Flat Character : 

★ A flat character is less well developed, and has fewer traits.

★ Flat characters are not fully developed, we call them flat.

★ We must have these flat characters to help carry the action, to show how the central character behaves or relates to others, to make the setting a believable place because in this setting live these people.

Fern in Charlotte’s Web, for example, is a flat character. Fern has few traits that distinguish her from other little girls.

Stock Character :

Stock characters are ones who represent specific stereotypes. These characters are types and not individuals.

In Charlotte’s Web, Lurvy is an example of a stereotype, in this case of a hired man. Lurvy has only the expected traits and does only the expected things. He nails down the loose board on Wilbur’s pen, slops Wilbur and discovers the exploded dud. Lurvy is neither eloquent nor imaginative.

Occasionally the writer may use a character foil, a minor character whose traits are in direct contrast to a principal character, and thus highlight the principal.

The snobbish lamb is as young and naive as Wilbur, but she is smug instead of humble. Pigs are little or nothing to her. Since the lamb is consistently disdainful, her behavior contrasts sharply to Wilbur’s, and in this way she acts as a foil.

Round Character :

a round character is one that we know well, who has a variety of traits that make him or her believable.

From the first words of the first page when Fern asks where her father is going with the ax, we are anxious about Wilbur’s fate. We soon discover that Wilbur’s struggle is the conflict, and that he is therefore the protagonist, or central character.

An oxymoron is a figure of speech that juxtaposes elements that appear to be contradictory, but which contain a concealed point.

for example:

(a) Ordinary Miracles

(b) "Parting is such a sweet sorrow."  Shakespeare has used this phrase in Act-II, Scene-II of his play, Romeo and Juliet.

(c) bittersweet: containing a mixture of sadness and happiness

 John Donne 

Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud Related Poem Content Details

By John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. 

Wit (2001) - Death be not proud

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

By John Donne 

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

   And whisper to their souls to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say

   The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,

   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

'Twere profanation of our joys

   To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,

   Men reckon what it did, and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

   Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

   Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,

   That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

   Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

   Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

   As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

   To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,

   Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans and hearkens after it,

   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

   Like th' other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

   And makes me end where I begun.