Author’s
Note: Assignment 2
was a character sketch. We were instructed that a character sketch was mostly
story (emotional) elements that we would ascribe to make a protagonist,
antagonist, or other character in our work. Character sketches tell the writer
the whole story of the character, though not all of the elements covered in a
character sketch might make it into a final body of work. Character sketches
can be of any length—obviously, the longer the sketch, the more prominent the
character will be in your work. I started out writing my character sketch about
Gerta, who I had intended to be a minor character, with little sympathy towards
her: I had intended to make her merely a
harsh, bitter spinster with very few friends. However, as I wrote the sketch, I
began to gain more sympathy for her as I filled in her backstory, and towards
the end of my sketch (which I could’ve made much longer but cut short for time
and academic reasons), I ended up coming to like her because I always tend to
feel a bit of affection for underdog characters. Obviously, Gerta’s physical
appearance (not particularly attractive) and the circumstances of her life
(bleak and harsh) make her a bit of an anti-heroine, but she’s grown on me, and
I think I may end up using her sometime in the future in one of my works.
Grade
Earned: A, with many
positive comments from the instructors moderating the course
Gerta
Gerta sighed in a disheartened manner and tossed
aside the cracked hand mirror. She would never be pretty—never, never. Her
hair, now wiry and gray, had always been limp, stringy, and up until this
point, horribly moldy-straw brown, a color no one, not even Mother Nature,
could bother to pretend was decent.
She picked up the hand mirror again and scowled as
she observed her rather hard and rather average features. The scowl only added
to her dissatisfaction as it only served to emphasize the sharp, angry creases
in her flaccid and liver-spotted skin. God, I’m only forty, her inner voice
screamed as she again set aside the looking glass, the only thing she’d
inherited from her harsh and unforgiving grandmother.
Her grandmother had taken her in as a child as a
flimsy act of charity and goodwill towards her parents, whose marriage she’d
never given her hard-hearted blessing to. Her grandmother had never let her
forget this, either, from the moment the sun rose sleepily over the horizon to
the moment it crept stealthily down the sky as night enveloped the land. Every
thought, every action, every morsel of food in the house had been begrudged to
Gerta from the moment of her arrival at Grandmother Stepins’ house all those
years ago as a small child.
Gerta recalled how the squat, petulant woman had so
frightened her at their first meeting that she had wailed and wept and clung
fiercely to her angelic mother, begging penitently not to be forced to live
with such an odious monster. But there had been a war on at the time, and such
things were not open to negotiation. She would be safer in the country with
Grandmother Stepins, her father assured her as he ran his large, calloused
hands over her small face, tears in his eyes, as he kissed her goodbye for the
last time.
And that was her final, most poignant memory of her
parents, who had been so kind and so loving. Their memory made her ache with
deep-seated loneliness. Grandmother Stepins had never revealed to her what had
ever become of her parents, though Gerta suspected she probably knew damn well
what had.
Gerta had been so angry for so many years at her
parents for never coming to retrieve her from the ogre Grandmother Stepins
after the war ended, and that rage and bitterness had etched itself coarsely,
permanently, and spitefully upon her plain visage, but as she had grown and
matured, and had known of parental love in theory as she had observed in other,
happier families, her attitudes towards them had softened, then dissolved, then
reformed into the innocent, all-encompassing love that had been in her heart as
a child. She knew her mother—beautiful, always smiling, and lively—and her
father—calm, pragmatic, and soft-spoken—would never have left her forever with
Grandmother Stepins had they been able to come back. Had they known what
Grandmother Stepins was really like, how her hatred for her grandchild, who was
nothing better than a mongrel born of a Jewess in her eyes, had shaped her
every waking moment, they would’ve come back, in spite of the war. No one who
loves another human being lets them live in such emotional penury. Especially
not a parent, thought Gerta as she methodically dressed herself and prepared
herself for yet another long, arduous day of chores on the farm.
Her clothes were simple, plain, and practical,
nothing like what Gerta remembered her parents wearing when she’d lived in the
capitol with them all those years ago. What had her mother been when she’d met
her father? Oh yes, a secretary at a bank. Gerta had no concept of what that
job really was—after all, the only work she’d known or seen her whole life was
mucking out barn stalls and feeding unruly, unintelligent beasts their daily
rations—but she imagined it was something beautiful and glamorous—like a movie
starlet—because her mother had been so comely and elegant. And she pictured her
father, who had been an accountant, as doing something noble and heroic, yet
sensible, because that’s what he had been when she knew him.
Gerta smiled as she dreamed these elaborate dreams
of her parents as she went about her chores and felt comforted. My parents were
wonderful people and loved me—they would not have left me to rot like this, not
on this fetid little farm, she thought. And thus she thought on and on as she
ascribed virtue after virtue to people whom she had barely known and who were
merely human. They may have had their flaws and shortcomings, but they were
cloaked and unseen by the kindness that only a child’s love and a span of many
years could drape over them.
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