how to use characterization in an essay

Writing a Character Analysis Essay | Step-by-Step Guide

I’m also going to give you a ton of examples.

This post is split into four parts for easy navigation:

• What is a Character Analysis Essay?
• What is the best Format to Use?
• 11 Character Analysis Example Ideas
• Template, Checklist and Outline for Your own Piece

In this post, I’m going to explain to you clearly and in a step-by-step way how to conduct a character analysis.

1. What is a Character Analysis Essay?

Let’s get you started with some really simple details about what a character analysis is:

• A Quick Definition: A character analysis essay zooms-in on a character in a book, movie or even real life. It provides what we sometimes call a ‘sketch’ of a character.
• The Purpose of a Character Analysis: The purpose of a character analysis is to reveal interesting details about the character that might contain a broader moral message about the human condition. For example, Atticus Finch is not just a lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird. Rather, he provides us with a moral message about the importance of doing what you believe is right even though you know you will likely fail.

2. What is the best Character Analysis Essay Format?

Character analysis essays do not have just one format.

However, let me offer some advice that might act as a character analysis essay outline or ‘checklist’ of possible things you could discuss:

1. Start with the Simple Details.

You can start a character analysis by providing a simple, clear description of who your character is. Look at some basic identity traits such as:

• Race (if relevant)
• Social class (if relevant)
• Protagonist or Antagonist? A protagonist is the character who is our central character in the plot; the antagonist is often the protagonist’s opponent or challenger.
• Major or minor character?

2. What are the character’s distinctive personality features?

Your character might have some really clearly identifiable character traits. It’s best to highlight in your character analysis the exact traits that this character possesses. Some common character traits include:

I recommend you take a moment to write down what you think the top 3 to 5 words are that you’d use to explain your character’s personality traits. These will be important to discuss throughout your character analysis.

Sometimes a character may start out with some personality traits, but change over the course of the text. This is quite common; and one clear example of this is Lady Macbeth she deteriorates from a cutthroat power player to a guilt ridden shell of a person roaming the halls of the castle. This dramatic character change is something that makes her very interesting, and is worthy of discussion!

3. What are the character’s key relationships?

Does your character have a close relationship with a certain person in the storyline?

You might want to discuss the character’s relationships as a part of your character analysis. These relationships may reveal some key personality traits of your character.

For example, in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Horatio is the loyal offsider to Hamlet. Through his actions in staying by Hamlet through thick and thin, we learn that he is a deeply loyal character.

Examining the character’s relationships with their friends and foes therefore is very useful for digging deeper into who this character actually is, and what personality traits they have when they are put to the test within the narrative.

4. What are the character’s motivations?

Another thing you might want to examine are the character’s motivations . What do they desire most in the world? Some common motivations for characters in stories are:

• A simple life
• To serve others

This list really could be endless, but I hope the above examples give you a bit of an idea of the sorts of traits to look out for. By mentioning and examining the motivations of the character, we will come closer and closer to learning exactly what moral message this character might be able to tell us.

5. What are the character’s key conflicts?

Stories tend to have a beginning, a complication, and a resolution.

The complication involves conflicts and challenges that need to be overcome. For Edmund in Narnia, it’s cowardice. For Romeo and Juliet, it’s the conflict between love and family loyalty. Here’s some other common conflicts for characters:

• Whether to stay loyal to a friend;
• To overcome obstacles to love;
• To seek a way out of a challenging situation;
• To escape war or poverty;
• To persevere through imprisonment;
• To overcome personal fear

Again, this list is endless.

Knowing the character’s core conflict gets us even closer to knowing the moral that the character is trying to teach us.

For example, in Romeo and Juliet, the challenge of Romeo and Juliet being together despite their families’ objections teaches us something. Personally, I believe it teaches us the importance of letting go of old grudges in order to let love bloom.

This moral lesson was taught to us through conflict: namely, the conflict that Romeo and Juliet were right in the center of.

6. What are the character’s epiphanies?

Sometimes a character has an epiphany. This often happens towards the end of the story and helps the character overcome the challenge or conflict that we discussed in the point above.

Here’s an example of an epiphany:

• In the Lion King, Simba runs away from his tribe to live in exile. After a chance encounter with his childhood friend Nala, he has an epiphany that he has a duty to his tribe. This leads him back home to fight Scar and return freedom to Pride Rock.

Not all characters have an epiphany. But, if they do, I strongly encourage you to write about it in your character analysis.

7. Examine the moral message the character teaches us.

Finally, conclude by examining the moral message behind the character. Nearly every character has something to teach the reader. Authors put a lot of thought into creating complex characters with whom we can relate. We relate to the character and say “wow, they taught me a lesson about something!”

The lesson might be something like:

• Money doesn’t buy happiness;
• Loyalty to family comes above all else;
• Love gives life meaning;
• Honesty is always the best policy

This is the core of your character analysis essay. If you can pick out exactly what moral message the character teaches you, you’ll be well on your way to writing a strong character analysis.

Below I’m going to give you some examples to help you out. I know it can be hard to really get your head around a character, so sometimes the best thing is to look at some samples!

3. Here’s 13 Example Character Analysis Essay Ideas.

Most times when we create a character analysis, we’re exploring the deeper moral stories / aspects of humanity. Here’s some example ideas. I’ve tried to outline in less than a paragraph exactly what your key point will be about each character:

• Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird: A character who teaches us a lesson about standing up for what’s right, even if you know you’re likely to lose.
• Huckleberry Finn from Huckleberry Finn: A character who reveals our inner desire for freedom from the elements of society that constrain us.
• Dudley from Harry Potter: A character whose personality tells us a cautionary tale of the perils of middle-class narcissism, parents’ desire to wrap their children in cotton wool, and the lack of discipline we perceive in contemporary childhoods.
• Jack from Lord of the Flies: A character who represents the innate desire for power that seems to lurk not too far from the surface of the human condition. When social structures are stripped away, he quickly reverts to violence and superstition to assert control over his peers.
• Lady Macbeth from Macbeth: Lady Macbeth teaches us a valuable lesson about the perils of contravening our own morality. She starts out a cutthroat killer but is increasingly consumed by the guilt of her own actions. While we may be able to escape full punishment from outside forces, it is the inner guilt that might eat us away to our last.
• The Boy who Cried Wolf: The boy who cried wolf is a character whose fatal flaw is his desire for attention and adulation. His repeated attempts at gaining the attention of others leads the townspeople to no longer take him seriously, which causes him harm when he actually needs the villagers to take him seriously to save his life. He teaches us the virtue of honest and humility.
• Nick Carraway from the Great Gatsby: Nick shows us all the inner conflict between the trappings of wealth, glamor and spectacle; and the desire for simplicity, honesty and community. He is drawn by the dazzling world of East Egg, New York, but by the end of the novel sees live in East Egg as shallow and lacking the moral depth of his former life in small town Minnesota.
• Alice from Alice in Wonderland: In many ways, Alice represents the child within all of us. She is a character of goodwill to all and who looks upon the world (or, rather, Wonderland) with awe. Travelling with a cadre of flawed characters, she learns with them the importance of seeking strength from within.
• The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet: Like many Shakespearian characters, the nurse’s role is both as loyal confidante to a central character and comic relief. Shakespeare uses minor characters to regale his crowd and sustain viewer interest between scenes.
• Lucy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Lucy represents a surprising character whose youthfulness and small stature make her an underrated character by all around her. Nonetheless, she possesses within the bravery and loyalty necessary to carry out the quest for Aslan. Lucy represents the goodness in children and, by extension, all of mankind.
• Anne in Anne of Green Gables: Anne occupies the typical literary role of young girls in many classical novels: she represents innocence and wonder, and her contraventions of rules are seen through a prism of childhood innocence. This frames Anne not as a deviant but as a precious soul.
• Simba from The Lion King: Simba’s story follows his struggle with growing up, embracing his destiny and duty to his family, or fleeing towards freedom and a ‘no worries’ lifestyle. Simba flees Pride Rock and goes through an existential crisis with his existentialist friends Timon and Pumba. When he runs into an old childhood friend, he realizes how shallow his new carefree life has become and reflects upon his obligation to his community back home.
• Woody from Toy Story: Woody starts out Andy’s favorite toy, but when Andy gets a new flashier toy, Woody’s status amongst the toys falls apart. Woody’s key character challenge is to learn to be humble and inclusive living within the group. By the end of the movie, Woody realizes his duty to love and serve Andy is more important than his own status within the group.

4. Here’s an Example Template for your own Character Analysis Essay

Feel free to use this brainstorming template to get you started with your character analysis essay. I recommend filling out as many of these key points as you can, but remember sometimes you might have to skip some of these points if they’re not relevant to your character.

Once you’ve brainstormed the ideas in Table 1, follow the character analysis essay outline in Table 2 to stay on track for your character analysis essay. Do remember though that each assignment will be different and you should adjust it based on your teacher’s requirements.

Here’s Table 1, which is a brainstorming template for your character analysis essay:

And here’s Table 2, which is an example character analysis essay outline. This is for a 1500 word character analysis essay. Change the word count according to how long your essay should be:

Read Also: 39 Better Ways to Write ‘In Conclusion’ in an Essay

Character analyses can be really tough. You need to know your character really well. You might even need to re-read (or watch) your book or movie a few times over to get to know the character really well.

I recommend when you re-read or re-watch the text before you write your character analysis, have the checklist I provided above handy and take notes. Then, use the essay outline I provided above to put all of those notes together into a clear and thorough final character analysis essay.

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Characterization

Characterization Definition

What is characterization? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Characterization is the representation of the traits, motives, and psychology of a character in a narrative. Characterization may occur through direct description, in which the character's qualities are described by a narrator, another character, or by the character him or herself. It may also occur indirectly, in which the character's qualities are revealed by his or her actions, thoughts, or dialogue.

Some additional key details about characterization:

• Early studies of literature, such as those by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, saw plot as more important than character. It wasn't until the 15th century that characters, and therefore characterization, became more crucial parts of narratives.
• Characterization became particularly important in the 19th century, with the rise of realist novels that sought to accurately portray people.

Characterization Pronunciation

Here's how to pronounce characterization: kar-ack-ter-ih- zey -shun

Direct and Indirect Characterization

Authors can develop characterization in two ways: directly and indirectly. It's important to note that these two methods are not mutually exclusive. Most authors can and do use both direct and indirect methods of characterization to develop their characters.

Direct Characterization

In direct characterization, the author directly describes a character's qualities. Such direct description may come from a narrator, from another character, or through self-description by the character in question. For instance, imagine the following dialogue between two characters:

"That guy Sam seems nice." "Oh, no. Sam's the worst. He acts nice when you first meet him, but then he'll ask you for money and never return it, and eat all your food without any offering anything in return, and I once saw him throw a rock at a puppy. Thank God he missed."

Here the second speaker is directly characterizing Sam as being selfish and cruel. Direct characterization is also sometimes called "explicit characterization."

Indirect Characterization

In indirect characterization, rather than explicitly describe a character's qualities, an author shows the character as he or she moves through the world, allowing the reader to infer the character's qualities from his or her behavior. Details that might contribute to the indirect characterization of a character are:

• The character's thoughts.
• The character's actions.
• What a character says (their choice of words)
• How a character talks (their tone, dialect, and manner of speaking)
• The character's appearance
• The character's movements and mannerisms
• How the character interacts with others (and how others react to the character)

Indirect characterization is sometimes called "implicit characterization."

Indirect Characterization in Drama

It's worth noting that indirect characterization has an additional layer in any art form that involves actors, including film, theater, and television. Actors don't just say the words on the script. They make choices about how to say those words, how to move their own bodies and in relation to other character. In other words, actors make choices about how to communicate all sorts of indirect details. As a result, different actors can portray the same characters in vastly different ways.

For instance, compare the way that the the actor Alan Bates plays King Claudius in this play-within-a-play scene from the 1990 movie of Hamlet, versus how Patrick Stewart plays the role in the same scene from a 2010 version. While Bates plays the scene with growing alarm and an outburst of terror that reveals his guilt, Stewart plays his Claudius as ice cold and offended, but by no means tricked by Hamlet's little play-within-a-play into revealing anything.

Round and Flat Characters

Characters are often described as being either round or flat.

• Round characters : Are complex, realistic, unique characters.
• Flat characters : Are one-dimensional characters, with a single overarching trait and otherwise limited personality or individuality.

Whether a character is round or flat depends on their characterization. In some cases, an author may purposely create flat characters, particularly if those characters will appear only briefly and only for a specific purpose. A bully who appears in a single scene of a television show, for instance, might never get or need more characterization than the fact that they act like a bully.

But other times authors may create flat characters unintentionally when round characters were necessary, and such characters can render a narrative dull, tensionless, and unrealistic.

Character Archetypes

Some types of characters appear so often in narratives that they come to seen as archetypes —an original, universal model of which each particular instance is a kind of copy. The idea of the archetype was first proposed by the psychologist Carl Jung, who proposed that there were twelve fundamental "patterns" that define the human psyche. He defined these twelve archetypes as the:

While many have disagreed with the idea that any such twelve patterns actually psychologically define people, the idea of archetypes does hold a lot of sway among both those who develop and analyze fictional characters. In fact, another way to define round and flat character is to think about them as they relate to archetypes:

• Flat characters are easy to define by a single archetype, and they do not have unique personal backgrounds, traits, or psychology that differentiates them from that archetype in a meaningful way.
• Round characters may have primary aspects that fit with a certain archetype, but they also may be the combination of several archetypes and also have unique personal backgrounds, behaviors, and psychologies that make them seem like individuals even as they may be identifiable as belonging to certain archetypes.

Good characterization often doesn't involve an effort to avoid archetype altogether—archetypes are archetypes, after all, because over human history they've proved to be excellent subjects for stories. But successful authors will find ways to make their characters not just archetypes. They might do so by playing with or subverting archetypes in order to create characters who are unexpected or new, or more generally create characters whose characterization makes them feel so unique and individual that their archetype feels more like a framework or background rather than the entirety of who that character is.

Characterization Examples

The characters of nearly every story—whether in literature, film, or any other narrative—have some characterization. Here are some examples of different types of characterization.

Characterization in Hamlet

The famous literary critic Harold Bloom has argued in his book The Invention of the Human that "Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention." Whether or not you agree with that, there's no doubting that Shakespeare was a master of characterization. One way he achieved such characterization was through his characters delivering soliloquies . The excerpt of a soliloquy below is from Hamlet , in which Hamlet considers suicide:

To be, or not to be? That is the question— Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep— No more—and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.

Hamlet's soliloquy is not simply him saying what he thinks. As he delivers the soliloquy, he discovers what he thinks. When he says "To die, to sleep. To sleep," he is all-in on the idea that suicide is the right course. His words "perchance to dream" flow directly out of his thoughts about death as being like "sleep." And with his positive thoughts of death as sleep, when he first says "perchance to dream" he's thinking about having good dreams. But as he says the words he realizes they are deeper than he originally thought, because in that moment he realizes that he doesn't actually know what sort of dreams he might experience in death—they might be terrible, never-ending nightmares. And suddenly the flow of his logic leaves him stuck.

In showing a character experiencing his own thoughts the way that real people experience their thoughts, not as a smooth flow but as ideas that spark new and different and unexpected ideas, Shakespeare gives Hamlet a powerful humanity as a character. By giving Hamlet a soliloquy on the possible joy of suicide he further captures Hamlet's current misery and melancholy. And in showing how much attention Hamlet pays to the detail of his logic, he captures Hamlet's rather obsessive nature. In other words, in just these 13 lines Shakespeare achieves a great deal of characterization.

