Character Development Exercise

At the end of the first seminar we were given a random sentence that we were asked to use to develop and form a character from, basing them on whatever the sentence told us to. Then sentence I was given was:

The point of view of a blind person.

Using this sentence we had to create a character who has an emotional want, but cannot get it. While developing my character I took this very literally and used the sentence I was given to become the obstacle that doesn't allow the character to obtain their emotional want.

My character is Bernard Price, a 72 year old from Leeds. He lives alone in a council estate in Beeston and moved there 5 years ago after his wife died. His vision started to deteriorate just after his wife died and now he is almost completely blind. He relies heavily on his son and his family to help him out, although they don't really like him that much anymore because it has become a chore and interrupts their lives. Bernard is a simple, old fashioned person who's emotional want is to simply see his grandchildren grow up and watch his legacy carry on but he cannot do this because of his visual impairment.

I see this story unfolding as quite a depressing drama piece with a lot of focus on Bernard's loneliness and emotions towards his son and his wife being quite aggressive and frustrating, contrasting with the happiness he feels when he is with his grandchildren. I imagine that the majority of the story would be Bernard alone talking to himself with some grieving over his late wife, and also him coming to terms with his slowly fading vision.

I've taken inspiration here from the film Grand Tarino (2008) by Clint Eastwood, focusing on the character of Walt and how he copes with loneliness and his interactions with other people. The narrative would focus on his emotional want to see his grandchildren grow up and how he has to repair his relationship with his son whilst overcoming his blindness and death of his wife.