Character Analysis

Objective

To identify a major character in one of the works on the syllabus and analyze a key conflict in that character's life.

Overview

We often discuss the behavior of characters in works of literature just as we would discuss people in our own lives. We evaluate their actions according to our own set of moral guidelines, and we think about the events that motivate them to behave as they do. Indeed, it is very easy for us to get into arguments over a character's virtues or faults and whether a character is a hero or villain in the text.

In this paper, you will want to choose one character from Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Custom of the Country, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Underground Railroad, or The Road. Choose the work that interests you the most and a character whose experiences or behavior in the work strike you as worthy of discussion. Argue for the merits or the villainy of a character's actions.

Support your argument by including quotations from the book, each followed by a page number in parentheses. Such quotations might be from the writer's description or illustration of a character, from the setting or from things the character does or says. To add clarity to your argument, it may be useful to compare the character to other characters in the book.

Suggested Topics

Choose from one of the following arguments or choose an argument of your own. Just be sure that you can come up with an arguable thesis statement. I have left some blanks in these statements for you to fill in as you adapt the sentence into a thesis statement. You may have to revise the statement even further in order to make it workable.

1. People usually think _________ is an evil character, but it is actually possible to justify _________'s behavior if you consider ____________.

2. The worst decision this character makes is when he/she . . . That is the true cause of this character's misery.

3. Of all of the characters in this story, _________ is the most virtuous, because . . .

Questions for Development

Do not attempt to answer all of these questions in your paper. These are just to give you some ideas as you attempt to develop your argument. If you do answer some of these questions in your paper, make sure you do so in a way that is consistent with your overall argument.

• Does the character have heroic qualities?

• Is the character villainous in any way?

• How does the character regard his or her own actions? Is this the same as how other characters in the work regard these actions?

• What is this character's community like? What are its standards governing behavior? How well is the character integrated into her or his surrounding community? How is this community different from our current community?

• What is the character's social class? Which characteristics serve to define that class? Does the character seek to change his or her class status, or does the character strive to maintain his or her current status?

• What is the character's gender and how does this gender restrict or liberate this character?

• What are the defining moments in the life of this character? Are there any defining moments in this character's life that take place outside of the literary work in question (i.e. before the beginning of the story)?

• Why should an audience of readers in the year 2017 care about what happens to this character? Which larger historical developments shape this character?

• What does the author of the work think of this character? (Often, though not always, authors reward virtue and punish evil in their characters, so the story's outcome tips us off as to their attitudes toward these characters.)

• What distinguishes this character from other characters in the work? What distinguishes this character from other characters in literature? Does this character have any doubles or counterparts in the work?

Procedure

1. Take another look at the book you will be writing about for this assignment. Look back over your notes and reread important sections of the book.

2. Develop a thesis statement that addresses the questions in the above prompt for your book (or choose a different topic after discussing it with me). Of course, this thesis will be subject to revision once you have written an argument.

3. Write a draft of your argument in support of your thesis. Refer directly to specific words and phrases in the chosen poem in supporting your argument. At some point, write an outline of your argument, so that you can make its structure as clear as possible to your readers. Remember, this paper needs to be more than just a plot summary.

4. Revise your draft extensively.

5. Having completed your revisions, proofread your paper. Watch out for typos, incorrect punctuation and other problems. Do not hesitate to look these rules up. The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University offers an extremely helpful collection of guidelines for using the MLA Format, and you can find it at "http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/". Go to that website and click on "MLA Formatting and Style Guide" in the right-hand column.

6. Turn in the completed final draft on November 16th, 2017, in class.

Writing Tips

1. A key step in writing a clear argument is a clear thesis statement in the opening paragraph. A thesis statement should:

   1. Be a one-sentence statement of your paper's central argument.

   2. Be arguable. If reasonable readers will agree with your thesis statement right away, then it is not arguable enough. Take a stand on an issue that will generate a healthy discussion.

2. Organize your ideas in a logical manner. Do not let the order of events in the story determine the order of claims you are making about the character in this paper. In other words, this paper is not a plot summary. Instead, organize your argument according to arguable sub-topics that fit together to back up your thesis statement.

3. MLA format means you should include a list of works cited at the end of your paper. In this paper, it will likely include only one work (though, you are always welcome to supplement your analysis with a little extra research). For example:

   Wharton, Edith. The Custom of the Country. 1913. Penguin, 2006.

4. Some grammatical tips:

   1. Refer to events in a work of literature in the present tense. This may sound strange at first, but it is the convention for addressing literature. Notice that we tend to follow this rule in class discussion.

   2. Avoid using the passive voice whenever it is possible to do so. For example, replace "This book was written by Colson Whitehead" with "Colson Whitehead wrote this book."

   3. Avoid contractions when writing college papers. Replace they're with they are and replace don't with do not (these are just a few examples of the numerous possible contractions out there).

   4. Italicization is the best way to signal that you are referring to a word itself and not to the thing that the word represents:

      For example:

      I rode my bicycle to school today.

      The word bicycle has three syllables.

      (In the second sentence, I italicized bicycle because I was talking about the word, not the thing.)

      You should also italicize titles of books (including in parenthetical references and lists of works cited) and foreign-language words like picador or ennui.

   5. The word it's (with an apostrophe) is a contraction of it is. The word its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive form of it. In other words, the word it's should never appear in your paper because it is a contraction.