Characterization in The Duchess of Malfi

In his play the The Duchess of Malfi , John Webster includes an excellent example of direct characterization. In this speech, the character Antonio tells his friend about Duke Ferdinand:

The Duke there? A most perverse and turbulent nature; What appears in him mirth is merely outside. If he laugh heartily, it is to laugh All honesty out of fashion. … He speaks with others' tongues, and hears men's suits With others' ears; will seem to sleep o’th' bench Only to entrap offenders in their answers; Dooms men to death by information, Rewards by hearsay.

Ferdinand directly describes the Duke as deceitful, perverse, and wild, and as a kind of hollow person who only ever laughs for show. It is a devastating description, and one that turns out to be largely accurate.

Characterization in The Great Gatsby

Here's another example of direct characterization, this time from The Great Gatsby . Here, Nick Carraway, the narrator of the novel, describes Tom and Daisy Buchanan near the end of the novel.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

But The Great Gatsby, like essentially all other literature, doesn't solely rely on direct characterization. Here is Nick, earlier in the novel, describing Gatsby:

He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.

This is an example of indirect characterization. Nick isn't describing Gatsby character directly, instead he's describing how Gatsby is behaving, what Gatsby is doing. But that physical description—Gatsby reaching out with trembling arms toward a distant and mysterious green light—communicates fundamental aspects of Gatsby's character: his overwhelming yearning and desire, and perhaps also the fragility inherent such yearning.

Why Do Writers Use Characterization?

Characterization is a crucial aspect of any narrative literature, for the simple reason that complex, interesting characters are vital to narrative literature. Writers therefore use the techniques of characterization to develop and describe characters':

• Motivations
• History and background
• Interests and desires
• Skills and talents
• Self-conception, quirks, and neuroses

Such characteristics in turn make characters seem realistic and also help to drive the action of the plot, as a plot is often defined by the clash of actions and desires of its various characters.

Other Helpful Characterization Resources

• Wikipedia entry on characterization: A brief but thorough entry.
• Archetypal characters: The website TV tropes has built a vast compendium of different archetypal characters that appear in film and television (and by extension to books).
• Encyclopedia Britannica on characters: A short entry on flat and round characters.

• PDFs for all 136 Lit Terms we cover
• Downloads of 1924 LitCharts Lit Guides
• Teacher Editions for every Lit Guide
• Explanations and citation info for 40,556 quotes across 1924 books
• Downloadable (PDF) line-by-line translations of every Shakespeare play
• Flat Character
• Round Character
• Onomatopoeia
• Point of View
• Climax (Plot)
• Slant Rhyme
• Tragic Hero
• Anthropomorphism
• External Conflict

How to Write a Character Analysis Essay

A character analysis essay is a challenging type of essay students usually write for literature or English courses. In this article, we will explain the definition of character analysis and how to approach it. We will also touch on how to analyze characters and guide you through writing character analysis essays.

Typically, this kind of writing requires students to describe the character in the story's context. This can be fulfilled by analyzing the relationship between the character in question and other personas. Although, sometimes, giving your personal opinion and analysis of a specific character is also appropriate.

Let's explain the specifics of how to do a character analysis by getting straight to defining what is a character analysis. Our term paper writers will have you covered with a thorough guide!

What Is a Character Analysis Essay?

The character analysis definition explains the in-depth personality traits and analyzes characteristics of a certain hero. Mostly, the characters are from literature, but sometimes other art forms, such as cinematography. In a character analysis essay, your main job is to tell the reader who the character is and what role they play in the story. Therefore, despite your personal opinion and preferences, it is really important to use your critical thinking skills and be objective toward the character you are analyzing. A character analysis essay usually involves the character's relationship with others, their behavior, manner of speaking, how they look, and many other characteristics.

Although it's not a section about your job experience or education on a resume, sometimes it is appropriate to give your personal opinion and analysis of a particular character.

What Is the Purpose of a Character Analysis Essay

More than fulfilling a requirement, this type of essay mainly helps the reader understand the character and their world. One of the essential purposes of a character analysis essay is to look at the anatomy of a character in the story and dissect who they are. We must be able to study how the character was shaped and then learn from their life. 

A good example of a character for a character analysis essay is Daisy Buchanan from 'The Great Gatsby.' The essay starts off by explaining who Daisy is and how she relates to the main character, Jay Gatsby. Depending on your audience, you need to decide how much of the plot should be included. If the entire class writes an essay on Daisy Buchanan, it is logical to assume everyone has read the book. Although, if you know for certain that your audience has little to no knowledge of who she is, it is crucial to include as much background information as possible. 

After that, you must explain the character through certain situations involving her and what she said or did. Make sure to explain to the reader why you included certain episodes and how they have showcased the character. Finally, summarize everything by clearly stating the character's purpose and role in the story. 

We also highly recommend reading how to write a hook for an essay .

Still Need Help with Your Character Analysis Essay?

Different types of characters.

To make it clear how a reader learns about a character in the story, you should note that several characters are based on their behaviors, traits, and roles within a story. We have gathered some of them, along with vivid examples from famous literature and cinema pieces:

Types of Characters

• Major : These are the main characters; they run the story. Regularly, there are only one or two major characters. Major characters are usually of two types: the protagonist – the good guy, and the antagonist: the bad guy or the villain. 
• Protagonist (s) (heroes): The main character around whom most of the plot revolves. 

For example, Othello from Shakespeare's play, Frodo from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Harry Potter from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, and Elizabeth Bennet from 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen.

• Antagonist (s): This is the person that is in opposition to the protagonist. This is usually the villain, but it could also be a natural power, set of circumstances, majestic being, etc. 

For example, Darth Vader from the Star Wars series by George Lucas, King Joffrey from Game of Thrones, or the Wicked Queen from 'Snow White and Seven Dwarfs.'

• Minor : These characters help tell the major character's tale by letting them interact and reveal their personalities, situations, and/or stories. They are commonly static (unchanging). The minor characters in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien would be the whole Fellowship of the ring. In their own way, each member of the Fellowship helps Frodo get the ring to Mordor; without them, the protagonist would not be a protagonist and would not be able to succeed. In the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, minor characters are Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger. They consistently help Harry Potter on his quests against Voldemort, and, like Frodo, he wouldn't have succeeded without them.

On top of being categorized as a protagonist, antagonist, or minor character, a character can also be dynamic, static, or foil.

• Dynamic (changing): Very often, the main character is dynamic.

An example would also be Harry Potter from the book series by J.K. Rowling. Throughout the series, we see Harry Potter noticing his likeness to Voldemort. Nevertheless, Harry resists these traits because, unlike Voldemort, he is a good person and resists any desire to become a dark wizard.

• Static (unchanging): Someone who does not change throughout the story is static.

A good example of a static character is Atticus Finch from “How to Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. His character and views do not change throughout the book. He is firm and steady in his beliefs despite controversial circumstances. 

• Foils : These characters' job is to draw attention to the main character(s) to enhance the protagonist's role.

‍ A great example of a foil charact e r is Dr. Watson from the Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle.

How to Analyze a Character 

While preparing to analyze your character, make sure to read the story carefully.

• Pay attention to the situations where the character is involved, their dialogues, and their role in the plot.
• Make sure you include information about what your character achieves on a big scale and how they influence other characters.
• Despite the categories above, try thinking outside the box and explore your character from around.
• Avoid general statements and being too basic. Instead, focus on exploring the complexities and details of your character(s).

How to Write a Character Analysis Essay?

To learn how to write a character analysis essay and gather a more profound sense of truly understanding these characters, one must completely immerse themself in the story or literary piece.

• Take note of the setting, climax, and other important academic parts.
• You must be able to feel and see through the characters. Observe how analysis essay writer shaped these characters into life.
• Notice how little or how vast the character identities were described.
• Look at the characters' morals and behaviors and how they have affected situations and other characters throughout the story.
• Finally, observe the characters whom you find interesting. 

Meanwhile, if you need help writing a paper, leave us a message ' write my paper .'

How Do You Start a Character Analysis Essay

When writing a character analysis essay, first, you have to choose a character you'd like to write about. Sometimes a character will be readily assigned to you. It's wise to consider characters who play a dynamic role in the story. This will captivate the reader as there will be much information about these personas.

Read the Story

You might think that if you already have read the book, there is no need to do so again; however, now that you know the character you would like to focus on, reading it again will have plenty of benefits. It will give you an opportunity to be more precise while reading the scenes that relate directly to your character and are important for his/her analysis. While reading the book, pay attention to every tiny detail to make sure you grasp the whole array of your character's traits. 

Consider the following things:

• What specific descriptions does the author provide for each character?

For example, when J.K. Rowling describes Harry Potter for the first time, she describes his clothes as old and oversized, his hair untidy, and his glasses as broken. It might seem just like a simple description, but she expresses compassion and pity for an orphan neglected by his only relatives. 

• What kinds of relationships does your character have with others?

Think about how Harry builds up his friendships with others. First, he and Ron do not like Hermione because she acts like a know-it-all, but when she gets stuck in the dungeons with a horrendous troll, he rushes to save her regardless. 

• How do the actions of the character move the plot forward?

In 'The Philosopher's Stone,' Harry is very observant of any events taking place at school. He analyzes people's actions, which builds up the plot around the stone and its importance for the magical world.

Get help with your character analysis from our experts.

Choose a Dynamic Character

Choosing a dynamic character is a great idea. This does not necessarily have to be the protagonist, but a character that undergoes many changes has grown throughout the story and is not boring and/or static. This gives you a perfect advantage to fully show the character and make your paper entertaining and engaging for the reader. If you choose a character that is not very dynamic, your essay might seem monotonous because your character will not end up doing much and will not be very involved in the story.

While you are reading, it is useful to take notes or highlight/underline any of the critical elements of the story. This will add depth to your character description(s). By providing vivid and specific examples, you connect your reader to the character, and the character comes alive in their eyes. Review your notes and formulate the main idea about your character when you're finished reading with your character in mind.

Make an initial draft while taking note of the character analysis essay outline provided by your instructor. You may follow the recommended character analysis essay format if you have not been provided with a sample.

Choose a Main Idea

While reading the story, make sure you keep track of your notes. It is a good idea to look at them, choose the ones that are the most representative of your character and find patterns. This will be your thesis. Then, you must support this idea with examples and situations involving your character. 

If your character were Jem Finch from 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee, the main idea would be how his personal character is shaped through racial conflicts, social inequalities, and internal struggles between public opinion, his own views, and what is actually right. Essaypro offers you history essay help. Leave us a notice if you need to proofread, edit, or write your essay.

Character Analysis Questions

Now that you have jotted down some main concepts about your character, here is a list of questions that can help you fill in the blanks you might still have:

• Where do the events involving your character take place?
• What are the relationships between your character and other significant characters?
• What is the primary change your character has gone through throughout the story?
• What is your character's background?
• What is your character's occupation?
• What kind of emotions does your character go through?
• What are your character's values?
• What is your character's value?
• Does your character have friends?
• Is there a lesson your character has learned by the end of the story?
• Does the character achieve the goals he/she has set for himself/herself?

Make a Character Analysis Essay Outline

When you're unsure how to write a character synopsis, remember that creating a literary analysis outline is one of the most critical steps. A well-constructed character analysis outline will keep your thoughts and ideas organized.

Character Analysis Essay Introduction:

Make the introduction to your paper brief and meaningful. It should hold together your entire essay and spark your audience's interest. Write a short description of the character in question. Don't forget to include a character analysis thesis statement which should make a case for the character's relevance within the narrative context.

Character Analysis Essay Body:

Subdivide your body paragraphs into different ideas or areas regarding the character. Look at your professor's rubric and ensure you'll be able to tackle all the requirements. You should also be provided with questions to be answered to formulate your analysis better. The body should answer the following questions:

• What is the character's physical appearance, personality, and background?
• What are the conflicts the character experiences, and how did he/she overcome them?
• What can we learn from this character?
• What is the meaning behind the character's actions? What motivates him/her?
• What does the character do? How does he/she treat others? Is he/she fair or unjust?
• What does the character say? What is his/her choice of words? Does he/she have a rich vocabulary?
• How does the character describe themself? How do others describe him/her?
• What words do you associate with the character? Perhaps a word like 'hope,' 'bravery,' or maybe even 'freedom'?

Character Analysis Essay Conclusion:

It's time to master the secrets of how to write character analysis essay conclusions. Your ending should also hold your ideas together and shape a final analysis statement. Mention things about the character's conflicts that we could experience in real life. Additionally, you can write about how a character should've reacted to a certain situation.

Character Analysis Essay Example

Read our blogs ‘Character Analysis of Jem Finch', 'The Great Gatsby Book Through Daisy Buchanan Character,' 'Analysis of Characters in Beowulf,' or simply use these character analysis essay examples to reference your paper. You might also be interested in a synthesis essay example .

Now that you know what is character analysis, it might be time to choose a character to write about. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to type ' do my homework for me ,' you should contact our writers. You also get a free plagiarism report, formatting, and citing when  buying an essay from us!

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5 Chapter 5: Analyzing Characterization

Chapter 5: Analyzing Characterization

Let’s begin with a pretty obvious point: a character is not a person. We sometimes can lose ourselves in characters, identify with characters, and feel like we know characters when they are drawn particularly well, but a character is always a construct of language, an effect of words on a page. A character is a fictional rendering of an individual (usually a human being, but robots, animals, and supernatural creatures can also be characters) who engages in activities that make up part of the plot of a narrative. Characterization is the process by which characters are developed over the course of a narrative.

In analyzing  for characterization, we can’t just give our impressions of what defines a character (such as “this is a selfless, heroic character” or “this is a psychologically divided, traumatized character”), we have to “show our work” in breaking down how the character has been constituted in this way and to what ends: what details paint this character as traumatized and what does the character then say or show about the nature of trauma?

So what are the various techniques that works of fiction use to create senses of character?

• Actions: As in the old cliché “actions speak louder than words,” what characters do are one of the principle things that define them. Does a character’s actions show that they are ambitious? Avaricious? Selfless? Keep in mind that what characters do may clash with what they say–the narrator in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” talks about what a circumspect individual he is on one page, then proceeds to snoop around in an employee’s desk the next page, showing that he (and perhaps the capitalist world he stands for) is a hypocrite.
• Names: Names can say a lot about a character. They can indicate their ethnic, regional, national, and/or religious background. They may allude to a figure from literature, history, or some religious tradition (see chapter 9 on allusion), in which case we are being asked to see in this character either some attribute(s) or quality from the figure being alluded to or their antithesis (this would be what we call an ironic usage of allusion). For instance, a character named Napoleon might have the strategic brilliance or the psychological overcompensation for physical lack of the historical Napoleon. Or this character, in an ironic naming, might be totally at ease with themself and totally lacking in grand strategizing or vision. Names generally mean something in their language of origin, which is certainly worth looking up to get a better grasp of character. For example, my given name Michael means “who is like God?” (with the implication being no one is) in ancient Hebrew and my surname, Walonen, means “little light” in Finnish. If I were a fictional character, you would be compelled to ask if that less-than-deific meaning of my given name is the most important meaning being played off of in the makeup of my character, or perhaps the allusion to the biblical archangel. And my last name could be taken to mean that my character is good, illuminating, but not grandiosely so, or that the light I cast is fairly insignificant—because names can be symbolic in their meaning, that is, they can represent ideas.
• Dialogue: Dialogue is the representation of character speech. What characters say can show us profound things about their beliefs, motivations, and temperament. But language, fraught with social prejudices as it is, can also show us things about someone’s socio-economic status, their regional or national origins, their level of formal education, and so forth as well. For example, at one point the narrator’s stepfather in George Saunders’s story “Sea Oak” says, “It’s the freaking American way-you start out in a dangerous craphole and work hard so you can someday move up to a somewhat less dangerous craphole. And finally maybe you get a mansion. But at this rate you ain’t even gonna make it to the somewhat less dangerous craphole.” From the patterns of language here we can infer that the character is brusque, lacking in refinement, and probably not very formally educated. While he espouses fairly conventional ideas regarding the American Dram here, these facts should dissuade us from taking what he says as necessarily an accurate statement about the world.
• Physical appearance: We know from science that the way we look is a fluke of heredity, but in the 19th century and beforehand, people believed that there were basic corollaries between one’s inner and outer nature—if you had “noble” facial features, you were noble on the inside; physical shortness could be seen as representing moral smallness. You may see this in the modes of characterization of older works of fiction. But beyond this, appearance can tell us a lot about a character—their disability status or ethnicity, perhaps some of the things they’ve gone through in life (a missing limb, or more prosaically, going through life as a short vs. a tall person). Their clothing can tell us things like their socio-economic status and what cultures or subcultures they belong to. And their character psychology might be reflected in their appearance in some way, like if they habitually slouch or if they have undergone some form of plastic surgery or other bodily modification.
• Thoughts: Whether expressed through dialogue, by a first-person narrator, or a third-person narrator with some degree of omniscience, if we have direct access to a character’s thoughts, we should carefully attend to it, because this is our most direct inlet to the character’s psychology—keeping in mind that what a character thinks will generally say more about them than it will deliver truth-statements about the subject(s) of their reflection.
• What other characters say about them: The remarks characters make about each other (or anything else, for that matter) might say more about themselves than about the subject of their utterances, but nonetheless characters can give additional perspectives on each other.
• Exposition: Exposition means backstory – events that are not narrated but are mentioned as having happened before the time of the events narrated in the story. This narrative device, quite popular in fiction from the 19th century and earlier but less so since, can fill in a lot of information about the origins and evolution of a character.

The British writer E.M. Forster distinguishes between flat and round characters (or what we could also call two-dimensional vs. three-dimensional characters): those that have many layers and psychological depth vs. those defined by just one or two salient character traits. Flat characters may be stock characters : readily identifiable character types passed down in a culture, like the wise old man or the happy-go-lucky sidekick. Having flat characters in a work is not a bad thing—not every character in a work needs to be subjected to complex, drawn out characterization. It would probably be a bit absurd to develop into roundness the character of a butler whose only function in a narrative is to deliver a message, for instance. And as we noted a few chapters back, before the inception of modernity gave birth to the novel and short story as genres, effectively all fictional characters were what we would today call flat.

Another important distinction to make when thinking about characterization is that of static vs. dynamic characters . A static character stays the same throughout a narrative while a dynamic character changes. When we encounter a dynamic character, we should ask what theme(s) is being explored through this process of change –what is the text saying overall about the nature of maturation or trauma or aging and jadedness? For example, over the course of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” Ebenezer Scrooge goes from being a cold-hearted, self-centered miser to a compassionate, giving individual – thus illustrating how reflection on our past and on the sufferings of others can increase empathy and break us out of habitual modes of being.

When we analyze characterization, we need to systematically ask not just how characters have been constructed in the text, but what themes they help to develop through their defining traits, the situations they encounter, and their modes of negotiating these situations. For instance, what is Jay Gatsby saying about the nature of ambition and what is he showing about the operational dynamic of Roaring Twenties capitalism? What is Okonkwo in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart showing about the admixture of pride and toxic masculinity and what does his downfall illustrate about the social consequences of European imperialism?

When we are asking these questions, we need to do so with a firm sense of the cultural context of the work we are approaching. The actions or other defining traits of a character may mean something different in the culture of a work’s setting than they do in our own. For instance, the rotund figure of the Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales would have signified sexual allure in Chaucer’s England of the Middle Ages, while in contemporary U.S. society dominant cultural attitudes would associate that sort of figure with qualities like sloth and physical unattractiveness. A famous incident is often recounted about an anthropologist doing fieldwork in the Kalahari Desert: the tribe he was working with would tell stories around the campfire at the end of the day and asked him to do the same. Unable to think of another story, the anthropologist began recounting the plot of Shakespeare’s Hamlet . But the tribespeople couldn’t understand the basic narrative conflict, why Hamlet was so hung up on the romantic coupling between his mother and his uncle, which registered for him (and Shakespeare’s early Modern British audience) as unnatural. In the tribespeople’s society a man is expected to marry his brother’s widow so that she can be provided for, hence Hamlet’s response to this came off as insane or nonsensical to them. “Unnaturalness,” like most resounding moral judgments we might make, is pretty culturally relative.

Suggested Short Story Readings to Accompany this Chapter

My preference is to use stories with just one or two vivid characters to further develop students’ understandings of the process of characterization. I use the story “Miss Clairol” by Helena Maria Viramontes, which works particularly well, as there are two variations available online, each of which provides a slightly different articulation of character (and hence theme). Other useful textual exemplars of characterization include “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant.

An Introduction to the Analysis of Fiction Copyright © 2023 by Michael K. Walonen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Characterization

Characterization definition.

Characterization is a literary device that is used step-by-step in literature to highlight and explain the details of a character in a story . It is in the initial stage in which the writer introduces the character with noticeable emergence. After introducing the character, the writer often talks about his behavior; then, as the story progresses, the thought processes of the character.

The next stage involves the character expressing his opinions and ideas and getting into conversations with the rest of the characters. The final part shows how others in the story respond to the character’s personality.

Characterization as a literary tool was coined in the mid-15th century. Aristotle in his Poetics argued that “ tragedy is a representation, not of men, but of action and life.” Thus the assertion of the dominance of plot over characters, termed “plot-driven narrative ,” is unmistakable. This point of view was later abandoned by many because, in the 19th century, the dominance of character over plot became clear through petty-bourgeois novels.

Types of Characterization

An author can use two approaches to deliver information about a character and build an image of it. These two types of characterization include:

• Direct or explicit characterization

This kind of characterization takes a direct approach toward building the character. It uses another character, narrator , or the protagonist himself to tell the readers or audience about the subject .

• Indirect or implicit characterization

This is a more subtle way of introducing the character to the audience. The audience has to deduce for themselves the characteristics of the character by observing his/her thought process, behavior, speech, way of talking, appearance, and manner of communication with other characters, as well as by discerning the response of other characters.

Characterization in Drama

On stage or in front of the camera, actors usually do not have much time to characterize. For this reason, the character faces the risk of coming across as underdeveloped. In dramaturgy, realists take a different approach, by relying on implied characterization. This is pivotal to the theme of their character-driven narrative. Examples of these playwrights are Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen , and August Strindberg.

Classic psychological characterization examples, such as The Seagull , usually build the main character in a more indirect manner. This approach is considered more effective because it slowly discloses the inner turmoil of the character, over the course of the show, and lets the audience connect better.

The actors who act in such roles usually work on them profoundly to get an in-depth idea of the personalities of their respective characters. Often, during such shows, plays, or dramas , no direct statements about the character’s nature are found. This kind of realism needs the actors to build the character from their own perspective initially. This is why realistic characterization is more of a subtle art, which cannot directly be recognized.

Importance of Characterization

Characterization and skill to create characters are very important for writing fiction , especially short stories and novels. The reason is that the storyline of stories hinges upon characters. The actions of the characters in certain settings not only move the storyline forward but also create tension, and conflict and convey a message to the writers. Although there could be a story without characters, it would not be much interesting for the readers, for they want to learn something about human beings and the human quest for peace, happiness, and solution of mundane issues or complex ones.

Everyday Examples of Characterization  

• Online Dating Websites: Every dating websites offer examples of characterization as people pick up certain characters and adopt them as their names. Some even go for avatars.
• Police Line-ups: Some people adopt different characters of police-line ups to hide their true identities.
• Obituaries: Obituaries also demonstrate the characterization of the dead ones in good terms.
• Eulogies : Written for specific persons, these poems also offer examples of characterizations.

 Difference Archetypes and Characterization

Whereas archetype characters have specific features and characteristics, characterization means to bless such characters with those features. Characterization is the manner of delineation while archetypes are characters themselves. Also, archetype and characterization are both nouns , but whereas one means the creative task, the other is itself the creation.

Difference Between Characterization and Stereotypes

Characterization and stereotypes are both entirely different things. As a literary device, a characterization is an act of creating characters. It is linked with stereotyping as some of the skills learned during characterization are used for generalizing some traits of specific people to denounce or torment those people. This is called stereotyping. It could be of a tribe, race, a whole nation, or even a specific individual. It happens with African Americans or Asians and Latinos in the United States.

Round and Flat Characters  

Round Characters are complex characters. They undergo a considerable transformation during their work or life in the storyline. They, sometimes, cause shock and surprise the readers and seem to them interesting. However, flat characters are not very complex as they are just two-dimensional. They are simple and often stay the same throughout the storyline.

Characterization in Stories

• Beowulf : It includes a balanced characterization as King Hrothgar, Beowulf , and their supporters are good characters while Grendel, his mother, and the dragon are bad characters.
• The Gift of the Magi: It introduces innocent characterization as both Dell and Jim are loving and caring, demonstrating their family traits.
• To Kill a Mockingbird : harper lee presented the beautiful characterization of both good and bad characters such as Scout, Jem, Finch, Dubose, and Lee.
• Animal Farm: It comprises the characterization of animals among which some are good such as Snowball and Boxer, some are innocent such as Mollie and pigeons and some are clever and shrewd such as Napoleon and Squealer.
• Lord of the Flies : It reveals innocent characterizations of Ralph and Piggy and clever of Roger and his supporters.

Examples of Characterization in Literature

Example #1: the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald.

There are many examples of characterization in literature. The Great Gatsby  is probably the best. In this particular book, the main idea revolves around the social status of each character. The major character of the book, Mr. Gatsby, is perceptibly rich, but he does not belong to the upper stratum of society. This means that he cannot have Daisy. Tom is essentially defined by his wealth and the abusive nature that he portrays every now and then, while Daisy is explained by Gatsby as having a voice “full of money.”

Another technique to highlight the qualities of a character is to put them in certain areas that are symbolic of social status. In the novel , Gatsby resides in the West Egg, which is considered less trendy than East Egg, where Daisy lives. This difference points out the gap between Jay’s and Daisy’s social statuses. Moreover, you might also notice that Tom, Jordan, and Daisy live in East Egg while Gatsby and Nick reside in West Egg, which again highlights the difference in their financial background. This division is reinforced at the end of the novel when Nick supports Gatsby against the rest of the folk.

Occupations have also been used very tactfully in the novel to highlight the characteristics of certain protagonists. The prime example is Gatsby who, despite being so rich, is known for his profession: bootlegging. He had an illegal job that earned him a fortune but failed to get him into the upper class of New York society. In contrast , Nick has a clean and fair job as a “bondman” that defines his character. The poor guy Wilson, who fixes rich people’s cars, befriends his wife; and then there is Jordon, who is presented as a dishonest golf pro.

Function of Characterization

Characterization is an essential component in writing good literature. Modern fiction, in particular, has taken great advantage of this literary device. Understanding the role of characterization in storytelling is very important for any writer. To put it briefly, it helps us make sense of the behavior of any character in a story by helping us understand their thought processes. Good use of characterization always leads the readers or audience to relate better to the events taking place in the story. Dialogues play a very important role in developing a character because they give us an opportunity to examine the motivations and actions of the characters more deeply.

Synonyms of Characterization

The following words are close synonyms for Characterization: picture, verbal description, word painting, depiction, delineation, portrait, word picture, and portrayal. Each word has a distinct meaning as well.

Related posts:

• Direct Characterization
• 10 Best Characterization Examples in Literature

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characterization

What is characterization definition, usage, and literary examples, characterization definition.

Characterization  (care-ack-tur-ih-ZEY-shun) uses context and detail to reveal something about a character. In literature, characterization is expressed directly and indirectly through physical descriptions, dialogue, characters’ inner thoughts, and actions. These details reveal characters’ behavior, psychology, personality, and motive.

Character hasn’t always been central to stories.  Plot -driven  narratives  dominated literature prior to the 19th century.  Realism , a literary movement that emerged in the mid-1800s, prized authenticity and verisimilitude, emphasizing genuine depictions of people as a critical aspect to plot and narrative. Characterization remains significant to this day.

Direct and Indirect Characterization

Writers can convey characterization directly or indirectly, and they tend to use both methods to achieve fully realized and developed characters.

Direct Characterization

Direct characterization is explicit. It is commonly achieved through description and dialogue, in which the narrator or one character explicitly attributes traits or qualities to another.

In this example from Charles Dickens’s  Great Expectations , protagonist Pip describes his brother-in-law:

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow—a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.

Pip explicitly describes Joe’s physical appearance and temperament: He is fair in complexion and personality, good-natured, sweet-tempered, and easygoing but also naïve. This provides a strong foundation for readers to visualize and understand Joe as a character.

Indirect Characterization

Indirect characterization is implied; readers must infer character on their own through contextual clues. Thoughts, actions, speech patterns, appearance, mannerisms, clothing—all these can inform character.

In this excerpt from E.B. White’s  Charlotte’s Web , Fern’s father just departed for the hog house with an ax:

“I don’t see why he needs an ax,” continued Fern, who was only eight.

“Well,” said her mother, “one of the pigs is a runt. It’s very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it.”

“Do  away  with it?” shrieked Fern. “You mean  kill  it? Just because it’s smaller than the others?”

Fern lacks the life experience to realize the pragmatism in her father’s actions. While White doesn’t explicitly call Fern naïve, it’s implied through the mention of her age. Her surge of moral outrage also suggests a strong sense of justice and empathy.

Characterization and Character Types

Characterization often depends on character type, as different types fulfill certain roles in a story.

A protagonist is a major character; their arc drives the plot. Protagonists often exemplify positive or heroic traits, like  Harry Potter , who is courageous, perseverant, and has a strong sense of justice. Antiheroes are a type of protagonist who lack those heroic qualities; they often defy conventional ethics or exhibit dubious or gray morality. Rodion Raskolnikov from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s  Crime and Punishment  is an antihero.

Antagonists tend to embody negative traits, like Harry Potter’s nemesis Lord Voldemort, who is arrogant, cruel, and utterly lacking in empathy. Antagonists are often foils—characters whose personality traits clash with the protagonist’s. Readers can discern much about characterization through that contrast.

Here are other character types that affect characterization.

• Round characters  are crucial to the narrative; they are richly characterized and demonstrate a variety of personality traits. Round characters tend to be dynamic: They encounter  conflict  and affect change, and they transform in response to those experiences.
• Flat characters  are secondary and incidental. Because they exert little influence over the plot, they are less developed and tend to exhibit a single personality trait.
• Archetypal characters represent patterns in human experience. Readers can easily identify them because they recur throughout literature. The mentor is a common fictional archetype; they guide and support the protagonist using their wisdom and life experience. Gandalf the Grey from J.R.R. Tolkien’s  The Lord of the Rings  series is a classic mentor character.
• Stock characters have become conventional or stereotypical through repeated use in literature. They are like archetypal characters but generally flat and one-dimensional. They are often caricatures who embody ideals (the noble savage) or flaws (the village idiot).
• Dynamic characters transform after encountering conflict or other narrative action. A protagonist who starts off lonely and isolated will likely find a sense of community and belonging by the story’s end.
• Static characters remain unchanged throughout the story. Joe Gargery, mentioned above, is a static character. His good nature holds steadfast even when faced with injustice and cruelty.

The Functions of Characterization

Characterization breathes life into a story by making characters more dynamic and engaging. Good characterization is often realistic, meaning characters act in a way that’s authentic to the human experience. They make choices, feel emotions, and display reactions that reflect real life. These expressions of humanity make them more interesting and relatable to the reader.

Writers also use characterization to show development. Just as people change with age and experience, characters change in tandem with the plot. As a protagonist moves through the  narrative , encountering and reacting to other characters, settings, and situations, they transform. This mirrors how a person can grow in the real world and emphasizes the sense of progression from a story’s beginning to its end.

Characterization can also show cause and effect or incite action. Take Samwise Gamgee, companion and servant to Frodo Baggins in  The Lord of the Rings . Sam embodies the sidekick archetype. He’s loyal to a fault, and that devotion leads him on a quest across Middle Earth despite enormous peril and a dim chance of survival. Even when Frodo falters, Sam persists. His incredible fidelity and strength of will ensure the quest’s success.

Characterization in Other Media

Where literature is bound by words and characterization must build through sentences or even paragraphs, visual media can express it easily through visual cues. Scenery, staging, wardrobe, makeup, props, and the like are all carefully designed to convey a specific message or idea.

In short, there’s an immediacy to visual storytelling as several details are presented at once. A character enters the scene, and viewers can immediately discern several facts or make judgments based on observation.

Consider villains from Disney’s animated films, like Cruella Deville, Ursula, Maleficent, Hades, Jafar—the list goes on. They come in all shapes and sizes, but they share common design attributes that clearly suggest their evil, scheming personalities: thin eyebrows, sharp cheekbones, narrow noses, angular eyes, and dark clothes.

Examples of Characterization in Literature

1. Philip Pullman,  The Golden Compass

Pullman’s fantasy children series—some consider it a response to  The Chronicles of Narnia —follows protagonist Lyra Belacqua as she opposes and tries to overthrow a corrupt theocracy. In this scene, Lyra has just overheard a plot to kill her uncle, Lord Asriel, while she is hidden in a wardrobe. She observes her uncle as he enters the room:

Then Lord Asriel stood up and turned away from the fire. She saw him fully, and marveled at the contrast he made with the plump Butler, the stooped and languid Scholars. Lord Asriel was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter. It was a face to be dominated by, or to fight: never a face to patronize or pity. All his movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal, and when he appeared in a room like this, he seemed a wild animal held in a cage too small for it.

This passage demonstrates both direct and indirect characterization. While other characters are plump, stooped, and languid, Lord Asriel stands tall with powerful shoulders and a dominating countenance. His fierce face, flashing eyes and savage laughter suggest a cold personality and keen intelligence. He might even possess a violent streak, which is supported by the comparison to a wild animal.

2. Tennessee Williams,  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

One of Williams’s most famous works, this play portrays a family in crisis. Early in Act I comes a scene that gives a taste of the dynamic between Brick and his wife Maggie:

BRICK: I’ve dropped my crutch.

[ He has stopped rubbing his hair dry but still stands hanging onto the towel rack in a white towel-cloth robe. ]

MARGARET: Lean on me.

BRICK: No, just give me my crutch.

MARGARET: Lean on my shoulder.

BRICK: I don’t want your shoulder, I want my crutch!

[ This is spoken like sudden lightning. ]

MARGARET: Here, here, take it, take it!

This scene’s indirect characterization sheds a light on Brick and Maggie’s personalities as well as their marriage. Brick’s sudden and emphatic rejection of Maggie’s support shows his mercurial mood and indifference toward his wife; he’d rather cling to a towel rack than accept her touch. Maggie, however, is determined to support her husband and keep the peace—expressed through her repeated line, “Lean on me,” and frenzied capitulation to his demands.

3. Charlotte Perkins Gillman,  The Yellow Wallpaper

This feminist short story details a woman’s descent into madness as she begins to obsess over and fear the wallpaper in her bedroom. The narrator presents her story in a series of diary entries. This passage from the first entry explains why the narrator and her husband have moved into a colonial mansion for the summer:

John is a physician, and  perhaps —(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)— perhaps  that is one reason I do not get well faster.

You see, he does not believe I am sick!

And what can one do?

If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?

My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.

So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.

Personally, I disagree with their ideas.

Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.

But what is one to do?

The reader is told very little about the narrator, but her diary provides a wealth of indirect characterization. This passage reveals that she feels dismissed by her husband, who does not take her illness seriously. She’s skeptical of the treatment he prescribes but feels she has no voice to advocate for her own health and wellbeing. So, she uses writing to express her frustrations, free of his judgment.

Further Resources on Characterization

TVTropes features an extensive list of  common character tropes .

Writers seeking to flesh out their characters might benefit from these free  character development worksheets  by Dr. Victoria Lynn Schmidt.

The Writing Cooperative  provides a lesson on creating and developing authentic characters.

Related Terms

• Flat character
• Round character
• Stock character

Character Analysis Essay Guide: How to Write a Good Character Analysis Essay

Writing in high schools or colleges is one endless activity. And while it may be hectic and frustrating for some, to others, it is a sweet experience because essays provide opportunities for students to show their creativity.

A character analysis essay is one of the most essay types you will probably write, depending on your course. These pieces explain and expound on the characters in plays, cinemas, or other literary forms, but they all follow a similar pattern.

And if you’re looking for a guide to help you write your essay, look no further. I’ll walk you through some simple steps to write a character analysis essay.

Tips on How to Write a Good Character Analysis Essay

Writing a character analysis essay is much more than just describing a character. You must look at how that character’s actions affect the story and what it means for them.

Here are some tips on how to write a good character analysis essay.

Read the entire story

Before you start writing a character analysis, you must read the story from beginning to end. This will help you understand the characters better and give your essay more credibility and structure.

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Further, it helps you get an overall idea of what’s going on in the book or movie so that you know how much information is available about each character before writing your essay.

And even if you have ever read the story, reading it a subsequent time is still encouraged. This is because it helps you focus your mind on the characters, setting, or plot development. Generally, ensure you’re familiar with every detail of a character before beginning your essay.

Identify the character to analyze

An effective character analysis essay goes deep into detailing a specific character. And depending on your essay length, character choice will play a significant role.

If your professor requires a large word count, protagonists or antagonists are the best characters to choose from rather than minor characters. This is because the main characters have more details than the others.

However, you do not have to go for the protagonist. Instead, go for a dynamic character who undergoes several changes because it gives you more meat to write on.

Reread or rewatch the story with perspective on your character

Now that you have a clear idea of your story and what kind of character you’re writing about, it’s time to start thinking about how this character will move through space and time.

Further rereading the story with this character in mind helps you focus on them alone. Some of the questions to ask yourself in this stage include;

• Description of the character by the author
• What are the character’s actions?
• What is the relationship between the character and others?
• What are the character’s failures and successes?

Take notes identifying the central theme

As you read the story, take notes of important themes. The main theme is the story’s central idea and usually involves a problem or conflict that characters face and often resolves itself by the end of the story.

In addition, the central theme plays throughout all three acts of a play or novel, but they’re usually more apparent in Act 1 than in Acts 2 and 3 because those later acts mainly deal with plot complications and resolutions.

Outline and write the paper

Your paper consists of an introduction, body, and conclusion. The opening is a concise brief of the character in question and leads the reader to gain interest in reading the piece. On the other hand, the body has several sections, but it is a good idea to follow your instructor’s guidelines. At the same time, the conclusion ties everything together and summarizes your entire paper.

How Do You Analyze Characters in an Essay

Generally, analyzing a character entails identifying, determining their role, and understanding their actions. Further, you must explore their relationships with others, identify their traits, and finally identify how they evolve through the book or play.

These are six primary ways of analyzing characters in an essay. Let’s now look at each in detail.

• Character identification

This is a significant step, and you should classify your character as static or dynamic. Additionally, you should identify if they are primary or secondary characters.

• Role determination

After identifying the character, you should move to determine their role. If you go for the main character, it means their part is to bring out the theme, while the secondary characters’ role is to support the achievement of the theme.

• Identify the character’s mentioned roles

Next is to identify the mentioned character roles. Some aspects to help you include why the characters are antagonists or protagonists, their first actions in the story, and how they influence the story.

• Character’s relationships

This entails how the identified character relates with others and the significance of these relationships in the story.

• Identify personality traits

Traits of the character emanate from their actions and relationships. They may include bravery, self-centeredness, or generosity.

How to Write a Thesis Statement for a Character Analysis Essay

Writing a thesis statement for a character analysis essay entails four major steps. These are drawing a rough sketch of the characters, their main traits, role, and functions, and summing all these points into one sentence.

The thesis statement is the main idea of your paper, so it is vital to make sure that the thesis statement is specific, direct, and clear. The body paragraphs should support your thesis statement with specific examples. In other words, each body paragraph should provide support for your thesis statement.

For your statement to be effective, it must include all four mentioned parts. The first part describes the character’s appearance, actions, values, beliefs, and tendencies. It then comprises their relationship, role, and functions.

The role and function of the character will form the bulk of your thesis statement. And because the statement answers the why and how question, you should ensure you provide an entirely detailed explanation of the character’s role and functions and how it contributes to the theme and plot.

After having all these parts, it is time to sum them into one sentence.

How to Write the Introduction of a Character Analysis Essay

Writing the introduction of a character analysis essay is probably the most important because it determines if a reader will continue reading the paper or not. As such, following these steps will help you write the best introduction.

• Start with a quote

Quotes are one of the best ways to start an introduction. However, ensure they are related to the character’s trait. For example, if the character is generous, use a quote about generosity.

• Background information

Next is presenting the literature information. This is where you identify the character’s name, author, and title.

• Character introduction

Your introduction should then introduce the character being analyzed. Some of the information included here include their role, whether they are protagonist, antagonist, static, or dynamic.

Further, you should have a few lines giving a general look and description of this character.

• Have a broad assertion

This part of the introduction is the transition between the character description and the thesis statement. It also entails the central theme of the piece of literature being analyzed.

• Thesis statement

This is the last part of your introduction. It includes your fundamental assertion and thus should be clear. You can also highlight what you will cover in your body paragraphs.

How to Write the Body Paragraphs of a Character Analysis Essay

The body of a character analysis essay is also a significant part because it gives more details about the character. Each paragraph has a topic sentence and specific examples supporting the sentence. In addition, the topic sentence supports your thesis statement.

Further, the body paragraphs are where you will develop your analysis. Each body paragraph should have a topic sentence and specific examples from the work of literature to support that topic sentence.

If possible, include quotations from the text and paraphrases of what other people have said about the character in question.

As you write this section, some of the must-answer questions include the following;

• How does the character describe themselves?
• How do others describe the character?
• What does your character do, and how do they treat others?
• What motivates the character to behave in a specific way?
• What lessons can one learn from the character?
• Does the character encounter conflicts, and how do they solve them?
• What are the character’s appearance, background, and other physical features?

How to Write the Conclusion of Character Analysis Essay

This is the last part and involves three major areas; stating a summary of the entire essay, your opinions, and your thoughts and predictions. You can also note how the character is relevant in real-life situations.

Also see: How long should a conclusion be in an essay? 

Also, this is where you will elaborate on those points and explain why they are relevant to your topic. Any quotes from the source material that shows how well you understand the material being studied should also be included in this paragraph.

Further, the conclusion concludes the character’s role in the story, how they changed over time or why they were essential to the plot. You could also expand on other characters and how they relate to your character of choice.

Generally, your conclusion should have the following;

• Give your opinion on the character as well as their role in the book or movie;
• Mention what you have learned about this character
• Tell how your opinion changed after reading/watching the work
• Indicate what other people may think about this character and give your reasons why they might feel differently than you do
• The application on day-to-day life

How to Write a Character Analysis Essay: Examples & Outline

A character analysis is an examination of the personalities and actions of protagonists and antagonists that make up a story. It discusses their role in the story, evaluates their traits, and looks at their conflicts and experiences. You might need to write this assignment in school or college. Like any other essay, your character analysis should contain an introduction, a conclusion, and a thesis.

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Want to know how to write a character analysis essay? Not sure how to start? We understand. Whichever piece you choose – Lady Macbeth, A Rose for Emily, or something else, – analyzing a character for the first time might be challenging. No worries, we are here to help! In this guide by our custom writing experts, you will find a step-by-step guide, outlining and writing tips, as well as a number of character analysis examples.

• 📔 Character Analysis Definition
• 🧙 Types of Characters
• 📝 Writing Guide
• 🖥️ Formatting Tips

📑 Character Analysis Essay Examples

📔 what is a character analysis essay.

A character analysis essay is an assignment where you evaluate a character’s traits, behaviors, and motivations. It requires critical thinking and attention to detail. Unlike descriptions, analyses focus on a character’s personality and internal drives. It explains how those factors shape the narrated events.

So, what you need to do is to see the characters as if they were real people who feel and act just as we do. Ensure there are no baseless assumptions and interpretations: the ideas you present should be supported by quotes from the text.

Character: Definition (Literature)

How do you define a character? It is a person, a creature, or an animal that makes up the story’s world. A character can be based on a real-life person, or it can be entirely fictional. It is someone who thinks, feels, and acts.

We use the word “character” in many different contexts. For instance, it can denote someone eccentric or worthy of our admiration. In both contexts, the term “character” means a distinctive personality. Similarly, in an analysis, your task is to show what makes a character stand out.

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Characterization: Literary Definition & Examples

Characterization is the process by which a character’s personality is revealed. It presents characters’ traits, feelings, and motives to the reader. For this reason, characterization is closely connected to character analysis. It helps us to understand the characters better throughout the reading process.

Characterization can be direct and indirect .

• Direct characterization is when the narrator directly tells the audience what the personality of a character is.
• In contrast, indirect characterization shows things that hint at a character’s nature.

Here are some examples of direct characterization taken from Patti Smith’s Just Kids :

“But he always suppressed his real feelings, mimicking the stoic nature of his father.”

Here we see a direct description of a character. The author straightforwardly talks about Robert’s feelings. In comparison, look at the description of a woman taken from John Steinbeck’s The Snake :

“He looked around at her again. Her dark eyes seemed veiled with dust. She looked without expression at the cat’s open throat.”

These lines don’t directly reveal anything about the woman, but the reader can understand that she is cold and dangerous. It’s an indirect characterization that focuses on looks and actions to convey the message to the reader.

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🧙 Types of Characters for Your Essay

When it comes to characters, they can be divided into several groups. For example, characters can be:

• Protagonists or antagonists,
• Static or dynamic,
• Flat or round.

These types define how much the characters change through the course of the story and their role in it.

Character Type: Definition

In psychology, a character type is defined by a combination of personality traits that coexist in an individual. Authors incorporate different types of characters into their works to convey the message and make the story more exciting or relatable to the reader.

There are three ways to categorize a character type:

• by archetypes,
• by their role in the narrative,
• by their ability to change throughout the story.

If you are about to write a character analysis essay, being familiar with character archetypes is essential. They have been categorized by a generation of writers, including the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and the American literary theorist Joseph Campbell. A lot of characters we see in today’s literary works are rooted in them.

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Archetypes include the Trickster, the Ruler, the Lover, the Sage, and others. The Hero is one of the most notable archetypes. Hercules or Achilles can be good examples of heroic protagonists. They are strong and courageous; they meet challenges and save the day by helping others.

