Character Clues
Character Analysis
Family Life
Good grief, these kids have dysfunctional families. From Cheryl's perverted grandpa to Bonny's neglectful parents to Karl's mom who habitually steals from him, the Madmen have their share of domestic issues. And, we've barely scratched the surface—there's a lot more than just these terrible family members.
The thing that's so important to note about the Madmen's relationship with their families, though, is how fiercely loyal they are. "None of us ever narked," Karl explains, "because we knew it wouldn't help. I mean, what was I going to do, have them take my mom away, lose our house, lose everything?" (3.89). No matter how bad things get, the kids recognize that they could potentially get much worse if their parents get caught. Kids could go to foster homes, splitting up the families; parents could get arrested; or someone could end up in jail. In spite of everything, they love their families to a depth that makes taking the abuse easier than doing something about it.
Clothing
Okay, Shmoopers. Time to strap on your platform shoes, sexy boots, and leisure suits because it's the 1970s, and boy are clothes huge in this book. One of the things that makes these high schoolers so real is that they have unique styles of dress, like real teenagers would, and it's appropriate to the time period.
Take Cheryl, for instance. The most popular girl in school, she's big into fashion and is described as wearing "a tight tan jacket, a loose blousy top, and nice tight pants that rode low, and the soles of her shoes probably added three pounds to each foot and three inches to her height" (3.2). Yikes. How does she even climb the stairs in those things?
Then, at the other end of the spectrum, there's Marti, who has no fashion sense at all. "Her wire rim glasses perched on chipmunk cheeks smeared with acne, above a mouth full of braces," Karl describes. "The white t-shirt she was wearing was too big on her, like she'd missed her last three months of meals" (3.35). Yeah, we're thinking she won't be vying for prom queen any time soon.
So, what's our point? The Mean Girls dress code existed in the '70s, too, and how characters dress helps place them socially as well as clues us into some of their priorities. We wouldn't be surprised if Cheryl and her girls wore pink on Tuesdays. Oh, and no sweatpants allowed.
Direct Characterization
One of the great things about having a first-person narrator is that Karl does a lot of the dirty work for us—rather than leaving us on our own to question whether we should like a character or not, he's blunt enough to just come out and tell us.
Whenever a character makes an appearance, Karl almost immediately makes no beans about how he feels about him or her, and he's pretty blunt about it. Darla, for example, is "super-intense and super-smart and ultra-beyond-super-weird" (3.18). Gratz is "an asshole Vietnam vet" (2.97). Tierden and Harris are "two really hateful guys that would have been our class clowns if they'd been funny" (4.44).
We could go on, but you get the idea. Of course, with Karl as a narrator comes a certain amount of unreliability about whether what he says about these people is actually true. For more on that, check out "Narrator Point of View."
Props
One element of characterization in Tales of the Madman Underground that just plain rocks is that there's a great selection of props. Darla has Mr. Babbitt, while Karl's mom's sexy boots are such a part of her persona that she's known across town as "Beth with the Boots" (14.1). Larry and Karl don't go anywhere without reading material, whether it's MAD magazine, Huckleberry Finn, or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
In all of these cases, the props reveal what's important to the characters. Darla uses Mr. Babbitt as a coping mechanism in a world where people seem more interested in mocking her than helping her. (Mr. Babbitt is kind of awesome, we know. If you want more Babbitt-tastic analysis, check out Darla's analysis in "Characters" and swing by "Symbolism.") Karl's mom's boots are a sign of her attempt to find her identity as a party hippie chick after her husband's death. Larry and Karl both just like to read and talk about weird literature. In summary, we learn a lot about these people by the stuff they carry around.