary and theatrical sense of 'an individual created in a fictitious work'
1292-614: The police to take the credit for his deductions, including Lestrade in cases such as those in " The Adventure of the Empty House " and " The Adventure of the Norwood Builder ". Lestrade is able to write in shorthand . Lestrade is initially doubtful about Holmes's methods, and he suggests that Holmes is "too much inclined to be cocksure" in "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder". He is "indifferent and contemptuous" of Holmes's exploration in " The Boscombe Valley Mystery ". Holmes
1330-481: The reader. In psychological terms, round or complex characters may be considered to have five personality dimensions under the Big Five model of personality. The five factors are: Stock characters are usually one-dimensional and thin. Mary Sues are characters that usually appear in fan fiction which are virtually devoid of flaws, and are therefore considered flat characters. Another type of flat character
1368-400: The series' run. Recurring characters often play major roles in more than one episode, sometimes being the main focus. A guest or minor character is one who acts only in a few episodes or scenes. Unlike regular characters, the guest ones do not need to be carefully incorporated into the storyline with all its ramifications: they create a piece of drama and then disappear without consequences to
1406-450: The start of the story, he is a bitter miser, but by the end of the tale, he transforms into a kindhearted, generous man. In television, a regular, main or ongoing character is a character who appears in all or a majority of episodes, or in a significant chain of episodes of the series. Regular characters may be both core and secondary ones. A recurring character or supporting character often and frequently appears from time to time during
1444-457: Was described by H. Paul Jeffers in the following words: He is the most famous detective ever to walk the corridors of Scotland Yard, yet he existed only in the fertile imagination of a writer. He was Inspector Lestrade. We do not know his first name, only his initial: G . Although he appears thirteen times in the immortal adventures of Sherlock Holmes, nothing is known of the life outside the Yard of
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