CharacterizationCharacterization is a literary device that is used to explain and reveal the personality of a character including the behavior, thought-process, and opinions of the character. There are two types of characterization: direct and indirect characterization. Direct characterization requires the author to introduce one character who then encounters all other characters whereas indirect characterization involves the audience to interpret and be able to figure out each character’s personality from being thrown into the middle of a story. George Bernard Shaw uses indirect characterization to introduce us to all other characters. We begin on the street where two nontrivial characters introduce us to Eliza. After we meet Higgins and Pickering, and through conversations with other characters learn of their occupations, they introduce us to other characters such as Freddy and Mrs. Higgins.
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StereotypeA stereotype, in literature, is a character who is unoriginal or a representation of a type, gender, class, etc. The upper-class people we meet at the ambassador’s party are all stereotypical in that they dress and act as pretentious as readers would believe the elite to be. They dress too elegantly, speak too pompously, and surround themselves with rather extravagant belongings. Eliza also serves as a stereotype of the poor class with her rather exaggerated Cockney accent and in the condition in which Higgins found her, begging on the street.
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ProtagonistA protagonist is the leading character in a novel. There are actually two protagonists in Pygmalion: Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle. Eliza Doolittle is clearly transformed from a flower girl into a woman who speaks, acts, and dresses like an upper class woman. She serves as a kind of underdog who the readers route for to change and successfully fool others into thinking she is an upper-class woman. Henry Higgins, on the other hand, seems rude and unsympathetic on the surface, but if one looks deeper, you see that Higgins actually took Eliza into his home, gave her clothing, food, and education for free and spent his time teaching and training her to move up the social ladder.
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AntagonistIn general, the antagonist of the story is the opposing force in a piece of literature that brings conflict against the protagonist. The protagonist must overcome this character. In this case the antagonist is actually society. Eliza has to change herself to move up in social ranks because it is society that has deemed that upper-class people must speak the most proper English, and dress and act differently. Because of society, Eliza must overcome society’s standards and, without this antagonist, the crises would not have existed and the plot would not have developed.
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"Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my profession; also my hobby. Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby! You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets."