TwentyThe 5 Ps
“Character must be true to life: for this is a distinct thing from goodness and propriety, as here described.”
(Poetics, Part XV)
The quality of LIKENESS is usually taken to mean like us. After all, if the goal of character is to serve the story and the goal of the story is to reflect something universal of our experience back to us, then it makes sense that the character experiencing these events be one that allows an audience to say, “Ah, that is me.”
But just what makes a character identifiable, true to life, in a way that is different from the previous concepts of Goodness and Appropriateness?
For Aristotle, it simply means they possess qualities and traits that real people possess. And central ...
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