Alex Oviatt
Practically Family
- Messages
- 515
- Location
- Pasadena, CA
There are counless instances in literature where caracters are closely associated with their headwear (think Sherlock Holmes, for example) but this struck me forcibly when I recently reread one of my favorite books, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. In the first few pages, key characters--including Satan--are all charcterized through their choices of headwear:
"At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the
Patriarch's Ponds. One of them, approximately forty years old, dressed in a
grey summer suit, was short, dark-haired, plump, bald, and carried his
respectable fedora hat in his hand. His neatly shaven face was adorned with
black horn-rimmed glasses of a supernatural size. The other, a
broad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair, his checkered cap
cocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousers
and black sneakers."
"And here the sweltering air thickened before him, and a transparent
citizen of the strangest appearance wove himself out of it. A peaked
jockey's cap on his little head, a short checkered jacket also made of air."
And even the Devil himself wears a beret:
"He was wearing an expensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour. His grey beret was cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm he carried a stick with a
black knob shaped like a poodle's head. [13] He looked to be a little over
forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right eye black,
left - for some reason - green. Dark eyebrows, but one higher than the
other. In short, a foreigner."
What a different world..... Any other fictional hat-wearers come to mind?
"At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the
Patriarch's Ponds. One of them, approximately forty years old, dressed in a
grey summer suit, was short, dark-haired, plump, bald, and carried his
respectable fedora hat in his hand. His neatly shaven face was adorned with
black horn-rimmed glasses of a supernatural size. The other, a
broad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair, his checkered cap
cocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousers
and black sneakers."
"And here the sweltering air thickened before him, and a transparent
citizen of the strangest appearance wove himself out of it. A peaked
jockey's cap on his little head, a short checkered jacket also made of air."
And even the Devil himself wears a beret:
"He was wearing an expensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour. His grey beret was cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm he carried a stick with a
black knob shaped like a poodle's head. [13] He looked to be a little over
forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right eye black,
left - for some reason - green. Dark eyebrows, but one higher than the
other. In short, a foreigner."
What a different world..... Any other fictional hat-wearers come to mind?