Main Character: Definition & Examples

The main character and the protagonist often get mixed up. Most narratives also have the figure of the antagonist , whose actions affect the plot and stimulate change. Let’s have a look at the similarities and differences between these types.

The main character is central in the narrative. We experience the story through their eyes. They don’t necessarily have to be protagonists, though it happens in many cases.

The crucial difference between the main character and the protagonist is that the protagonist goes through changes throughout the story. The main character, however, is there to guide the reader through the experience. Often they help to show a different, darker side of the protagonist.

To understand the difference better, let’s turn to some examples.

What’s a Static Character?

Now that we’ve learned about the main character and the protagonist, we will closely look at other types of character classifications. One of the ways to categorize a character is by their ability to change throughout the story.

A static or simple character is someone who undergoes little or no significant changes. They often exist for comedic purposes. Here are some examples:

Complex Character: Definition & Examples

Complex or dynamic characters are the opposite of static characters. Characters of this type change as the book progresses. They display different qualities, emotions, and motives. They become more complicated and interesting to the reader as the story unfolds.

Check out these examples of dynamic characters:

Other Kinds of Characters

You already know about several ways to define a type of character. Now, let’s go over some other types, starting with flat and round characters.

Similar to dynamic and static ones, round and flat characters represent two different ends of a spectrum. Round characters usually come with an in-depth background. They are traditionally protagonists, antagonists, or those close to them. In contrast, flat characters are two-dimensional, and there is not much depth to them.

For the examples, we will turn to the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Finally, here are some bonus character types for you:

• Stock characters have a fixed set of traits and are flat. Most of the time, they exist for comical relief.
• Symbolic characters represent a concept or a theme that goes beyond them. They can be round and flat as long as they symbolize a particular notion or phenomena.
• Sidekick is a secondary character who supports the protagonist.
• The love interest is someone with whom the main character is infatuated.
• Foil is someone who’s set in contrast with the protagonist, thus putting more emphasis on the latter’s qualities.

Characterization Essay: Which Character Type to Choose

Before you start writing a paper, it essential to decide on the character you’re going to analyze. There are different types of characters in every story, so you need to choose which one suits your essay topic the best.

Usually, it’s best to choose a dynamic and round character . With static and flat ones, there may not be enough substance for you to analyze. However, some such personalities can be interesting to work with. For instance, a flat character such as Mr. Collins can be symbolic of something. Then, you can talk about how it embodies a specific idea or notion. You can also look at how they affect other characters in the story.

📝 How to Write a Character Analysis Step by Step

Now, we’re going to discuss how to write your paper step-by-step. But first, here are some pre-writing steps for you to consider:

• Choose a character for analysis.
• Take notes while reading;
• Define the type of the character and their role in the story;
• Pay attention to their descriptions and actions.

How to Analyze a Character: Description Examples

Knowing how to organize your work is an essential skill. Certain things need special attention if you are describing a character:

• physical appearance,
• emotional state,
• how the character speaks,
• behavior and personality traits,
• relationships with other characters.

When you analyze a character, try to look at them as if they were a real-life person. You want to know their motive, learn about how they feel, and understand why they think in a certain way. Ask yourself:

• How did the character change throughout the story (if at all)?
• What do other characters say about them? Can their words be trusted?
• Where is the character physically and emotionally? What brought them here?
• What is the character ready to do to achieve their goal?

Now, let’s look at the character of Franklin from the short story Just Before the War with the Eskimos by J.D. Salinger:

Character Profile Template for Writing

When writing your essay, use this character analysis template:

In the following sections, we’ll discuss each step in detail.

Character Analysis Outline: How to Start a Character Analysis

The beginning of your essay is its crucial part. It sets the mood and grabs the reader’s attention. There are many different ways to write a character analysis introduction, but here are the most effective ones:

• Use a quotation. It’s a great way to make a catchy hook. If it relates to the character and reflects their nature, it can also help to set the tone for analysis. In case you are using a quotation from somewhere else, mention the source in parentheses.
• Talk about the book or story. Mention the author, the name of the story, and the genre. Briefly describe the main events that are taking place in the story.
• Introduce the character. State their role in the story (define whether they are a protagonist, an antagonist, etc.) Then, explain whether the character is static or dynamic. Finally, describe them in 2-3 sentences.

The final part of an introduction is a thesis statement.Read on to learn how to write one!

Character Analysis Thesis Statement & Examples

A thesis is the key component of every essay, and character analysis is not an exception. It’s crucial to develop a good and clear thesis statement that includes all the aspects of your paper. For instance, if you plan to write a 4-paragraph body, including 4 points in your thesis.

What should a character analysis thesis include? Well, try to think of any trait that the character possesses that has to do with their downfall or somehow influences the story. Think about how this trait affects the character’s relationship with others or how it contributes to their motive or aspiration.

Take a look at the following examples:

How to Write Character Analysis Paragraphs for the Main Body

The main body of your essay can include as many paragraphs as you need. In this part, you introduce the character and analyze them. We have already talked in this article about what kind of questions should be answered in these paragraphs. The most important points are:

• Describe the character and their role within the story.
• Give the audience an explanation of the character’s motives.
• Show what message the author wanted to convey through this character.

Keep in mind that every paragraph should have a topic sentence that captures its main idea.

Tsukuru Tazaki’s spiritual rebirth also affects his physical appearance.

Character Analysis Conclusion: How to Write

The conclusion part of your essay summarizes all the information you have mentioned and restates the thesis. Here is some advice for your conclusion paragraph:

🖥️ Character Analysis Essay Format

Most college assignments and essays are written according to the APA or MLA format. Both styles have the same formatting, which requires:

• a double-spaced paper with 1-inch margins,
• a page header with page numbers flush right,
• an 11-12-point font.

While writing an essay on characters, pay special attention to quotations. Here are some tips for APA in-text citations:

• When you summarize or paraphrase the information, mention the author’s name and publication date in brackets. Example: According to Collins (1997.)
• When you quote directly from the source, add the number of the page, as well. Example: “There is a view that…” (Collins, 1997, pp. 134-135.)
• If the source includes three or more authors, use the abbreviation “et al.” after the first author’s name. Example: (Collins et al., 1997)

As for MLA format:

• You can write the author’s name in the sentence. Example: As Collins mentions in his essay<…>.
• You can mention the author’s name in the parentheses at the end of the sentence. Example: (Collins, J.K.)
• The last option is to use either footnotes or endnotes.

Below you’ll find a collection of character analysis essay examples and a downloadable sample to inspire you even more.

• The Grandmother in A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Character Analysis
• Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman: Character Analysis
• Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway: Character Analysis
• Prospero in The Tempest: Character Analysis
• Agamemnon in the Iliad: Character Analysis
• Lord Pococurante in Candide: Character Analysis
• Andromache in the Iliad: Character Analysis
• Character Analysis of the Knight from The Canterbury Tales
• Essay on Soldier’s Home: Analysis of the Characters

Character Analysis Example (Downloadable)

Roald Dahl’s  Matilda  is one of the most famous children’s novels of the 20th century. The protagonist of this tale is Matilda Wormwood, a five and a half-year-old girl with a brilliant and lively mind that distances her from the rest of the family. Matilda’s character is particularly interesting as she has a powerful personality with extraordinary mental abilities, and she manages to overcome all the obstacles that surround her.

Character Analysis Essay Topics

• Character analysis of Abbas from A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge .
• Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• Beowulf and Hamlet : similarity and diversity of the characters.
• Personal and social failures of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.
• Character analysis of Othello .
• Analyze the characters of Stanley and Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire .
• The tragedy of Mathilde Loisel from The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant.
• Character analysis of Huck Finn from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .
• Moral force of Kate Lipton from Double Helix by Nancy Parker. 
• Character analysis of Thorvald and Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House .
• Discuss the character of king Creon in Antigone .
• Analyze the personality of Lydia from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice .
• Compare Nick Carraway and Tom Buchanan from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• Describe the peculiarities of Lord Pococurante in Candide .
• Sarty Snopes in William Faulkner’s Barn Burning : character analysis.
• Analyze the character of Biff Loman in Death of a Salesman.
• Personality of Nora in A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen.
• Examine the main characters of The Yellow Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
• Personality change of the main character in Edgar Alan Poe’s The Black Cat .
• Analyze the characters of E. Hemingway’s A Clean, Well-Lighted Place .
• Describe the main characters of the novel The Overstory by Richard Powers.
• Controversial personality of Vladek in Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman.
• Character analysis of Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.  
• Discuss the character of Creon in Oedipus the King .  
• The manipulative character of Iago in Willian Shakespeare’s Othello .
• Analyze the characters of Nil and Kristine in A Doll’s House .
• Eccentricity of Grendel’s character in Beowulf .  
• Describe the main characters of Four Summers by Joyce Carol Oates.
• Examine the characters of Harold Krebs and his mother in Ernest Hemingway’s Soldier’s Home .
• Analyze common and different traits of the characters in The Monkey’s Paw .
• Character peculiarities of Rostam and Sohrab in Shahnameh by Ferdowsi Tousi.
• How does the character of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen differ from the rest of her family?
• The behavior and meaning of the characters in Nicholas Rowe’s The Tragedy of Jane Shore.
• Compare the characters of Victor Frankenstein and the monster in Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley.
• Discuss the differences of main characters in Everyday Use by Alice Walker.
• Examine the character of Connie in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates.
• The influence of social pressure on the characters of Chopin’s Desirée’s Baby and Sedaris’ A Modest Proposal .
• Dynamic feminist characters of Delia and Jig in Sweat by Z. Hurston and Hills Like White Elephants by E. Hemingway. 
• Analyze the personality traits of Emily in William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily .
• Examine the characters of The Quiet American by Graham Greene.
• Henry ΙV by William Shakespeare : analysis of main characters.

Now you know everything necessary for writing an excellent character analysis. What character would you like to analyze? Let us know in the comments!

Further reading:

• How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay Step by Step
• Literature Review Outline: Examples, Approaches, & Templates
• Library Research Paper: Example & Writing Guide [2024]
• How to Write a Critique Paper: Tips + Critique Essay Examples
• 435 Literary Analysis Essay Topics and Prompts [2024 Upd]
• How to Write a Literature Review: Actionable Tips & Links

❓ Character Analysis FAQ

A character analysis involves:

1. description of a character; 2. explanation of how they change throughout the story; 3. their role in the narrative; 4. relationships with other characters; 5. what idea the author wanted to convey through the character.

A character analysis creates a description that contains their most important qualities. It provides a new perspective of a character that reveals more about what it’s like to be human. It can also point to a moral or a lesson.

Literary analysis uses the technique of tracing the character development. This technique is usually used to understand the theme of the work better. Through tracing a character’s development, we can learn more about the story’s message and how it’s conveyed.

A summary paragraph in a character study should include answers to the questions “what,” “who,” “where,” and “why.” You should mention who narrates the story, where the story is set, its theme, and the message it conveys.

• Critical Concepts: Character and Characterization: Kansas State University
• Analyzing Novels & Short Stories: Texas A&M University
• Guidelines for Writing a Character Analysis Essay: Tidewater Communite College
• Literary Criticism: Thesis Examples: The University of Texas at Arlington
• Writing a Literary Analysis Paper: Germanna Community College
• Flat and Round Characters: Encyclopedia Britannica
• Literature: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• How to Write a Book Analysis: Kean University
• Elements of Literary Analysis: Alamo Colleges District
• Defining Characterization: Read Write Think
• APA Style: General Format: Purdue University
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A character analysis is a type of essay that requires you to analyze and evaluate the characteristics, traits, motivations, and decisions of a literary character. It involves closely examining such aspects as their personality, thoughts, behavior, and development. You should further explain how a character contributes to the overall meaning of the work.

When writing a character analysis essay, it is important to think critically and look beyond basic understanding of the character. For example, instead of simply describing their physical traits or explaining what happens in the plot, focus on how the characters think, feel, and interact with other characters. Examine the motivations behind their decisions and actions, as well as how they reflect a larger theme or idea in the work. 

In this blog, we will explain how to write a character analysis essay. You will find a strtucture, outline and step-by-step guidelines along with examples.

If you don’t have much time for reading, we’ve got an easy solution for you. Entrust your assignment to essay writing services by StudyCrumb and get a custom paper tailored to your specific requirements.  

What Is a Character Analysis Essay?

The main task of a character analysis essay is showing in detail key characteristics and certain person’s traits. Essay includes not just ordinary situations. It shows possible occasions for describing fictives fully and circumstantial. This type of essay helps understand how a hero will act in this or that situation, why would he do so, what were his reasons for these deeds? Analysis helps in figuring out what role a person plays in a story: great one or just secondary. Moreover, knowing the needed words of an analysis essay will enlarge students’ spoken literature.  

What Is a Purpose of Character Analysis Essay?

Main purpose of a character analysis essay is helping the reader understand who's the bad one and who is among the good guys. This helps catch the idea of the story from the beginning. Knowing how a hero acts in this or that separate case, speaks a lot about his point of view. Essay divides all characters into main and minor ones. Detailed character analysis essay helps readers understand the nature of personages from an early beginning. Very often the story has several chapters, so the reader could discover much about a certain person from his doings/opinions.  

Types of Character Using in Character Analysis Essay

While writing a character analysis essay, students have to remember two central personages: protagonist (key person) and antagonist. These are the main ones. The most striking roles are divided between them. Additional (minor) figures:  

• confidante.

Each hero has special traits and behaviors. The round one is described as a person of passion having depth in feelings. Foil one is opposite one to positive, main one. Flat one is another side of round one: no vivid emotions, no changes while the story is being told. Use our  college essay writing service to turn in the best character analysis your instructor has ever seen.

Protagonist — The Main Character

Protagonist in character analysis essays is the main story’s hero. This is a person all situations revolve around. They are the bearer of truth, the spokesman for the author's ideas, the main drive behind the plot. They don't have to even be a positive hero. After all, there is also an antihero - a protagonist with morally ambiguous or straight-up negative traits. Protagonist is a key figure, all other personages are considered minor ones. For better understanding of the protagonist, consider these examples: Romeo and Juliet, Katniss («Hunger Games»), Harry Potter, MacBeth. You can also consider Walter White («Breaking Bad»), Dexter Morgan («Dexter») and Hannibal Lecter («The Silence of the Lambs») to be antiheroes. All these examples are dynamic.  

Antagonist — Character in the Opposite Position

Antagonist in character analysis essays is an opposite one to the protagonist. This type of character belongs to the dark side. Often, this can be a jealous, envious, bad, villain gossip person. They don't have to be the one ruining good protagonist’s plans, but they alway get in hero's way. Actually, there may even be more than one antagonist who may become hindrance for the protagonist. And if they are neutral in present, in the nearest future they will show their nature. Opposition between both protagonists and antagonists is clearly seen throughout the whole story. There is, of course, a catch. As with protagonists, there's more to know about antagonists' traits. After all, an anti-villain is also a thing! Basically it's when an antagonist has some heroic traits or can be sympathized with. One can also say that it's that type of person who has good intentions or their goal is pretty good, but their methods took a very wrong turn at some point. Othello, Captain Hook and Lord Voldemort — great antagonists’ examples. And those like John Silver, Khan («Star Trek») and Erik Lensherr («The X-Man») can be called anti-villain basically.  

Major Characters

Major characters in character analysis essays are those who create a story. They play main (and clearly - important) parts, and have key roles. They make a so-called key set of personages. They are close confidants to the protagonist. If some conflict appears, major figures are mentioned first. Robinson Crusoe is a bright example.

