Harold

Harold for instance is living a mundane, comatose existence. He doesn’t wake up from his dull stupor until he hears the voice of the narrator predicting his “imminent death”. Only at this point do we see Harold have an emotional reaction to anything. He becomes loud, upset, angry, even violent. He says he doesn’t want to be a “character in [his] own life.”

Miss Pascal

Miss Pascal is quirky passionate rebel who knows all her customers. She is kind underneath a tough exterior. She says exactly what she (and the audience) is thinking. Dialogue is always a clue to character. When Harold says he doesn’t like cookies she asks, “What’s wrong with you?” After eating them he tells her, “Thank you for forcing me to eat them.” The dialogue in the film is excellent because the characters only ever say something relevant for the plot and theme of the story. When Harold asks her how she became a baker, she tells him her story and then says, “I figured if I was going to make the world a better place I’d do it with cookies.” In that moment we learn something about the type of person Miss Paschal is but we also learn something about the kind of person we want to be as well. Great stories do this—they reveal bigger ideas and deeper truths than the immediate ones on the page.

Professor Hilbert

Professor Hilbert is a quack who strikes us as less than helpful. His questionnaire seems stupid/irrelevant. He says “let’s start with ridiculous and move backwards.” Is this really a logical place to start? We do learn a few details about Harold through the questions, however. For instance, his favorite word: integer. His lifelong dream: to have more music in his life; to learn to play the guitar. In spite of his eccentricities and lack of real help, Professor Hilbert becomes the person Harold looks to.

Kay Eiffel

Kay Eiffel, who is played by Emma Thompson, is an angst-ridden brilliant writer who cannot seem to get a grip on her characters or the reality around her. She is paranoid and obsessively fixated on death. At the end of the movie when Karen goes to Professor Hilbert and we discover that she changed the ending, he tells her that the story is “o.k.” Karen tells him, “You know, I think I am fine with ‘o.k.’.” What does this reveal about how Karen has changed?