Tools of Characterization
Characterization in Fargo
Actions
To cite the ancient proverb, actions speak louder than words. By that token, chasing down a car with two innocent people in and murdering them should speak pretty loudly. The fact that Gaear and Carl don't give a flying hoot about the lives of other people testifies to their wickedness and criminality. In a way, it's almost like they're too dumb and deluded to even know that life has value.
This seems particularly true in Gaear's case. He'll casually kill Jean for being "too noisy," and later find some trivial revelation on a soap opera utterly shocking and mesmerizing. We don't need a line of dialogue to see what Gaear is like.
We can see by her actions how Marge is a sharp and dependable police chief. She pursues the case's solution doggedly but with a firm politeness. She's not afraid to draw a gun on Gaear, while he's stuffing Carl's body in the wood chipper, and she handles the investigation of the initial triple-homicide with a calm, cool demeanor.
Family Life
Jerry probably cares about his son, Scotty, to some extent, and he doesn't seem to hate his wife, but he's so preoccupied with his need for money that he's willing to risk their safety. It just doesn't seem to occur to him that by arranging to have his wife kidnapped, things might not work out so well for her. He's incapable of considering his family's feelings, and his fraught relationship with Wade, his father-in-law, is just another source of tension. The way he deals with his family is the way he handles everything else: stupidly and cowardly.
On the other hand, Marge and her husband seem to have a strong and loving relationship. Marge and Norm seem to content themselves with simple hobbies like fishing and painting, while also enjoying fast food and buffets and watching TV in bed, like any typical American family. At the end of the movie, they're both anticipating the birth of their child, in a moment of quietly hopeful domesticity:
NORM: Two more months.
MARGE: Two more months.
Food
The relationship between Norm and Marge seems to involve a lot of eating. We see them eating Arby's on their lunch break together, and piling their plates at a local buffet. At one point, one of her officers comes in with some important info on the case. But the first thing he does is ask Marge, "How's the fricassee?" To which Marge responds, "Pretty darn good. Ya want some?"
First things first. We see that Marge takes pleasure in simple, everyday food, as long as there's plenty of it. Nothing fancy for her; and that's true in all aspects of her life.
Also, early in the movie, Gaear wants to eat pancakes for breakfast and lunch, whereas Carl's hungry for a steak and some booze. It highlights the childishness of Gaear: even though he's a murderer, there's something weirdly innocent about his ignorance. When Marge asks him if he knows that there's more to life than a little money, we feel convinced that Gaear probably didn't actually know there was… except pancakes.
Location
The location helps forge the characters' identities in a really crucial way. Their accents are all exaggerated versions of Minnesotan speech, except for Carl. The fact that Marge is from Brainerd, "home a' Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox," shows that she's not some jaded Big City person. She personifies the best values of small-town America.
On the other hand, Carl Showalter lacks the personality of a Minnesota native. Where the other characters tend to eschew profanity in favor of words like "darn," Carl regular busts out F-bombs. He also lacks the Northern reserve of many of the characters, and is instead extremely irritable and volatile. He's definitely an outsider. It's harder to tell with Gaear; He hardly says anything. Maybe he's Minnesotan to the nth degree.
Names
Befitting its Minnesotan locale, many of the names in the movie have Scandinavian origins: Lundegaard, Gunderson, Grimsrud, Gustafson. Those folks are the natives.
Occupation
The way occupation reveals character is obvious in Fargo: Marge is a police chief, honestly concerned with doing her job and preserving order, while Gaear and Carl are self-centered, lawless maniacs. It's the classic cops and robbers dichotomy.
Then, you have Jerry Lundegaard: the Coens play on the untrustworthy car-salesman stereotype of someone who will do anything to make a sale and a buck. In Jerry's case, he's even a terrible salesman, foreshadowing his even worse skills as someone trying to sell the whole kidnapping story.
Wade, as the big boss of the dealership, is a typical businessman: hardheaded and used to getting his way.
Physical Appearances
In describing Carl's appearance, one of prostitutes from the Blue Ox motel says, "Well, the little guy, he was kinda funny-looking." That's as deep as her explanation goes. Maybe his appearance doesn't have much to do with his personality, but Carl is a little off, obviously. He's "funny" in the sense of being whacked out, combustible, out of sorts. The Coens wrote the role with Steve Buscemi in mind, so they definitely had a certain look and demeanor they were going for.
On the other hand, Gaear's bulk and expressionless appearance mirror his own inner dullness and primitive impulses. He's scary; there doesn't seem to be much "there" there. He's more like an animal than a person, except for the fact that he watches soap operas and late night TV.
Norm Gunderson has the pleasantly bland, impassive look that several of the local characters have. The Coens see that as typical of the reserved Minnesotan character. It doesn't mean they're not deep folks, just that it's unseemly to get too worked up about anything.
