Quote:
Originally Posted by BeccaPrice
It has been pointed out to me that, in general, the characters in my stories have no names. I always figured that this was because I'm lousy at finding good names for my characters, and since they're mostly archetypes anyway, they don't need names.
Then I picked up a copy of Bruno Bettlehein's book The Uses of Enchantment, which analyzes fairy tales, and their roles in children's lives.
He says (on page 40 in the 1976 hardback copy by Knopf)
So having unnamed characters is not only a standard fairy tale trope, but it has valuable psychological effects.
Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  |
Yep. Pilgrim's Progress did that. Characters had names like Piliable, Faithful, Mr. Legality & Mr. Worldly Wiseman just to name a few. They weren't meant to represent actual people but ideas which were part of the journey that the main character was going on.