May 2008

When you’re through learning, you’re through.

from Don Piper

A strong character analysis will:

1. identify the type of character it is dealing with. 
2. describe the character, using various measures as detailed below.
3. discuss the conflict in the story, particularly in regards to the character’s place in it.

To describe the character:

Consider the character’s name and appearance.

• Is the author taking advantage of stereotypes? The hot-tempered redhead, the boring brunette, the playboy fraternity guy.
• Is the author going against stereotypes? The brilliant blonde, the socially adept professor, the rich but lazy immigrant.
• Is the author repeating a description of the character? If so, then it is important. For example, Kathy in East of Eden is described as rodent-like and snake-like, “sharp little teeth” and a “flickering tongue.”
• Is their name significant? Is it a word that means something, like Honor or Hero? Does it come from a particular place or time and make reference to that? Scarlett, Beowulf.
• Appearance and visual attributes are usually far less important than other factors, unless their appearance is the point– such as in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Clothing also rarely matters, except to make him/her easier to visualize.

Consider if he/she a static (unchanging) or dynamic (changing) character. If the character has changed during the course of the story:

• Was the change gradual or rapid?
• Was it subtle or obvious?
• Are the changes significant to the story or are they a minor counterpoint?
• Are the changes believable or fantastic?
• What was his/her motivation to change?
• What situations or characters encouraged the change?
• How does the character learn from or deal with the change?

Consider how the author discloses the character:

• By what the character says or thinks.
• By what the character does.
• By what other characters say about him/her.
• By what the author says about him/her.
• The short form for this is STAR (says, thinks, acts, reacts).

Look for these things within the creation of the character:

psychological/personality traits

• Do these characteristics aid in the character being consistent (in character), believable, adequately motivated, and interesting?
• Do the characteristics of the character emphasize and focus on the character’s role in the story’s plot?

motivation

• Is the character ethical? Is he/she trying to do the right thing, but going about it in the wrong way?
•  Is the motivation because of emotion (love, hate) or a decision (revenge, promotion)?

behavior /actions

• Does the character act in a certain way consistently?
• Or is the character erratic?
• Could one pluck the character from the story, put them in another story, and know how they would react?

relationships

• With other characters in the story
• How others see/react to him/her

weaknesses/faults

• Typical tragic weakness is pride.  Oedipus is proud.
• Weakness could be anything.  In “Little Red Riding Hood,” the girl talks to a stranger.  That’s a weakness.

strengths/virtues

• There are many different strengths and virtues.
• One strength/virtue is being good in trying times, like Cinderella.
• Another strength/virtue is caring for family, like Little Red Riding Hood.
• Another strength/virtue is being smart, like Oedipus.
• Most protagonists have more than one strength/virtue.

moral constitution

• Often a character will agonize over right and wrong.
• If a character doesn’t agonize and chooses one or the other easily, that is also significant.

protagonist/antagonist

• Does the story revolve around this character’s actions?
• If so, is the character the hero (protagonist) or villain (antagonist)?

complex/simple personality

• Personalities are more likely to be simple in children’s stories, fairy tales, and short stories.
• Personalities are more likely to be complex in longer works.
• Even in short works, such as “The Story of an Hour,” the character’s personality can be complex.  Then it depends on what the author was focusing on.

history and background

• Sometimes a character analysis looks at the history of the individual character.  Was that person mistreated? abused? well-loved? liked?
• Sometimes the history of the work matters more.  Is the story set in World War II?  In ancient Greece?  That makes a difference because culture changes stories.  If you don’t know the culture, though, you may not be able to comment on this.

similarities and differences between the characters

• This could be the foil aspect again.  (See How to write a character analysis for a longer discussion.)
• It could be looking at how characters complement each other.
• It could be looking at why characters would be antagonistic.

character’s function in story

• Is the character an integral character?  (Cinderella)
• Is the character a minor character? (The wicked stepmother in “Cinderella”)
• Is the character someone who could have been left out or is gratuitous? (The second wicked stepsister in “Cinderella.”)

If this post was helpful to you, please leave a note in the comments to let me know. You could point out what was most helpful, so that I will know what I might want to expand later.