And then there's Marge. When we first see that Marge is pregnant, it adds a random, comic element to the film. She's big, she waddles a little, and it's a bit disorienting to see a police chief in the late stages of pregnancy. It makes the viewer think about how this all is going to figure into the plot. The joke is that it really… doesn't. Aside from her having an extremely healthy appetite and a bout of morning sickness, it's irrelevant to how she handles the investigation.
Props
Marge, ever considerate, remembers to pick up a bag of night crawlers for her husband, Norm for ice-fishing bait. She thinks to do this despite having just left the scene of a triple-homicide. You gotta love the fact that Norm looks appreciatively into the bag of worms and goes calmly back to chowing down his Arby's sandwich.
Also, even though Norm is fairly unexpressive, the paintings on the walls of their home suggest artistic aspirations and a more complex personality.
Weirdly, we notice an accordion in Scotty Lundegaard's room, along with a poster depicting the "Accordion King" (some yodeler-looking dude). Not an interest we might've expected a kid his age to have.
Also, there's a bunch of golf things in Jerry's office—from weird, racist statues of African-American caddies, to the "I [Heart] Golf" note-pad on Jerry's desk. Golf probably is an interest we might've expected Jerry to have.
Sex and Love
We hear about and see a wide spectrum of relationships in this movie: from Mike Yanagita stalking the woman he later pretends is his wife, to Gaear and Carl sleeping with prostitutes, to Jerry not caring about what will happen to his kidnapped wife, to Marge and Norm Gunderson cuddling and watching TV in bed.
The only functional, non-neurotic relationship we witness is the Gundersons, since Jerry's wife's well-being never seems to cross his mind. Carl and Gaear are probably incapable of love, and Mike Yanagita is plagued by delusions. The Coens hold up the Gundersons as an ordinary, low-key example of a solid, loving relationship.
Social Status
No one in this movie, with the exception of Wade Gustafson, is a real high roller. Even Wade isn't some sort of uppercrust New Yorker socialite: he's a practical, tough product of the Midwest, a guy who loves the Gophers like any other Minnesotan. Everyone else spans the spectrum from middle-class to working-class to criminal underworld: Jerry's a car salesman, Shep Proudfoot is a mechanic, the prostitutes are college dropouts, Carl and Gaear are murderous criminal losers.
You can see this isn't taking place in the rarefied universe of an Edith Wharton novel. There are little jokes that seem to poke fun at people for being unsophisticated, like when Mike Yanagita seems to think that the restaurant at the Radisson is really high-class.
But you could easily argue that the Coens aren't interested in just parodying the simple middle-class and working-class lifestyle of the characters in the film. They show the absurdity and humor in everything, but they also show the inherent goodness of Marge and Norm and their way of life. In the end, the folks with the small-town values outsmart everyone.
Speech and Dialogue
Throughout the movie, we hear the Minnesotan accents of the characters (or a more exaggerated version of that accent): "Yah, you betcha!" Or, as Jerry says, "You're darn tootin'!" It situates the characters in their place, and gives the movie its distinctive flavor. In other cases, the fact that certain characters spare their words says a lot about them: take Gaear, for example, or Norm Gunderson. And then there are more garrulous cases, like Mike Yanagita and Carl Showalter, who both seem pretty unbalanced compared to the more reserved characters.
The fact that Carl doesn't have a Minnesotan accent, and constantly spouts profanity, sets him apart from the other characters, who tend to be much friendlier and tend to substitute darns for damns. As Marge surmises, the killers aren't from Brainerd.
The Minnesota accent derives from the influx of Scandinavian immigrants that settled the area in the late 1800's. If you want a crash course on the culture and language of the area, take a listen to a few seasons of " A Prairie Home Companion."
Thoughts and Opinions
Part of the humor of this film comes from characters that don't think too deeply about things. They just plunge ahead impulsively, not thinking about the consequences, blinded by greed. This is especially true for Jerry and the two criminals, Carl and Gaear. (Carl would disagree; he thinks he has pretty sophisticated opinions and throws around words like "force majeure.") Overall, we're not dealing with extremely reflective people: they're creatures of impulse.
Then again, Marge Gunderson's opinions express a kind of simple and indisputable wisdom. She says to Gaear,
MARGE: There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don't you know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it.
Gaear doesn't respond. He is what he is and he does what he does.
Also there are times when a character's opinions are used for purely comic effect. The prostitute who slept with Gaear says that he looked like the Marlboro Man, and then second-guesses herself: "But maybe I'm sayin' that, you know, cause he smoked Marlboros… You know, like a subconscious-type thing." Yeah. It probably was a subconscious-type thing.