Character Analysis

Objective

To construct a persuasive, engaging argument about a chosen character from The Odyssey, Persepolis, GraceLand, Wide Sargasso Sea, or In Evil Hour using references to specific quotations and other appropriate details as evidence in support of your claims.

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 codes, 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 about a character's virtues or faults and over their status as "hero" or "villain."

In this paper, you will want to choose one character from The Odyssey, Persepolis, GraceLand, Wide Sargasso Sea, or In Evil Hour. Choose the work that interests you the most and a character whose experiences and/or behavior in the work give you a basis for a solid argument. The argument can be about the character's qualities or importance or both. Be sure that your paper's thesis is arguable. We will discuss this idea of arguability in class, but the basic idea is that a reasonable person should be able to argue the opposite of your thesis.

Support your argument by including several quotations from the book. Such quotations might be from the writer's description or illustration of the 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 blanks in many of these statements for you to fill in as you adapt them into a thesis statement. You may wish to revise the statement even further.

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. This character only gets to know himself/herself when . . . (insert a key moment from the story that is the turning point in the character's development).

4. 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 set of claims.

• 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 does the character integrate 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 2021 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 provides a hint of authorial attitudes toward their 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, counterparts, or opposites 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 work in supporting your argument. At some point, write an outline of your argument, so you can make its structure as clear as possible to your readers.

4. Bring a word-processed, properly formatted draft to class on November 18th, 2021, for peer editing in class.

5. Revise your draft in response to the feedback you have received from your peer editor/s.

6. Having completed your revisions, proofread your paper. Watch out for typos, incorrect punctuation and other problems. Do not hesitate to look these rules up in a style manual—many are available in the UMD Library, such as the MLA Handbook, Eighth Edition. Remember, too that the Writer's Workshop is available to offer students assistance with papers such as this. Feel free to bring any writing project at any stage in the writing process. To make an appointment, visit "https://d.umn.edu/writwork/".

7. Turn in the completed final draft and peer-edited working draft on November 30th, 2021, in class.

Writing Tips

I have developed these tips from my experiences grading various student assignments over the years.

1. Follow the MLA format for citations. Include a list of works cited at the end according to MLA format as follows (in this case, it will probably include only one work). The syllabus for this course lists all of the required readings in the MLA format, so you should be able to use that list to provide a correct citation for the end of your paper.

2. Some grammatical tips:

   1. Avoid using the passive voice whenever it is possible to do so. When writing in the passive voice, you remove the subject from the sentence or at least de-emphasize it. This makes writing less engaging to most readers.

      Example:

      ACTIVE VOICE: Isabella eats rice pilaf.
      (Note structure: subject/verb/object)

      PASSIVE VOICE: Rice pilaf is eaten.
      (Structure: object/"to be" verb/past participle)

      ACTIVE VOICE: Isabella ate rice pilaf.
                  } Passive voice can exist in any verb tense.

      PASSIVE VOICE: Rice pilaf was eaten.
      

   2. 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).

   3. Italicization is the best way to signal that you are referring to a word itself and not to the thing that the word represents. You should also italicize titles of books (even in parenthetical references and lists of works cited) and foreign-language words like je ne sais quoi.

   4. The word it's (with an apostrophe) is a contraction of it is. The word its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive of it. Its and whose both deviate from standard rules governing possessives.

   5. Commas. These are tricky little bits of punctuation, and your best bet is to look them up in a style manual. All the same, there are two things I can mention here. First, a comma is a very fragile, spindly, little thing, and it is not strong enough to string two grammatically complete sentences together all by itself. When you use a comma for this purpose, it is called a comma splice (and also, possibly, a run-on sentence).

      Example:

      WRONG:I am never going back to Las Vegas, I lose too much money there.

      CORRECT: I am never going back to Las Vegas because I lose too much money there.

      ALSO CORRECT: I am never going back to Las Vegas. I lose too much money there.

      Second, if the first word of your sentence is not the subject of the sentence, then it is a good idea to use a comma to separate the subject from whatever precedes it. If only one word precedes the subject, then this rule is optional, but a whole phrase really does need a comma after it before you get on with the rest of the sentence.

      Example:

      WRONG: At the turn of the century America was fast becoming a global power.

      CORRECT: At the turn of the century, America was fast becoming a global power.

      OPTIONAL: Yesterday, we ate strawberries.

      OR: Yesterday we ate strawberries.

   6. More about commas. A comma must precede a conjunction (and, or, but, because, yet, etc.) separating two clauses if there is a second subject-verb pair after the conjunction. If there is only a second verb, but for the same subject as before (and you are not repeating the subject), then you should not put a comma before the conjunction.

      NO COMMA: Erica went to Cloquet and ate a nice meal.

      COMMA: Erica went to Cloquet, and Fred stayed home.

      COMMA: Erica went to Cloquet, and she ate a nice meal.

   7. Type a hyphen (-) twice to produce a dash (--). In Microsoft Word® a double hyphen will become a dash automatically, if you—trust me on this one—set it to do so in "Autoformat as you type" under the "Autoformat..." menu. However, it is a good idea to avoid using too many dashes in a paper. Commas often accomplish the same thing more gracefully.

   8. Verb tense. Though it may seem peculiar at first, it is customary to refer to events in a story in the present tense. In discussions of the literature in class, you will notice that we tend to follow this rule as well. Keep to the present tense in your papers.

      Sometimes, this is hard to do, especially when discussing the author's life: "Elvis grew up in Nigeria in the wake of the Biafran War." It makes sense to refer to author's life in the past tense in this case, but return to the present tense when addressing events in the story: "GraceLand tells the story of a teenage boy growing up in Lagos the wake of the Biafran War."

      Every once in a while, it is necessary to refer to past event in the story that you are discussing in the present tense. The present perfect tense is often useful in this case: "While living with his father in Lagos, Elvis frequently thinks about the village he has left behind in Nigeria's Igbo region."

Paper Grading Standards