Characters
The most important characters in the short story “No Angel” by Bernie M…
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Annie
Annie is the narrator and the protagonist of the story. Her characterisation is conveyed directly through self-characterisation and indirectly, through her actions, her thoughts, and her attitude.
Annie’s outer characterisation informs us that she is the only living member of her Irish family and has “a good lecturing job” (l. 80). She is about 40 years old and is unmarried, and she is dating Thomas. However, their relationship ends by the end of the story.
Inner characterisation
Annie’s inner characterisation presents her from the perspective of Thomas’ parents as “attentive, soft-spoken, a bit long in the tooth for grandchildren” (l. 41).
Her inner traits are mostly conveyed in relation to her family and her boyfriend.
When Annie sees her dead father for the first time, she is not particularly surprised, which suggests that she takes talking to the dead as something natural:
His skin was …
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The father
The father appears in the story as a dead person who occasionally visits his daughter. However, the narrator also presents some of his traits from the time he was alive.
Outer characterisation
The man’s outer characterisation conveys his physical appearance after death:
When he turned his face to scrape the razor along his jaw, I could see that the scar was healing well, where the surgeon had removed the growth from the side of his nose. His skin was more yellow maybe; more so at the nicotine-stained finger tips, (ll. 11-14)
As a dead spirit, he also has the ability to appear as a wavy image over the fields wh…
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Robbie
Robbie is an absent character in the short story and is only presented based on the narrator’s memories of him.
Outer characterisation
From his outer characterisation, we find out that he was the narrator’s younger brother, who was killed at the age of seventeen. Some of his physical traits are also conveyed. When he was alive he was “built like a stick” (l. 86) and walked …