Minor Characters

Minor characters in character analysis essays are often called supporting. They are important, but rarely are described in the story as key ones. This kind of fictives is represented by Yoda, Samwise Gamgee, Jabba the Hutt. They don’t remarkably influence the actual plot. Why flat? Because of no vivid progression.

Dynamic Characters

Talking about dynamic characters in character analysis essays - Shrek is a fine example. He is a dynamic personage because he changes: becomes softer and opens his heart to people. Fictives like him influence the story and make changes in the course of events. Their main feature: they change and grow throughout the story, making the reader sympathize with them. Another good example: Aladdin, Merida, Simba, Anakin Skywalker.

Static Characters

Static characters in character analysis essays do not change throughout whole story. They remain the same with their thoughts and opinions. Static personages are best described with the likes of Indiana Jones, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes. These personages are positive ones - though, unchangeable. Their points of view and tastes remain identical until a story ends.

Foils in character analysis essays are based on stereotypes and are opposite of main heroes. They have several key characteristics: they are wicked, distracted, conniving and scrooge. At the same time main personages are principled, focused, generous, and well-meaning. Foils are depressed and pessimistic, while main heroes — optimistic, kind, and good.

How to Analyze Characters in Character Analysis Essay?

While writing a character analysis essay, you should give a hero a general picture. Description has to grab appearance peculiarities and traits. Students must depict whether personage is good or bad. Are they pessimists or optimists? Do they have negative or positive thoughts? There are 3 main steps for analysis:  

• Describing personality.
• Determining type of protagonist.
• Defining role in story.

To explore tiny personage’s quirks, all characteristics are taken into account. Just like in any  literary analysis essay , you will need to pay special attention to literary devices that help reveal the true nature of a character.  

How to Write a Character Analysis Essay Outline?

Character analysis essay outline includes 3 main parts: introduction, body, conclusion. Below you can find short description to understand some peculiarities:

• Introduction should be meaningful and brief. After reading this piece, essay’s idea should be understood.
• Main body is one that should be divided into paragraphs with described main heroes. It should give detailed answers to different questions concerning personality and appearance. Pay attention, separate paragraph depicts what we learn from hero or situation.
• Conclusion is the one where you should draw the final line of analysis. Summarize points you've given above, loop to your thesis statement or give your reader some food for thought. Just remember that this section should be brief.

Additionally, it will be good to write how a situation changed because of main hero's influence.

How to Write a Character Analysis Essay?

Instruction for writing character analysis essays is based on several steps. First, read a story carefully to find a person whom you are interested in. After reading the book, students should be able to completely grasp a key idea. Next steps include:

• choosing dynamic hero ;
• taking notes;
• defining main idea;
• answering analysis questions.

Concerning last point, think over next questions:

• What is hero's value?
• What kind of emotions does your hero go through?
• Does personage have a profound impact on plot?
• What are relationships between heroes and other significant figures?

Understanding an effect that main hero has on plot, it is easy to grasp the meaning the author put in their work.

How to Begin a Character Analysis Essay?

Character analysis essay introduction is the first step to start. It should describe whole essay in miniature. It's kind of a catchy hook for readers to get interested and proceed to explore chosen book. Introduction shows a completely full story in several paragraphs. To show all necessary information, make use of the thesis statement. These are rounded with text. It is fine to describe some catchy scenes and episodes to fuel readers’ interest.  

Character Analysis Essay Body Paragraphs?

While introduction is a grand way to actually introduce the hero, character analysis essay body goal is identification of main personages features. Body should depict:

• Hero’s personality and physical appearance.
• Conflicts and ways of overcoming them.
• Lessons readers should learn.
• Meaning behind hero's actions.

Dynamic figure is key personage. Separate attention is given especially to them. Additional paragraph should describe a reader's feelings: what words are associated with a hero? Brave, modest, lucky, confident? Answers are key points to create a comprehensive description.

How to End a Character Analysis Essay?

How to write a conclusion paragraph for an essay ? Character analysis essay conclusion contains author’s point of view on course of events. Main ideas should be described shortly and clearly. Final part is a kind of review but with student's opinion. Lessons learned are described. For example, a story might teach how to live honestly, help poor people, feel merciful to others, etc. Remember that sheets’ personages teach us how to behave in real life. Many situations shown will be useful in everyday life. Hero’ deeds teach us how to cope with problems and find ways from tangled situations.  

Character Analysis Essays: Final Thoughts

A character analysis essay is used for composing lines between parallel personages. It shows the present course of events that will make sense in future. Important traits and characteristics that are depicted in the book. They have a hidden idea, some kind of lesson. Comprehensive analysis helps to understand the meaning the author wanted to shed light on. Knowing main heros’ personal characteristics helps to explain their behavior and world perception. Buy essays for college in case this assignment isn't what you wanted to do this evening.  

FAQs' for Character Analysis Essay

1. what is a good thesis statement for a character analysis essay.

Character analysis essay is saturated with essential messages. It appears at the end (in last sentence) of introductory paragraph. Its task is to inform reader about information they will get acquainted with. Every sentence has hidden meaning concerning heroes. Remember, introduction must be brief but meaningful. Student’s thesis statements should be specific — include only points that will be discussed. Good thesis statement should grab readers’ attention, make them read whole story.  

2. What kind of essay is character analysis?

A character analysis essay mostly deals with certain books’ personages, though, figures from cinematography are involved. Its task is to explain in-depth key features of personages. Antagonist and protagonist are main ones. There also exist additional ones. This kind of an essay explains behavior and state of mind. Personal traits and preferences also make up whole picture described.

3. How do you write a literary character analysis essay?

Character analysis essay demands describing chosen personage in detail. Firstly though, it is needed to determine personage’s type. Next step include turning to plot for showing examples. Students have to explain why personages decide do act that way, after all.

Daniel Howard is an Essay Writing guru. He helps students create essays that will strike a chord with the readers.

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How to Write a Character Analysis Essay in 7 Steps

To analyze a character in a story (whether it’s a book or film) essentially means to discuss three things:

• What the character was like before the adventure
• How the character responded to the inevitable challenges 
• How the character transformed as a result of the adventure

It is very rare that a character in a story doesn’t change. An example of that would be the film The Remains of the Day where the main character never changes. That movie was a bit disappointing 🙂

The most interesting part of any story is what happens to its characters – how they transform as a result of facing difficulties in pursuit of a goal or while trying to solve a problem:

• Rocky faces a world champion to turn from a boxing mediocrity into a respected warrior and athlete
• Mulan helps defeat a fearsome invader to go from an awkward bride to a national heroine 
• Harry Potter must face inner and outer demons to turn from a troubled schoolboy into a real wizard

If you were to write an essay about any of these characters, these would be some of the likely central points in your paper. And in this tutorial, I will show you how to go about the process.

I’m Tutor Phil, and without further ado, let me take you through the…

7 Steps to Writing a Character Analysis Essay

Step 1. Choose the character you will write about

You may already have a pretty good idea of which character you want to write about. Or, perhaps your instructor has given you a prompt with a pre-selected character. 

If not, here are a few tips on choosing a character.

Make sure the character gets ample time and space in the story. Don’t choose a character that barely appears in the book or movie. Pick either the main character or a secondary character who gets a lot of attention from the author. 

You can choose a protagonist or an antagonist. The protagonist is the “good” guy or gal, and the antagonist is the anti-hero. You can analyze either one because both are very important characters in the story.

Choose a character who captivates your imagination. The better your emotional connection to the character, the easier it will be to write about them. If you have more than one story to choose from, pick your favorite character from any of the stories. 

These tips will ensure that you have enough material to write an essay. And let’s pick our character for the purposes of this tutorial. 

The character I’m choosing is the Beast from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (the animated feature). I absolutely love this animated film, and this also happens to be my favorite story ever.

The Beauty and the Beast as a story appears in many (almost all if not all) cultures of the world in one form or another. But we’ll focus on the Beast in Disney’s animated version because he’s a fascinating hero who undergoes an amazing transformation. 

Step 2. Read (or watch) the story again while taking notes

Even if you have already read the book or watched the movie, go through it again after picking your character. 

This time around, you’ll notice a lot more about this character than you did on the first reading or viewing. If it’s a movie, just watch the whole thing over while taking notes.

If it’s a long novel, you can reread only the key parts that are relevant to your character and what you might write about them. 

Character Qualities and Traits You Can Discuss

Let me give you a list of qualities and character traits you can notice and make notes about as you’re revisiting the story. 

Keep in mind that you can choose any one of these as your main subject in the essay. In the next step, we’ll do exactly that. We’ll also pick another one or more of these as supporting ideas.

So, make sure to take notes that are relevant to any of these aspects of character because they’ll be useful to you as you write the essay. 

Aspects of a Character

• Transformation (how the character changes)
• Strengths and special abilities
• Position/Status and how it changes
• Physical appearance and traits
• Psychological makeup
• Role in the overall message of the story

Additional elements to jot down

Quotations. Make sure to note the exact page number or time stamp in the film because you’ll need that when citing the quotation. Dialog can often reveal clues to the inner world of the character. 

Patterns of behavior. If any of the character’s behavior repeats, that is a clue to a character quality or trait. You may notice that a certain pattern of behavior occurs in more than one character. This is a possible theme you can explore in your essay.

Changes in attitude. If the character does something that is not like their typical behavior, that’s a clue to a transformation. It is interesting to learn why this character said or did something new and different. The character may be showing courage or decisiveness. 

Example of Note-taking

Here is an example of the kind of notes I would take as I’m rewatching Beauty and the Beast :

• The Beast starts out chronically angry. But he calms down as time progresses and he makes progress in his courtship of Belle. 
• The Beast is extremely strong physically
• He also proves to be generous when he gifts the library to Belle
• He is also gentle when he learns how to dance
• The Beast is under a magic spell (a curse)
• He has serious anger issues
• He seems extremely possessive
• He has all the qualities of a prince except the human form
• He exhibits extreme boundaries and prohibits Belle from visiting certain parts of the castle 
• The Beast looks like some kind of a furious animal resembling a lion
• He’s not exactly ugly. But he’s scary and intimidating. 
• He must experience real love before the last petal falls off a rose in his secret room in order to turn back into a human being
• The Beast has anger issues
• He is possessive and has strong boundaries of what is permissible and what is not
• He does not really believe that he can make the curse dispel 
• He is easily frustrated
• His curse came about as a result of arrogance and lack of kindness and compassion, so he has to deal with that, as well
• The Beast must overcome himself in order to become human. Perhaps the message of the story is that in order to be a real human being, you must overcome flaws that prevent you from experiencing real love.
• This last point sounds like a good potential main subject/idea for the essay.

Completing this step will provide you with enough ideas to write an essay of any length. 

Step 3. Choose the main and supporting aspects of the character

In this step you’re really deciding what your essay will be about. Yes, it will be about this character you’ve chosen. But now you need to narrow down your subject matter. 

If you try to write about everything about this character, your essay will seem like it’s about nothing. This is why you really want to pick your main subject, which is something about the character that is going to be the main theme of the essay.

You also want to pick several supporting (lesser) ideas that will help you discuss this character. 

A great thing about this process is that by the time you get through Step 2, you will probably already have a pretty good idea of your main and your supporting points.

Ideas begin bubbling as you take notes. You begin to notice patterns and discern the bigger and the smaller ideas. 

But this step is designed specifically for you to go over your notes and write down two things:

• The main idea you’ll probably turn into the main point in your essay
• Three or more supporting ideas

Here is how to do it in practice. All you need to do is create a simple bulleted list. In this list, the first one or more items will be the bigger ideas. And the second level will contain the smaller, supporting ideas. 

Let’s do it, using our example of the Beast:

• The Beast’s role in delivering the message of the story 
• He is under a magic spell (a curse)
• He seems very possessive
• He is scary
• He is clumsy
• He has enormous physical strength 
• He is generous deep inside 
• He can be gentle
• He lacks self-confidence
• He doubts his ability to experience love
• He has great difficulty controlling his anger

As you complete this step, don’t worry if some of your ideas overlap among these categories or if you seem to repeat some of the points. You’ll sort it all out and get total clarity in the next step.

These first steps are really a brain dump. In Step 3, you simply sift through your initial notes and attempt to bring some order your thoughts. Don’t try to be perfect. Just do it.

Step 4. Take a stand and write down your main point

This is where you must decide on what exactly you’ll be arguing in your essay. This is why it’s probably the most important step of all. Your main point is your thesis. 

A thesis is one main idea usually expressed in one sentence. 

A thesis statement is a full statement that contains the entire argument, including the thesis and the supporting ideas. 

Here’s a short video I made to explain the distinction between a thesis and a thesis statement:

In this step, we’re just writing out the main point in one sentence. We’ll write the entire thesis statement in the next step. 

And we have everything we need to write our sample thesis. We have identified the biggest ideas and the smaller, supporting ideas in the previous step.

Now, we need to focus on the bigger ideas, choose one of them or put two of them together into one, and write it down.

Let’s do it, using our example of the Beast. 

Character Analysis Thesis Example

Let’s think aloud a little:

We have our two big ideas that we identified in the previous step:

• The Beast’s transformation – he must conquer his own anger in order to regain the human form

These are just topics; they are only subjects. We must now turn them into one complete sentence. 

It looks like the Beast must overcome something within himself in order to be human again.  

Can we be a little more specific? We can borrow an idea or two from the supporting, smaller ideas to clarify the main point.

Well, the Beast is cursed, and to lift the curse, he must overcome himself. 

Okay, good. We’re getting there. Let’s add a little more specificity, and the thesis should come out great.

“The Beast must overcome his own anger, lack of compassion, and self-doubt in order to experience love that would lift the curse and turn him back into a human.”  

Bingo! I think we got it. This thesis is virtually flawless:

• The subject is clear – the essay will be about the Beast
• We know exactly what to say about him 
• The reader now has a clear idea of the overall argument of this essay
• This sentence summarizes this essay completely and perfectly.

And that’s exactly what a thesis for a character analysis is supposed to do. Now, we’re ready to write the introductory paragraph which will include the complete thesis statement. 

Step 5. Write the introductory paragraph

Note that a character analysis is really an expository essay. This means that the structure of a character analysis is that of an expository (or an argumentative) essay.

And here is a diagram that depicts the structure of an introductory paragraph:

The first sentence is purely introductory. Its job is to pull the reader into the subject matter of the essay.

The next sentence is the main point. And we just wrote it, so we have this most important part of the paragraph ready to include in the opening paragraph.

Finally, the next one or more sentences must list the supporting points in some detail while still keeping the paragraph very general. That’s because we’ll be digging into the details in the body of the essay. But the intro paragraph should be general. 

Before we get to the introductory sentence, let’s see if we have everything we need to write the rest of the thesis statement. Do we have the supporting points?

It just so happens that our thesis contains three wonderful supporting points that we’ll explore in the essay in detail. Why three?

Well, I usually recommend having three supporting ideas that will correspond with three main sections of pretty much any argumentative paper. I call this the Power of Three:

Why do I use it? Remember what we did in Steps 2 and 3? We listed all the elements of our character and enumerated all the possible ideas we could write about. 

Well, if we don’t set a limit for how many supporting ideas we’ll use, we can end up wandering forever, trying to structure this essay. 

If you go over three supporting points, then the overall structure of the essay won’t be clear to you, and you’ll waste a lot of time and effort trying to organize it.

