Wuthering Heights Character Review: Linton Heathcliff

*Warning: This post contains spoilers about Emily Bronte’s classic novel, Wuthering Heights. Read at your own risk if you are unfamiliar with the either book or the various adaptations.

There is something to be said about a well written, human character. They leap off the page and speak to us as if they were right in front us, as flesh and blood human beings, instead of fictional creations.

In this series of weekly blog posts, I will examine character using the characters from Wuthering Heights to explore how writers can create fully dimensional, human characters that audiences and readers can relate to.

Some characters are unfortunately fated to die young. As much as the writer or the audience would like see the character live into their golden years,  for some it is not simply meant to be.

In Wuthering Heights, this is the fate of Linton Heathcliff. The son of Isabella Linton and Heathcliff, the reader meets Linton as a young man. Hidden in London by his mother, Linton only returns to Thrushcross Grange (the Linton family estate) after his mother’s death. At first, Linton is safe with his uncle Edgar Linton and his cousin, Catherine. Then Heathcliff hears that his boy is back in the neighborhood and demands that Edgar hand over the boy.

Linton is a sickly young man who sometime comes off as spoiled. He is forced to marry his cousin Catherine by his father and dies soon after. The last victim of the emotional turmoil that stretches over the entire narrative, his death marks a turning point that will finally heal the wounds that have remained open for two generations.

To sum it up: As sad as the death of a character can be, it can also represent change and new opportunities. While Linton’s death is indeed sad, it also closes the door on the past and paves the way for Hareton and Catherine to start a new life elsewhere. As writers, we have to remember that death is more than the physical being dying. It can be representative of change, new opportunities and the closing of the door of what was.

 

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Flashback Friday-Mystery Men (1999)

Sometimes superhero movies take themselves a little too seriously.

In 1999, the genre was given the satirical treatment in the form of Mystery Men.

When the local superhero Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear) is captured by the local super villain Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush), it’s up to a ragtag group of superhero wannabes to save the day. Led by Furious (Ben Stiller), the group includes Bowler (Janeane Garofalo) and Blue Raja (Hank Azaria), this bunch of second-rate superheroes must band together to save their city and their superhero from destruction.

As I recall, what I enjoyed about this movie is not the DC, Marvel Comics type movie that many fans of the superhero and comic book genre have come to expect. The film had an underbelly of dark satire that was unique to the genre and made the audience laugh.

And of course, what a late 1990’s movie without the requisite theme song sung by Smashmouth?

I recommend it.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood Book Review

Before Trevor Noah succeeded Jon Stewart as the host of The Daily Show, he was a biracial child growing up in  apartheid era South Africa.

Last year, he published a memoir of his very unique childhood entitled Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. Noah’s father, a white man of Swiss/German descent, was in his son’s life as much as the white father of a biracial child could be back then. His black mother, whose ancestry in South Africa went back generations, was his main parent. Loving, but strict (and perhaps a bit intense), she raised her son with a firm, but free-spirited hand. In the book, Noah talks about what it was like to grow in South Africa when the country was divided by very firm and enforceable social, racial and economic borders.

What I really loved about this book is that unlike other celebrity memoirs, it felt authentic. There was nothing forced or fake about his stories. It was as if he was sitting in front of me and we were having a conversation about his childhood. I also loved that there is a universal quality to this book when it comes to childhood, growing up and how our perceptions of us, our world and our parents change as we get older.

I absolutely recommend it.