How to Write a Brief Character Analysis

How do I get enough information to write a whole page on one character?
Believe it or not, a one or two page character analysis is not long enough to permit you to say everything about a character that can be said (if such a thing could even be done). You have just enough space to make one or two points about the character and provide enough support to make your points persuasive.
We acquire information about dramatic characters in several ways:
· The author may tell us something about the character. Does the character have a symbolic or suggestive name? ("Everyman" is obviously symbolic. But calling a character "Doctor Faustus" or "Lear's Fool" also tells us something.) What is the character wearing? What does the author say about the character, in a prologue to the play or in the stage directions or cast descriptions?
· What the character says (and how he or she says it) can be very revealing. Does the character tell jokes, or is he deadly serious? Does the character tell the truth all the time? Does the character relate information important to the plot?
· What does the character do? Look for places where main characters have choices. Which choice did your character make, and why? That choice says something important about whom the character is. For minor characters, what distinctive things does each character do? That is, what does this character do that no one else does?
· What do other characters say about your character? How do they react to him or her? Their words and reactions are clues to your character's position in the play. Do other characters like your character? Why or why not?

How do I begin the planning and writing of the paper?
It's best not to make judgments about your character until you've gathered a considerable amount of data. After you have read through the play once and are confident that you understand the action, read again to take notes about your character. Make a note of every scene in which your character appears. Jot down potentially revealing actions or lines from the play, including what others say about your him or her. (Be sure to use exact words if you are quoting. Directors can change or omit lines when staging a play. Students and literary critics quote exactly.)
When you have completed your note taking, try to synthesize your material; generalize in a few sentences: What is this character like? What do I know about the character? What can I infer? What dramatic purpose does the character seem to serve in this play? (That is, why do you think the author included the character in the play? Does this character try to influence someone, or stand up for someone? Is this simply a character useful as a confidant to a more important character?) What drives the character? What does the character want to accomplish? (Characters perform actions because they are motivated by a want or need.)

What should be included in my analysis?
In your first sentence, identify the play, the author, and the character you will be discussing. You may need to summarize the character's part in the play, but give only a sentence or two to plot summary of this sort. Early in the paper you'll want make at least one assertion about your character. This is your interpretation of what the character is like and his or her purpose in the play. The remainder of your paper should consist of support for your assertion. If, for example, you assert that King Lear is a completely self-absorbed character, you will want to remind readers of the selfish acts he performs in the play, and any lines said by him or other characters that point to Lear's self-absorption. Try to have at least three pieces of support for every assertion you make.

How do I incorporate character speeches into my paper?
You can refer to scenes or page numbers and paraphrase a character's lines, thus avoiding quotations. Sometimes, though, it is helpful to have a character's exact words. In that case, enclose the lines in quotation marks and incorporate smoothly into your own sentences. Be very careful to include the exact words of the character. In a 1-2 page paper, long quotations should be avoided, as this will leave little room for your own analysis.

What if my interpretation is wrong?
Except perhaps inside a writer's head, there isn't really a "wrong" character interpretation. What we have is: (1) Interpretations that can be persuasively supported, and (2) Interpretations that can't be persuasively supported. Your interpretation can be persuasively supported if you can find evidence in the play (in the form of character actions, words or descriptions) to back up your assertions, and if there is nothing in the play that contradicts your assertions.

How to Ace an Essay Question

1. Read the question carefully, paying particular attention to the wording. What are you being asked to do? How many points does each part count?

2. Budget your time. It's fine to spend more time on whatever part you have the best answer for, but leave time to say something about each part of the essay question.

3. Make notes before you write. Read over the essay question again, and read the reference passage as well. Underline anything you remember from class discussion or homework, and jot notes in the margins. If you recognize something, there's a good chance it's important, and is something you can use in your answer. Take a minute or two to organize your notes, if possible, before you begin your answer. Taking notes insures that you remember to include important terms and points, and it also helps prevent panic over anything unfamiliar in the essay question. When you begin writing your answer, you aren't looking at a blank page. You have your notes to draw from.

4. Avoid wordiness. If you feel that you are repeating yourself, you probably are. Worse, you are wasting precious time saying the same thing several times while not answering the entire question. Long answers that say little are never impressive.

5. Plug in what you know. If you are still stumped on part of an essay question, say what you know about the passage. You may get partial credit, even if you are a little confused on some points.

Here's your essay question from Test 1. Let's look at it as an example of how to get the most possible points with what you already know.

Essay (140 points).

1366 And the mere bottom
has never been sounded by the sons of men.
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:
the hart in flight from persuing hounds
1370 will turn to face them with firm-set horns
and die in the wood rather than dive
beneath its surface. That is no good place.

Using the above lines from Beowulf as your reference point, discuss the poetic conventions of Old English poetry. For full credit, first explain the meaning of the passage and put it in context (50 points). Next, consider at least three characteristics of Old English literature, defining each and giving examples from the above text (90 points).