But if you decide that you’ll have three supporting ideas – no more and no less – this makes your life so much easier. All you need to do is decide. And it’s easy – the Power of Three works!

As I was writing the main point, I already kept the Power of Three in mind because, after all, I’m the one who came up with it 🙂

I use it in almost every essay and article I write, so at this point it’s just second nature to me and will become to you as well the more you use it. 

So, what are the three supporting ideas in this essay? Here they are:

• Lack of compassion

These are three qualities, character traits, or emotional energies which the Beast must overcome in himself in order to experience love and achieve his goal of regaining humanity.

Do you see how this works? Now that we know exactly what we mean to say in the introductory paragraph, let’s write it out.

Example of a Character Analysis Introductory Paragraph

“Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is a story of a miraculous transformation that must be gained through hard work. The Beast must overcome his own lack of compassion, his anger, and self-doubt in order to experience love that would lift the curse and turn him back into a human. The lack of compassion caused the initial disaster, and the Beast must get in touch with his kindness and generosity to remove the root cause of the curse. He must learn to control his anger because if he doesn’t he won’t have a chance to win Belle’s heart. And he must overcome self-doubt as the final obstacle to true love because faith in love is its ultimate test.”

Let’s Examine this Paragraph

So, what have we done here? The first sentence, just like the diagram instructs, is introductory. It doesn’t state the main point – that’s the function of the next sentence, which is the thesis.

The first sentence simply pulls the reader into the essay by stating what it is about in very general terms. We could have written an intro that would be even more general. But this sentence works. 

Remember – you can actually start your essay directly with the thesis. The only reason I teach my students to include an introductory sentence is that teachers and professors expect some sort of an introduction. So, just write it.

But immediately after the intro, we need to state the thesis – the main point. And we do it perfectly well in this paragraph. We wrote this sentence in the previous step, so we know exactly what it states.

Finally, and this is part three of the paragraph, we enumerate the three supporting points that help the reader see how we plan to go about supporting the main point.

We first talk about the lack of compassion, then about the Beast’s anger, and then about his self-doubt. And guess what – that’s exactly how we’ll structure this essay. 

In fact, our thesis statement is the outline of our essay. Let’s take a look. 

Character Analysis Sample Outline

As you can see, we have three main sections, each of which can be a paragraph or more, depending on how many words you need to write.

If you have to write up to about 600 words, then a five-paragraph structure will work great. If you have to write more, then each of the main sections will simply contain more than one paragraph.

But let’s keep things simple here and assume that we’re writing a five-paragraph essay of about 600 words. Then, we can distribute our word count this way:

• Introductory paragraph (75 words)
• Body paragraph 1 (150 words)
• Body paragraph 2 (150 words)
• Body paragraph 3 (150 words)
• Conclusion (75 words) 

If we add these up, we’ll get 600 words. Now that we have our introductory paragraph that has given us the main point and the overall structure, we’re ready to write the body of the essay.

Step 6. Write the body of the analysis

The body of a character analysis essay consists of paragraphs of a particular structure. Because we know that an analysis is an argumentative essay, each body paragraph should be structured in a certain way. 

Here’s a diagram of how to structure a body paragraph:

A body paragraph in an expository essay, just like the essay itself, must proceed from general to specific. 

The first sentence in a body paragraph is the lead sentence. It is the most general sentence in the paragraph. It functions just like a thesis does in an essay – it opens and summarizes the contents of the paragraph perfectly.

Then comes the next most general part of the paragraph – the explanation. Here, you should explain a process or describe how or why the point in the lead sentence is true. 

And finally, we have the most specific part of the paragraph, which is one or more examples. Examples are the most interesting and exciting part both for the writer and for the reader because they contain all the details.

Let’s write a body paragraph for our essay. We’ll pick the first body paragraph – the one about the lack of compassion in the Beast.

Character Analysis Body Paragraph Example

“Since the lack of compassion caused the witch to cast the spell, the Beast must discover kindness and generosity within himself to eliminate the root cause of the curse. His lack of kindness and compassion is his original sin. The animated movie opens with a sequence that reveals what happened to the prince that led to him losing his human form. An old woman asked for shelter from the rain, but the prince mocked her and refused her request. She then turned into a beautiful sorceress and punished him by casting a spell, condemning the prince to the form of a beast until he can experience reciprocated love. Unfortunately for him, the Beast retains the lack of compassion well into the middle of the story. He becomes enraged when he has another visitor – Belle’s father – while the weather outside is horrible. This echoes the initial refusal of shelter. He does the same with Belle when he gives her a number of prohibitions. He refuses her food and comfort unless she meets certain conditions. In other words, it looks like he has not learned a thing since the spell was cast.”

Body Paragraph Analysis

What have we done in this paragraph? First, we started with the lead sentence. The way you can write it is just by lifting it straight from the thesis statement and changing it around. 

That’s because the lead sentence is essentially an equivalent of one of the supporting points in the thesis statement. Just take that supporting point, change or expand it a little, and it will make a perfect lead sentence for a body paragraph.

Next, we provide an explanation. We explain why it is necessary for the Beast to conquer his lack of compassion. This was the reason he came under the spell. 

So, he must learn from that experience and eliminate this character trait. If he fails to do that, he’ll never gain Belle’s love and will never turn back into a human. 

Finally, we show that the Beast seemingly hasn’t learned a thing because he shows no hospitality or kindness to Belle and her father in the beginning. This means that he has a problem he must overcome. 

Once we’ve shown this, the paragraph has served its function, and we can move on to the next paragraph. 

To write the body of the essay, all we need to do is write it one body paragraph at a time, following the structure in the diagram. Once this is done, we’re ready for the final step. 

Step 7. Write the conclusion

The simplest and time-proven way to write a conclusion is to restate what you already wrote. In a sense, your conclusion is pretty much your thesis statement rewritten using different words.

Let’s write out our conclusion, and you’ll see what I mean:

“To conclude, the Beast is a prisoner of his own character flaws. His lack of kindness and compassion, his rage, and his self-doubt stand in his way of dispelling the curse and becoming human again. Early in the story, he displays each of these character flaws as if he never learned his lessons from what happened to him. And he must overcome each of these traits one by one in order to get in touch with the best in him, experience love, and achieve liberation from the terrible spell.”

As you can see, we’re not saying anything new here. We’re simply restating what has already been said in the essay. And it works in most cases. 

Some instructors will want you to do more in a conclusion. So, my advice is to approach your instructor and ask her what she prefers. This way you’ll know for sure. 

If you want to learn more ways to write conclusions, here’s a great tutorial I wrote . 

Guess what – we’re done, and I hope this was helpful! Now go ahead and write your own amazing character analysis essay.

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

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• Literary Terms
• Characterization
• Definition & Examples
• When & How to Use Characterization

I. What is Characterization?

Characterization is a writer’s tool, or “literary device” that occurs any time the author uses details to teach us about a person. This is used over the course of a story in order to tell the tale.

Aristotle first defined characterization in the 15 th century, speaking of the importance of plot over character in Poetics , “ Tragedy is representation, not of men, but of action and life.” What he means here is that “tragedy” (or drama, meaning a story) is not centered on the thoughts, and histories, and dreams of the characters . The story is centered on what happens to them (the plot), so writers employ characterization to relay information about those thoughts, histories, and dreams, without drifting away from the action.

II. Examples of Characterization

The way a character speaks can inform us of their background and personality, like how educated they are, or what they consider to be important. Even the way other characters speak to and about our characters is a form of characterization.

In the Harry Potter series, Dobby refers to Potter as “the noble Harry Potter,” or “good Harry Potter,” which shows us how the house elf adores the young wizard. It might also be a hint of how Dobby would show affection for other people he admires.

The way a character reacts to a certain scene also teaches us about them. For example, a character who snubs a beggar has is different from a character who opens their wallet and hands over a wad of hundreds, and still there are more differences from a character who works directly with the homeless population in a city. Characterization can happen in many, many ways.

III. Types of Characterization

A. direct/explicit.

This is clearly informative, and often uses the narrator, the protagonist, or the character themselves. The narration, “Clara had always been a smug, wicked little princess,” is a form of direct or explicit characterization, as is the line of dialogue, “Nicholas will never stop until he gets what he wants! He’s crazy!”

b. Indirect/Implicit

This more subtle method of characterization relies on you, the reader, to decide for yourself what it means. Indirect or implicit characterization uses behavior, speech, and appearance, as well as the opinions of other characters. Although other characters can be used to make direct characterization (“Nicholas is crazy!”), they can also be used to make indirect characterization about themselves.

Figuring out what it all means is most of the fun, and it’s the reason fans of certain books, shows, and movies can argue about whether or not a certain character is good, or evil, or in love. They’ve interpreted the characterization differently.

c. The Importance of Characterization

Modern storytelling usually emphasizes characterization even more than classical literature. This is because characterization is a major tool in the plot-driven narrative. They can quickly connect the reader to the character, without taking them out of the action. When you’re busy moving characters from one place to another, making things happen to them, it’s clumsy to suddenly stop, get inside of Tom’s head, and drift around with his thoughts for a while. On the other hand, no one is going to truly care about a story if they don’t care about its characters, whether by love or hate or even just amusement or pity.

So, it’s very useful to balance these two areas of development. Plot and character should be developing side by side and rely upon each other, which reflects the human experience. After all, how much of our own “plots” are related to our decisions (our character), and how much of it is totally random and disconnected from what we do?

IV. Characterization in Literature

Many of the most famed manuscripts are beloved for their “strong characters,” which is another way of saying characterization. Harry Potter has already been mentioned and has many beloved characters such as Hermione or Hagrid. From The Great Gatsby to A Christmas Carol , characterization is a major facet of both classical and popular fiction.

In The Great Gatsby , the location of lower upper-class characters (East Egg) compared to the location of upper upper-class characters (West Egg) serves to characterize their financial boundary.

In A Christmas Carol , Scrooge tells a charity collector that, if the poor would rather die (than go to poor-houses), they’d better do it, and “decrease the surplus population.” This line tells us a lot about how Scrooge sees both other people and his own good fortune.

V. Examples of Characterization in Pop Culture

Characterization, like many elements of storytelling technique, is an invisible tool to most casual readers. Many craft books and classes are devoted to the subject; they help build and portray strong, flawed, and realistic characters. The main source of characterization in pop culture comes from writers, actors, directors, and other types of artists that create scripts or skits. These mediums usually help the actors form the characters seen in plays, movies, TV shows, and other similar mediums. Here are a few examples:

Even Progressive commercials, which use the recurring salesperson Flo, could be said to use this skill.

Comedians can be said to use characterization for their stage personalities, because of its intentionally staged format, which details a certain personality. Comedians like Jeff Dunham actually create multiple characters. Using his ventriloquist skills and characterization, he jokes about different subjects relevant to the character.

In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, we see best-known movie characters that is a product of characterization. In the excerpt from the movie, his monologue introduces us to him, his opinions, and his plan of skipping school. More than likely, the monologue was scripted this way in order to give the audience an idea of the main character and what’s to come.

Keep in mind that although sometimes real people may seem like fictional characters—for example, rock stars or those on reality television—they are not agents of characterization unless they are being featured in a written work, such as in a magazine article, or a biographical book or film. Only in this scenario would the artist then use characterization to show personality in a manner which does not detract from the narrative (plot) itself.

VI. Related Terms

Flat, or unidimensional.

These terms are used to criticize characters who are poorly characterized, or poorly developed. Oftentimes, they speak in ways that don’t sound realistic, and are considered to be stereotypes . For example, the busy housewife could easily be called unidimensional. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have characters who seem to be stereotypes, but it does mean that they need to not be stereotypes upon closer examination. Perhaps the busy housewife loves to blow off steam with hiking and camping, instead of with a “spa day” that might just reinforce the stereotype.

Coined by Carl Jung, this refers to a set of twelve character types which (supposedly) exist across cultural boundaries and eras of time. Many writers consult these archetypes , but don’t rely on them alone. The twelves archetypes are: the Hero, the Caregiver, the Explorer, the Rebel, the Lover, the Creator, the Jester, the Innocent, the Sage, the Magician, the Orphan, and the Ruler.

VII. Conclusion

Characterization is one of the main building blocks of fiction today, no matter what genre or media the story uses. Anything that teaches the audience about your character is characterization, but the most common methods are through concrete action, dialogue, description, and the actions, thoughts, and words of the other characters in regards to the characterized character.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
• Cite This Website

How To Analyze a Character in 6 Easy Steps

Are you wondering how to analyze a character in a story? Character analysis is an important skill to learn. Learn more in this article.

There are a lot of basic skills that you learn in English class, and one of them could include character analysis. Most books have multiple major characters, and you need to understand how each character relates to one another. In addition, there are numerous types of characters, and each of them has its own personality traits.

If you are writing a character analysis essay, you need to track character development across the story. If you are unsure how to analyze a character, we will teach you all you need to know with the following six easy steps.

Materials Needed

Step 1: identify the character type, step 2: determine the character’s role in the story, step 3: understand the character’s mentionable actions, step 4: explore the main character relationships, step 5: discern the main personality traits, step 6: explore the character’s evolution, final word on how to analyze a character, why is it important to perform a character analysis , what are the most important ways in which to analyze a character, how is analyzing a character different from studying the plot of the story, does every character change as the story unfolds.

If you would like to analyze a character, the first thing you need to do is collect the appropriate materials. You won’t need much to complete a character analysis. Some of the materials you need to have include:

• You should have whatever work your character is in. This could be a short story, an essay, or a novel .
• If you have already read the work, you should also have your notes.
• You should have a notebook you can use to take notes as you go.
• You should have multiple highlighters and writing utensils available.

Once you’ve collected the necessary materials, it is time to start analyzing your character. There are several steps you need to follow. 

The first thing you should do is identify whether you have a dynamic or static character. This should not take you very long if you have already read the book. If you are dealing with a static character, you have a character that does not change much throughout the work. If you have a dynamic character, you have a character that changes a lot as the work unfolds.

You may want to look at the individual body paragraph because they will help you perform a character analysis outline. In many cases, it is easier to analyze a static character because it will not change over the course of the story. On the other hand, static characters can still have a lot of nuances in them.

It can take a long time to analyze a dynamic character because that character changes during the book or story. If you already have some idea of how the character changes, you may want to write a character analysis outline. That way, you can fill in the outline as you go through the rest of the story. You might also find our explainer on how to research books helpful.

Next, you need to identify the primary role of the character. For example, you may be working with the protagonist. The protagonist is the main character of the story. For example, if you are reading a story about medieval knights, the protagonist might be the hero of the story. They could be the knight in shining armor that saves the day.

Or, you might be doing a character analysis of the antagonist. The antagonist is the main villain of the story. For example, if you are performing a character analysis of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, you are dealing with the story’s main villain.

You can also perform a character analysis of some of the minor characters. There is nothing wrong with performing a character analysis of a supporting character you happen to find interesting. However, you should write down the character’s primary role you are analyzing at the top of the page. That way, you will not forget how the character fits into the rest of the story. 

So, now that you have identified the main character and whether they change throughout the story, it is time to figure out what the character does. Recognizing the character’s thoughts and actions will help you fill out the rest of your character analysis.

If you have already read the story , you should have some idea of what the character does as the story unfolds. You don’t necessarily need to write down each action that the character takes, but you should identify the main actions over the course of the story.

If you want to identify the character’s main actions during your character study, there are a few questions you may want to answer. They include:

• Why do you think your character is the protagonist or antagonist?
• What is the first significant action the character takes in the story?
• Why do you think your character behaves the way they do?
• How do the character’s actions influence the way the story unfolds?

