Not being gifted with a merit in look, personality, nor capabilities in such a meritocracy society, I once felt unattractive and untalented. The thirteen-year-old Amirah Kaca wasn’t beautiful, talented, nor popular. Back in those days, the fact that I had plenty of flaws haunted me through my tenebrous teenage years.

However, there was one thing that I also discovered during my youth, other than my awful gaucherie. It was literature, through my English class. After all those piles of books I went through, I developed my own standards to decide whether a book is good or not.  I started to understand that when I decided one book is good, it is for a reason. I also realized that the key element that makes a book good is characterization. Even one of my English teachers ever stated that the success of Shakespeare’s works lies in characters and that is the reason that his works have stood their test of being everlasting through time (you do realize that Shakespeare’s plots are rarely unoriginal).

What do good books’ characters consist of?

I could separate “good characters” from “non-good characters”. Every character in my criteria of non-good book is always subject to a criterion of superb perfection. There is always this one character, a protagonist of course, who becomes the symbol of superb perfection; close to the limit of every available ideality. It is not always stated obviously and it varies from book to book. In a “chick lit”, for example, a perfect bachelor is described with well looked-after face, toned body, bright career, and awesome social life with countless parties. On the other hand, in a religious novel, the perfect character is always described as a modest figure, best noted for their piety.  What you can tell from these books is that they push the readers into thinking that some characters are perfect. With set standards for perfection, an obvious line could be drawn to divide up characters into good and bad, as found in fairy tales or classic superhero movies (actually my friend, Dikdik Fazzarudin, described those books as having superhero story characteristics).

On the other hand, a good book doesn’t have the mindset that pushes readers into believing that a character can attain a state of superb perfection. Every character is human. Of course, those books can still have characters described as beautiful, intelligent, or in possession of other qualities desired by most people. However they are not being positioned as the paragon of that quality. They are described as a character, with all of their characteristics; the desirable ones as well as the undesirable ones. However, the undesirable ones, those we always call flaws, are usually what make them unique. Hence, I realized that a person that portrays such superb ideality is not a character, but merely a doll.

It came down to one simple conclusion: “In order to gain character, one must have flaws.”

After passing my unstable teenage years and learning the fact that in order to gain character one must have flaws, I came to find that all of those worries I had were just fatuous. This realization became the ratiocination that had helped palliate my low confidence level.

These are the facts that finally made me reconcile with my flaws. Today, I enjoy being myself more than ever. Not because I have gained anything significant in my looks (this one is difficult for sure), talent, or achievement, but because I have fully recognized my flaws.

Advertisement