What do you need to do with this passage? First, you want to try to figure out where in the poem the passage occurs. You may not know the word "mere" (a swamp). But wherever we are, there's a bottom to it, a bottom that has never been "sounded," and a bank. Sounds like water. Who do we know who lived in water? From your studying, you should remember that Beowulf fights three big battles: with Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon. Dragons don't live in water. They live in caves, where they can guard all their treasure. Grendel is described not in his home, but in his entrance at the Heorot mead hall. Beowulf and his men spend the night there so they can lie in wait for Grendel to come, and this is where Beowulf attacks. So that leaves Grendel's mother. This bad place is the swamp where she lives. She is the only monster living in a wet place who is pursued by Beowulf. For confirmation, look at the line numbers. Line 1366? Clearly, we are way into the poem, far the battle with Grendel.This is major information. Explain all this in a sentence or two and you have 50 points.

Now you want to grab the remaining 90 points. Three characteristics of Old English literature, with examples from the text. If you took notes on the days we looked at Beowulf and paid attention to the passages we read in class, and if you studied the terms on the PowerPoints, you'll know the rest of the answer with no problem. If not, your brain may be swirling with some terms, although you may not know the definitions. Let's see. We talked about runes, alliteration, foreshadowing, heroes, caesura, litotes, kennings. Would any of those fit here? The word "heather-stepper" may pop out at you. You may remember the last sentence, which we read in class. All Old English literature had caesura and were written in runes. There's no hero in this passage, and no foreshadowing, but you would get a bit of credit just for mentioning that these were characteristics of Old English literature.

Why was this passage selected, anyhow? Because it contains a lot of things to talk about. There's a kenning here, an example of litotes, and alliteration. There are two clearly defined caesura. Any of those would work. Name one, define it, and give an example from the passage and you've got 30 points.

Finally, here are examples of two answers to this essay question, both of which earned the full 140 points:

In this part of the epic, the author is describing the pool that Grendel's mother resides in. This is where Beowulf must dive if he is to kill Grendel's mother, and the author wants us to know how truly terrible it is. The pool is extraordinarily deep (lines 1366-67) and fearsome. A deer would rather be hunted down and killed than to chance things in the lake. To put it bluntly, "This is no good place" (1372). A common characteristic of Old English literature is the use of litotes. A litote is a gross understatement of something. In this particular passage the author refers to the pool as being "no good place" (1372). He has already alluded to the horror of the place. It's clearly more than just a place that's "not very good"; yet the author uses a litote to describe the place instead of a long string of descriptive words. Another common device is the use of kennings. A kenning is a compound phrase like "whale-road" or "word-hoard" that is used in place of the actual noun. In this passage the kenning is in line 1368, where the author uses the phrase "heather-stepper" as opposed to saying "deer." Alliteration and assonance are additionally common in Old English literature. Alliteration is, of course, the repetition of initial letters in a phrase like "Cairo clan . . . circular" and assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds within the words themselves. In this passage, the alliteration occurs on lines 1368-69 with "heather-stepper halts;/the hart . . . hounds," and the assonance occurs in these same lines with the repetition of the [ɛ] sound in "heather-stepper" and the [ǽ] sound in "halts" and "hart."
--Amber Gibson

(You gotta know your instructor is loving all these references to specific line numbers. The above example is excellent. But here's a much shorter version that also gets all the essential information in.)

The passage from Beowulf is when he is going to fight Grendel's mother. She is a monster no man wants to face. He has to dive underwater for hours to reach the bottom where she stays. This passage starts off with a caesura, which is a pause in the middle of a line. Story tellers used this technique to help remember such a long poem. The kenning "heather-stepper" is also used in the passage. A kenning is a compound word made to represent another word. An example of alliteration in the passage is "the heather-stepper halts." Alliteration is the repetition of sounds. In this case it is the repeated "h" sound.
--Ross Bosch

Ways to Look at a Sonnet

A. Put the following phrases from Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 1, into a bubble diagram to show the connections between ideas:

•I sought words
•That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain,
•1.Pleasure might cause her read,
•2.reading might make her know,
•3. Knowledge might pity win,
•4. pity grace obtain,

•to paint the blackest face of woe,
•Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain.
•Oft turning others' leaves
•to see if thence would flow/Some fresh and fruitful showers
•upon my sunburned brain.

B. Questions to ask about a sonnet:

Shakespeare's Sonnet 12 (pp. 1062-63)
Find the structure:
How many sentences?___________________

Rhyme scheme? _______________________

Divisions (octave/sestet, quatrains/couplet)? ____________________________________

Locate key or puzzling words:
Unfamiliar words? ________________________________________________________

Changed meanings? _______________________________________________________

Pronouns? _______________________________________________________________

Puns, double meanings? ____________________________________________________

Find the thought progression:
Word markers (when, then, for, but, yet, etc.)? __________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________

Anaphora? ______________________________________________________________

Volta? _________________________________________________________________

Note poetic devices:
Images? ________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________

Personification?__________________________________________________________

Metaphors?______________________________________________________________

Similes?_________________________________________________________________

State the main idea in one sentence._________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

C. Finding the structure of a sonnet: (Shakespeare's Sonnet 65, p., 1067). Complete the clauses and answer the questions after the following "structure markers."

•Lines 1-4
•Since . . .
•How ?
•Lines 5-8
•O how ?
•Lines 9-12
•Where ?
•What ?
•Who ?
•Lines 13-14
•O none, unless