Besides the links in the first paragraph, other sources on the website on this topic include:
How to Write a Character Analysis: Introduction
How to Write a Character Analysis: Body Paragraphs
How to Write a Character Analysis: Titles
How to Write a Character Analysis: Conclusion
Questions for Literary Analysis: Theme
Questions for Literary Analysis: Setting
Questions for Literary Analysis: Point of View

As freshman composition instructors, we can help our students gain information literacy by introducing them to and making them a part of the discourse community of the internet. If we presuppose that our students are already computer savvy because of their age, we are doing some of them a disservice (“Writing Technology”). To many students from a low socioeconomic background, the internet, if they use it at all, is simply a new kind of mailbox, sitting empty or collecting junk mail which occasionally needs to be thrown away (Rothbaum, Martland, and Jannsen). We can give them life skills they need, including how to integrate their learning (Abbot and Nantz), while increasing their writing and reading skills and encouraging their completion of college by involving them in an academic community (Tinto). All of this can be done using the internet. I know it can make a difference because I have done it in my classroom.

This is my proposal for TYCA-SW. I have already written the paper, but I figure I shouldn’t publish it until after I’ve presented it. For all I know, they might print the papers. (I don’t think so, but I’ve never been to this conference.)

I’ve been grading finals and teaching. Finals were due for one school on Friday, for the other on Monday. But Monday I had a new class start. So I had to get all of the grading done and in by last Friday. So I did.

Then I started my Brit Lit course. I love this class, but it is a lot of work for me and for the students. Every day we spend three full hours in class reading. Every night they have homework. (It takes between thirty minutes and three hours.) It takes me about that long to grade their homework, too. And we already had an exam. That was an essay test with six long paragraphs. I had to grade those, too. That took about three hours.

And we’re only one third of the way through the class.

Tonight I’ve been working on creating a readable transcript for my son. But no matter what I do, I keep ending up with two pages at least. I don’t know if one would really be better or not. But E will be applying to colleges in the fall, so I need to get the transcript ready.

“Fairness, idealism and other atrocities” from the LA Times.

Please note that the headline follows journalistic rules. If this were part of an English sentence, it should read idealism, and. In other words, all parts of a list, even the one before “and,” needs a punctuation mark, either a comma or a period, if it’s the last one.

Imagine what even a little truth would sound like on today’s campaign trail:

“No, I can’t fix public education. The problem isn’t the teachers unions or a lack of funding for salaries, vouchers or more computer equipment The problem is your kids!”

from The LA Times

Most teachers who leave the profession, leave because almost all of the attention, most of the perks, most of the privileges, and most of the allowances are given to the students who least deserve it: the disruptive kids.

from Scheiss Weekly

I submitted a last minute panel proposal with a gentleman from UofH and a friend from ACU. I hope it is accepted. It’s on things I learned at CC1 and applied at CC2 and I’m really excited about the paper. I hope they are too.

It was very last minute. I think we found out about each other two days ago.

…If this panel is not accepted, I hope I know soon enough to submit the paper to a different conference. I think this is the best one for that paper, but if they don’t like it, I will send it somewhere else.

It has a lot in common with another paper I am working on, but is less practical and more theoretical.

First we can understand the value patterns that these students’ communities have historically championed and call upon those values to encourage our students’ participation in building their fluency in composition. Instead of expecting them to immediately understand the preconceptions and presuppositions from which most of academia operates, we can learn their value patterns and invoke those as a means of engaging them in their own educational development (Sza).

Then we can create a multimodal composition course which predicates a minimal expertise with technology and engage our students, at all levels, by building towards information literacy for everyone that is on par with the most technology-immersed. While the early levels of expertise will be basic to some of our students, they will be a stretch for others. We can enhance student learning for the former by decompartmentalizing their technology knowledge and applying it in new configurations and to new situations (Abbott and Nantz). We can enhance student learning for the latter by helping them develop the skills we as academics take for granted (Hargittai).

I was looking around for something else and I found “Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement”.

It starts with this:

Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted a policy this evening that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online.

My first thought was that the pay sites would not be too happy that the journal articles Harvard folks wrote were available for free from Harvard.

And it apparently limits where Harvard faculty can publish, too.

The policy will allow Harvard authors to publish in any journal that permits posting online after publication.

I think I don’t like this idea at all.

This conference, for two year colleges, is at the end of October, October 30-November 1. The proposals are due June 1st.

I am going to work up a proposal, or two, (I didn’t see anything saying I couldn’t.) and send it in.

I’d like to do one on my classes at CC2 and the computer. I have seen so much growth in that class… Did I write already that I had one student who didn’t know how to capitalize the letters except with caps lock? And by the end of my class, he had written a resume, five blog posts, and made tons of comments on blogs.