After it all....

After exploring the many different novels, short stories, and pieces of poetry that my AP literature and composition class has studied this year through the microscope of one topic: How the relationships between characters effect the outcome of a story, I've come to realize that you really can't have a story without a complex web of relationships. Now, there are some such as The Hatchet that are still very good even there is mostly only one character in the story, but then again he gains a relationship with his surroundings that I guess you could count. I'm not going to get into that one that takes too much analysis away from my main topic.

My point is, all the characters in any novel, play, movie, song, poem, etc. that one could ever come up with are probably going to have some massive death web of complex character relationships that somehow effect the story. In Wicked you have the relationship between Elphaba and Nessa, her little sister (also known as The Wicked Witch of the East), Galinda (who most people know as Glenda), and several other characters that, unless you've read Wicked or are slightly familiar with the musical (which, albeit REALLY good, pretty much just took names and a few ideas from to come up with yet ANOTHER twist on Elphaba's life even though it really isn't very accurate to the book at all) you wouldn't have any clue who or what was going on so I'm not even going to bother mentioning them. 

You'd be amazed. Some novels have more obvious tight webs that change the outcome of the stories, such as Wicked, Their Eyes Were Watching God, or Harry Potter  whereas others are more subtle like The Giving Tree, The Destructors, or The Hatchet. All of the characters have found their ways into all the other character's hearts and minds. Love, hate, or anything in between, if something happens to one character (or one character DOES something) suddenly all of the other characters are caught in a spinning mass of motion that in many cases doesn't slow down to the end or even continues past that. 

Looking back at everything I remember studying this year, and in years past, or even things I've read for leisure, I can honestly say that it's really easy (and pretty mind-blowing) to be able to remember one or many instances where one character meeting another changed the entire novel's outcome or meaning. And I'm pretty impressed with the ones that, at the time, seemed insignificant to me. I'm going to notice the little character interactions more with every novel I read and that's really exciting to me. I can't wait to start the next one, because it means that I'll get to start reading from a completely different view point with each new reading project of any type that I begin.