First Page of the Great American Novel

Character.

You would never dare define it. Presumptuously, it may never be defined. It’s so utilized without meaning these days. Who has character? At what point does it vanish into a cloud of rhetoric like the broadest abstractions? Yet you ask me to solve it. ‘Sum it up, in five words or less,’ you assign.

Rank of one’s reputation.

Angle we hold our heads.

Integrity, malnourished.

Heathcliff is a character. Does that count? May we write it off like subversive topics of yore, until it’s picked up by a future generation in its clean-slate, nondescript form, reinvented to be tired, contrived and fatuous?

You remind us this is prep school, that we would never have dare attended had we no sense of the topic of character, or no redeeming value perchance we deem the morpheme internally void. True, but do not translate my warrant, or my sanity, on my behalf. Choices must not always be indicative of character, or we cannot elucidate politics or poetry. To this end, we must forego the commission?

Ingrained temperament in vainest casting.

All in the appearance.

Five words or less.

You have shared stories of character, in the way you flow, albeit not yet in your monologue. You had a grandfather in the war, a pilot, and he inherited you that jacket. It testifies the courage you do not affirm. Pace the lecture hall and wait.

Maybe it is true to character. Could character emblematize these respective roles we play? We inhabit seats and worlds, and perhaps character?

Expect nothing more from me, as you demonstrate the same. Opposing character is not in my blood. Yet tales may be distorted; stories, perverted. In that, a futile attempt can be