Composite character
Encyclopedia
A composite character is a character composed of two or more individuals, appearing in a fictional
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

 or non-fictional
Non-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...

 work. Two fictional characters are often combined into one upon adaptation of a work from one medium to another, as in the film adaptation
Film adaptation
Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...

 of a novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

. A composite character may be modeled on real historical or biographical figures in either type of work.

Sometimes composite characters are created in journalistic
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

 works, but such use raises ethical questions.

Fictional examples

  • Major
    Major (United States)
    In the United States Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps, major is a field grade military officer rank just above the rank of captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel...

     Frank Burns as portrayed in the 1970 film M*A*S*H, is a composite of Captain Frank Burns and a Major Hobson in the original novel. The composite character was carried over into the TV series.

Non-fictional examples

  • The character Bobby Ciaro in the biographical film
    Biographical film
    A biographical film, or biopic , is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people. They differ from films “based on a true story” or “historical films” in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a person’s life story or at least the most historically important years of their...

     Hoffa
    Hoffa
    Hoffa is a 1992 biographical film directed by Danny DeVito and written by David Mamet, based on the life of Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa. Jack Nicholson plays Hoffa, and Danny DeVito plays Hoffa's fictional longtime friend Robert "Bobby" Ciaro, an amalgamation of several Hoffa associates over...

  • Several characters in the movie 21.)
  • The character Henry Hurt in the docudrama
    Docudrama
    In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....

     Apollo 13
    Apollo 13 (film)
    Apollo 13 is a 1995 American drama film directed by Ron Howard. The film stars Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Kathleen Quinlan and Ed Harris. The screenplay by William Broyles, Jr...

    is portrayed as a NASA
    NASA
    The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

     public relations
    Public relations
    Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....

     employee assigned to the wife of astronaut Jim Lovell
    Jim Lovell
    James "Jim" Arthur Lovell, Jr., is a former NASA astronaut and a retired captain in the United States Navy, most famous as the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, which suffered a critical failure en route to the Moon but was brought back safely to Earth by the efforts of the crew and mission...

    , and who also is seen answering reporters' questions. This character is a composite of the NASA
    NASA
    The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

     protocol officer Bob McMurrey assigned to act as a buffer between the Lovell family and the press, and several Office of Public Affairs
    Office of Public Affairs
    The NASA Office of Public Affairs is tasked with media and public relations. Its mission is to "provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information to the media and general public concerning NASA activities and results" The function was created in the National...

     employees whose job was to actually work with the press.

Use in journalism

While creating composite characters for a fictional work is a useful tool, doing so in journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

 is considered to be like any other passing off of fiction as fact and is, in general, considered to be unethical
Journalism ethics and standards
Journalism ethics and standards comprise principles of ethics and of good practice as applicable to the specific challenges faced by journalists. Historically and currently, this subset of media ethics is widely known to journalists as their professional "code of ethics" or the "canons of journalism"...

. Nonetheless, writers have been known to employ this type of creative non-fiction. In 1944, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

ran a series of pieces by Joseph Mitchell
Joseph Mitchell
Joseph Mitchell was an American writer best known for the work he published in The New Yorker. He is known for his carefully written portraits of eccentrics and people on the fringes of society, especially in and around New York City.Mitchell was born on his maternal grandparents' farm near...

 on New York's Fulton Fish Market
Fulton Fish Market
The Fulton Fish Market is a fish market in The Bronx, New York, United States. It was originally a wing of the Fulton Market, established in 1822 to sell a variety of foodstuffs and produce...

 that were presented as journalism. Only when the story was published four years later as the book, Old Mr. Flood did Mitchell write, "Mr. Flood is not one man; combined in him are aspects of several old men who work or hang out in Fulton Fish Market, or who did in the past." Mitchell assigned his character his own birthday and his own love for the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

, Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

 and columnist Heywood Broun
Heywood Broun
Heywood Campbell Broun, Jr. was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, now known as The Newspaper Guild. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he is best remembered for his writing on social issues and...

. Similarly, John Hersey
John Hersey
John Richard Hersey was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer and journalist considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called New Journalism, in which storytelling devices of the novel are fused with non-fiction reportage...

 is said to have created a composite character in a Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

magazine story as did Alastair Reid
Alastair Reid
Alastair Reid is a poet and a scholar of South American literature from Galloway in Scotland. He is known for his lighthearted style of poems and for his translations of South American poets Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda. Although he is famous for translations, his own poems are gaining note...

 for The New Yorker. More recently, Vivian Gornick
Vivian Gornick
Vivian Gornick is an American critic, essayist, and memoirist. For many years she wrote for the Village Voice. She currently teaches writing at The New School. For the 2007-2008 academic year, she was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University...

 admitted in 2003 to having used composite characters in some of her articles for the Village Voice.

It remains a somewhat open question to what degree journalistic standards of newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 reporting apply when one is writing for a magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

. In his introduction to Mr. Flood, Mitchell wrote, "I wanted these stories to be truthful rather than factual, but they are solidly based on facts."

War and propaganda

Composite character may a real or fictional person to effectively immortalize this person. One legendary example is the case of Spartacus
Spartacus
Spartacus was a famous leader of the slaves in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable...

, a commander during the Third Servile War
Third Servile War
The Third Servile War , also called the Gladiator War and the War of Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last of a series of unrelated and unsuccessful slave rebellions against the Roman Republic, known collectively as the Roman Servile Wars...

, where all captured slaves admitted to be him. A modern example is the sniper Juba
Juba (sniper)
Juba is the pseudonym of an alleged sniper involved in the Iraqi Insurgency featured in several propaganda videos. The second of these videos shows Juba claiming to have shot 37 American soldiers...

 of the Islamic Army in Iraq
Islamic Army in Iraq
The Islamic Army in Iraq is one of a number of underground Baathist and Islamist militant organizations formed in Iraq following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by United States and coalition military forces, and the subsequent collapse of the Baathist government headed by Saddam Hussein.Although it...

 during the Iraqi Insurgency
Iraqi insurgency
The Iraqi Resistance is composed of a diverse mix of militias, foreign fighters, all-Iraqi units or mixtures opposing the United States-led multinational force in Iraq and the post-2003 Iraqi government...

who claims to have killed 143 US soldiers. With the arrest of two men claiming to be Juba and the high kill rate, Juba is considered to be a fictional person composed of several snipers.
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