Constructing The Novelist Character A study in The Novel (Professors of Illusion)

Abstract

The fictional character represents an important element of the narrative formation in the fictional or narrative text, As the fictional character is the only element at which all other formal elements intersect , Including the temporal and spatial coordinates necessary for the growth and steadiness of the fictional discourse. There is no novel without a character that leads the events, organizes the actions, and gives the story its narrative dimension. All writers have resorted to employing different techniques to present the fictional character and draw its physical and psychological features according to various and different semantic purposes. The authors' differed among themselves some of them draw the character in the smallest detail and others are those who obscure the personality from every outward description. Some of them present it in a (direct) way, telling about its nature, descriptions, and everything related to it or presents it in an (indirect) way, as entrusts this to other imaginary characters within the fictional work, but in general it can be divided the construction of the character into two styles.

First: news style where the narrator informs about the character and draws its features through two levels:

- The news style at the level of external vision

- The news style at the level of internal vision

Second: the dramatic style

According to this trend in constructing fictional characters, the novel “Professors of Illusion” was written by the writer (Ali Badr), which we can consider “historical blog” documenting the details of the social, political and economic life in Iraq. In one of the most difficult stages that the Iraqi people went through during the eighties of the last century, while they were enduring the conditions of the war that lasted for eight years, which ate the crops and the cattle.

The Iraqi novelist (Ali Badr) tries, through his fictional characters, to give an analytical visualization of the conscious and educated youth, revealing his thoughts, feelings, dreams, and ambitions, in light of a repressive political regime based on confiscating the freedom of youth and driving them to the machine of death (war).