Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

In our last episode,
<aa575f14.0401130043.60061221@posting.google.com>, the lovely and
talented skatty broadcast on alt.usage.english:

In this context, "the" implies the characters are trite.  "Cut-and-dried
material" in the first sentence, which happens to be the topic sentence,
might give you a clue.  "A" self-destructive party girl might be one
of several such possible characters, but by using "the" the critic
claims this is much the same stereotypic party girl that we have
seen in many other motion pictures, dramas, or novels.

"The" does not always have this implication.  In other cases it
may simply be the most appropriate article.  "William Howard played
the brother," for example, means that there was only one brother
of the principal and William Howard played that part.  In many
kinds of drama and fiction there are certain parts which are
necessary for the genre.  A detective story will have a detective
(although possibly not a professional one), and in describing such
a story you might begin speaking of "the detective" without necessarily
meaning that the character lacks orginality.  When the detective is
a consulting detective or a nosey old woman it almost always is the
case that principal police officer is a vainglorious moron, so if
you continue to describe such a story and mention "the bumbling
chief inspector" you are likely to mean to imply that the character
is something of a stereotype.

Unless you are very familiar with a genre, you may not know what
the critic means to imply, which is why the topic sentence in the
example you provided is so useful.