If you can identify specific moments in the story that answer the questions above, you should have an easier time figuring out what actions are most important to your character analysis. 

Once you identify the most important character actions throughout the story, you can start identifying their relationships. There is a good chance multiple other characters play important roles in the story. These relationships drive the story forward. Therefore, you should include them as a part of your character analysis.

There are several meaningful relationships you may want to highlight as a part of your character analysis. They include:

• Who is the main antagonist? Not all relationships are positive. You should write down the main antagonist in the story and how that relationship unfolds with the story.
• Does the character have any allies? For example, in The Lord of the Rings series, Frodo has an entire band that travels with him. All of these characters are important. 
• Are there any characters that your character has to protect? You may want to highlight these relationships as well. Your character might make decisions based on the protection of those individual characters.
• Does the character have any family members? Even if the family members are not present throughout the story, they could play an essential role in the character’s thoughts and actions.

These are a few of the most important relationships you may want to highlight in your character analysis. Even flat characters have relationships that you may want to highlight. You do not necessarily need to include every minor character, but you should try to include the main ones.

Now that you have identified some of the most critical actions and relationships, some of the key character traits should rise to the surface. Start by brainstorming some of the most prominent personality traits you think of when you envision that character. For example, if you think about Harry Potter , you probably think about bravery. Harry Potter consistently takes risks to protect those who are important to him.

Not every character is going to have the trait. If you are looking at a character with a relatively minor role, you may have difficulty picking out important personality traits. You do not necessarily have to write down a lot of traits, but you should write down enough to learn more about the character’s personality.

If you are having a difficult time identifying personality traits, some questions you may want to ask yourself include:

• Is your character more of an introvert or an extrovert?
• Is your character more aggressive or cautious?
• Does your character tend to talk a lot, or are they relatively quiet?
• Is the character generous and giving, or are they self-centered?

These are a few basic questions that will get you started. They will also help you learn more about the character’s background and why your character behaves a certain way. 

Finally, if you are dealing with a dynamic, round character, your character should change as the story unfolds. Even in a short story, your character might undergo several changes.

You might think this is a lot of work, but you probably already have a lot of the answers in front of you. First, take a look at the biggest actions the character takes. These actions usually drive the changes in the character’s personality. Next, review the personality traits you have just written down, and tie them directly to the actions above. Then, you may want to identify specific supporting characters that also play a role in those actions.

As you put all of this together, you should figure out how the character changes. What are some of the most significant changes the character makes? Why does the character change? How did these changes influence the decisions the character makes down the road?

This information can help you fill out a worksheet on character analysis. Performing a detailed character analysis is important because it enables you to see the story’s structure in its entirety. As you get better at character analysis, you will better appreciate the story.

You might also be interested in our guide on how to analyze a sentence .

There is more than one way to perform a character analysis, but this is one of the primary ways. You might even want to change how you carry out your character analysis based on the character you are analyzing. However, remember that you should always start with the character’s role and whether they change as the story unfolds.

Then, you should write down some of the primary relationships and actions the character takes. Usually, these actions and relationships reflect the character’s personality. This will help you identify some of the most important personality traits of that character.

Finally, if you would like to take your character analysis a step further, you may want to look at how that character’s physical attributes and actions play a role in the larger story. Again, this will help you conduct a deep dive into your specific literary work. 

FAQs About How To Analyze a Character

It is important to perform a character analysis because this will help you learn more about how certain characters relate to one another. This will also help you learn more about how certain actions taken by the characters influence the story’s plot. 

There are several important ways in which you should analyze a character. First, you need to determine whether your character is dynamic or static. Then, you need to figure out your character’s role in the story. After this, you should analyze the character’s relationships, actions, and personality traits. 

When you analyze the plot of the story, you look at the story as a whole. When conducting a character analysis, you look at an individual character and their relationships. The character analysis is more specific, while a plot analysis is more comprehensive. 

Not every character will change as the story unfolds. Usually, the protagonist and antagonist will change. More minor characters will usually stay the same during the story. If the character changes during the story, you should note how the character changes and why you think that’s the case.

Bryan Collins is the owner of Become a Writer Today. He's an author from Ireland who helps writers build authority and earn a living from their creative work. He's also a former Forbes columnist and his work has appeared in publications like Lifehacker and Fast Company.

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Story in Literary Fiction

• Literary Fictional Story
• Character in Literary Fictional Story
• Narration of Literary Stories
• Desire and Motivation
• Credibility
• Improving Dialogue

Characterization Improves Dialogue, Motivates Plot, and Enhances Theme

• Techniques for Excellence in Creating Character in Literary Fiction
• How to Change Fiction Writing Style
• Author’s Attitudes
• How Literary Stories Go Wrong
• Preparing to Write the Great Literary Story
• The Anatomy of a Wannabe Literary Fiction Writer
• Victims as Characters in Literary Fiction
• Information and Literary Story Structure
• 1st person POV in Literary Story
• Top Story/Bottom Story
• Strong Voice and Attention to Time
• Humor and Fiction
• Emotional Complexity in Literary Fiction
• Conflict in Literary Fiction
• What Exactly Is a Character-Based Plot?
• Writing in Scene: A Staple for Reader Engagement in Fiction
• Creating Story World (setting) in Literary Fiction
• Perception in Literary Fiction: A Challenge for Better Narration
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by William H. Coles

Learning effective characterization for literary fiction is essential for great stories:–imagined characters created to reveal theme and meaning and that drive plot action in some way and are not simply bystanders to fatalism.

Character traits for fiction, every one useful to consider, are readily available in texts on writing and online: confident, conceited, domineering, outspoken, shy, short tempered, violent, passive, etc., for examples.  These common traits often tend to be descriptive about appearance (e.g. overweight), or about personality  (e.g. garrulous).  But for the serious, character-based fiction writer, there are other characteristics essential for creating character-specific voice and dialogue, assuring synthesis of logical desires and emotions in characters, and displaying levels of intellect and imagination of the character.

Consider these thoughts for in-depth thinking about characterization in fiction.

A sense of humor is essential for human bonding and social existence. What makes the character laugh, and what triggers that response, reveals the core, inner self.  Irony is a complex form of humor that should often be part of character development.  In general, how is a specific character humorous and how does that character respond to story humor?

Being polite and courteous to others springs from a caring about others’ feelings.  Does your character have a touch of civility or is the character unable to display civility.  This can be important in plotting and to maintain credible yet surprising plot progression and character interaction and conflict.  Good dialogue can use character civility both for identification and consistency of characterization for understandable motivation.  And a lack of civility can also motivate characters and drive plot.  

Every human’s concept of virtue and evil, good and bad, differs.  And morality contributes strongly as to how a character acts in a story, and is often a source of inner conflict.  What is the morality of a character?  How would it be expressed in in-scene development (most effective) and narrative description.  Every story acts in a moral cobweb, and individual character morality may differ for ironic and dramatic effects. 

Inaccurate metaphors (she looked like a decaying walrus) that degrade are to be avoided.  Effective character-compatible metaphors are difficult to create . . . to error produces damaging effects on the quality of writing and storytelling. 

Does your character believe in a superior being?  Does that superior being direct their lives?  Is a divine presence vengeful, benevolent, just?  Does the character pray?  Does the character believe in human will, or predestination?  When present, it is often important to carry religious belief of the character into dialogue, and often into theme too.

Voice is everything a character–or narrator–does, thinks, says, or feels.  Most great fiction maintains distinct character and narrator voices in the creation, but in contemporary fiction, the authorial voice often dominates as the voice of the work of fiction without differentiation of characters’ and narrators’ voices.  How is voice used in your fiction?  Can a character voice be easily identified?   FOOTNOTE.

Speech for characters reveals how they think, and after a time, who they really are.  Dialogue for a writer is an effective way to build character but the dialogue must be crafted for a purpose, not just written as a description from life, or an imagined scene, to fill space.  And, of course, dialogue is a major way to reveal character in scene without being told details by a narrator or author; character speech allows a reader to develop a sense of the individuality of the character in the story, a phenomenon that occurs when the author has created characters with distinct voices and personalities.

What does the character need to win . . . in the moment or in life?  This is an essence of fictional story. The character must desire something, must want to win something.  Is it admiration, content, domination, superiority, revenge, love, etc.?  Real life is often a constant adjustment to get along–survive and procreate–without pain or threat of death.  But the fictional character, living in the story world of conflict and imbalance, must have a need to win something that will help make them unique, and, for most literary storytelling, this winning is most effectively presented through action and dialogue. 

What does your character fear, and how does that fear affect his or her life?  Examples: fear of failure, fear of drowning, fear of humiliation, fear of death, etc.

How do your characters hurt others.  Physically?  Psychologically?  Verbally?   Do they humiliate, condescend, disagree, lie, exaggerate, ridicule?  

What makes your character laugh and cry on both a daily level and throughout life.  Are emotional responses mainly positive (love, etc) or negative (anger, etc.).  Is your character displaying a range of emotions (it’s best) and what emotion predominates?  Even though angry, passionate, focused, dedicated characters help drive plots, characters described from life are frequently depressed, loveless, and non-creative and seriously erode story and characterization.  Find predominant emotions and be sure that the majority of character emotions expressed in the story result in positive action, that is contribute to strong characterization and plot movement, and not contribute to negative action that stops story momentum and tends to make characterization flat and uninteresting.

Victimization.

Strong effective characters often see themselves as victims of circumstance, or birth, and are most effectively created through an objective narrator, who can present the victimization without the self-pity, self absorption, and negativity that might be expressed through the character.  Victimization often acts as tragic flaw in a character and can precipitate nemesis, so it is very useful, yet it can also turn readers away from engaging and caring about the character.  If your character is controlled by victimization (being from a minority ethnic background, not being given or taught the skills to succeed, feeling the unjustness of being ignored, etc.), work to present the victimization objectively–although the character’s view is almost always subjective–so the reader can identify and sympathize with the character’s burden of victimization. 

Response to criticism.

How does your character respond to criticism?  As constructive?  With anger?  Pondering the value?  Criticism is often used to insert conflict in fiction, and your character’s responses will need to be logical and credible while simultaneously being as unique and interesting as possible.

How does a character remember things?  Does he or she always try to be accurate, qualifying when they’re not sure for the sake of honesty?  Or do they inflate or minimize for their own advantage.  What do they tend to forget, and why?

Is the gender of the protagonist right for the story?  Would a change in gender be more engaging, provide better support for meaning, allow more accurate establishment of enjoyable voice?

What is truth (in accordance with fact or reality) to the character? How does he or she perceive truth in his or her world, and how does it relate to the real world and the worlds of other characters.  (Potential for conflicts.)

Conformity.

Is the character concerned with social acceptance, rebellious against accepted norm, or just apathetic.  Does he or she conform to local, national, or world societal standards?  How does this desire to conform or not conform relate to the story being created?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and what a character finds beautiful can reveal inner self . . . most often through dialogue and the internal thoughts of characters so unique and valuable to prose.  Humans find pleasure in what they think is beautiful: music, art, motion, nature, proportion, symmetry or asymmetry, creating (a chef, for example), and many others.  How might your character react to these contrasts of beauty:

ARCHITECTURE

To create your characters’ choices about what is beautiful or not can add dimension to your character and story.  These choices about beauty may never be expressed directly in the prose, but revealing characters attitudes through action, dialogue, internalization can help create dynamic fascinating individuals. 

Characters in great, lasting, stories are sculpted by (1) every word chosen; (2) the construction of every prose element; (3) the rhythmic pacing; (4) the character-specific accuracy of metaphors related to character development; (5) and the actions and reaction to the plot, be it fatalistic or character-based, or both (usually).  To achieve this in fiction, an author creates from a broad knowledge of the world and humanity.  In almost every instance, character development is more effective when an author imagines what the character (not the author) feels, thinks, and does in the story setting.

Great literary fictional characters are created for a story purpose that will please a reader, and, to be most effective, are not described in exact detail from reality or imagined reality as an authorial achievement.  To create effective characters, an author must build the character word by word, idea by idea, action by action.  It means, to be good storytellers, authors must be able to live as the character would speak and think, and empathize with the character’s choices.  Few writers attain this skill, but all should try.

Examples of character development in literature: Heathcliff and Catherine ( Wuthering Heights ); Anna Karenina and Levin; Homer’s Odysseus ; Jane Eyre ; Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and Mr Collins ( Pride and Prejudice ); Helen and Mr. Wilcox ( Howard’s End ); Freddy and Fredericka ; Emma ( Madame Bovary ); Randall Patrick McMurphy ( One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ); Rodion Raskolinikov ( Crime and Punishment ); Charles Marlow ( The Heart of Darkness ); “The Stone Boy” ; “Miss Harriet” ; Felicite in A Simple Heart (Flaubert).

Recommended stories of William H. Coles demonstrating character development:

Novels: McDowell /  Spirit of Want

Short Stories: “The Gift” / “The Amish Girl” / “On the Road to Yazoo City” / “The Miracle of Madame Villard” / “The Stonecutter” / “Big Gene” / “Speaking of the Dead” / “Facing Grace with Gloria”

Creating characters with distinct voices is a skill the serious author of character-based fiction uses to create memorable stories with significant meaning. In the past half century, there has been the tendency to write fiction with an all pervasive authorial voice created by an author intent on describing events (usually personally experienced) rather than creating story through imagined action, reflection, and conflict. For the most part, this trend has produced energy-deficient fiction and often meaningless storytelling. Characterization has diminished to physical description and avoids: character action; logical, credible, unique character motivation; and desire.

In successful fictional works–works that are remembered , reread, and will pass to future generations–characters are created by a writer as separate humans. Successful characterization is the element of a great story that drives action, creates ironies, and embeds humor. Effective dialogue–with action and reaction, and internalization–is ideally expressed with the thoughts, feelings, and ideas of the character, a process unique to fictional prose as a storytelling medium.

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2 thoughts on “ Characterization Improves Dialogue, Motivates Plot, and Enhances Theme ”

1 I want to know how to prepare an essay on characterisation?.

2 What is the role of the narrator?

Read: https://www.storyinliteraryfiction.com/essays-on-writing/characterization/ Then search using “The Fiction Well” for more information. Narrators tell the story. Characters act out in stories. Authors create stories. Read: https://www.storyinliteraryfiction.com/essays-on-writing/narration-literary-stories/

Fundamentals in Creative Writing: What is Character?

Crwr 17010 fundamentals in creative writing: what is character.

What is character? And what is a  character? How we answer these two questions depends not only on the genre we're writing in, but also on the kind of writer and person we are. Which is also to say that tackling these questions requires a look within ourselves, a confrontation with who we think we are and how we think we see the world around us, even when our characters are nothing like us. In this Fundamentals course, we'll look at the range of ways that "character" can be seen and constructed—the different technical, aesthetic, and even philosophical approaches to characterization. How does characterization in a poem differ from characterization in a story, or in an essay, play, or memoir? What ultimately makes for a compelling and memorable character? Beyond actual human beings, what does it mean for an idea to be a character, or a city to be one, or the very work itself? Our reading material will include poetry, fiction, and essays, and our assignments will include reading responses, creative writing exercises, short essays, and presentations.

Day/Time: Tuesday, 2:40 - 5:40 PM

Students must be a declared Creative Writing major to enroll. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.

Writing a Characterization Paragraph: A How-To Lesson for English Class

• Kellie Hayden
• Categories : High school english lesson plans grades 9 12
• Tags : High school lesson plans & tips

Before beginning the lesson on how to write a characterization paragraph, review the four basic types of characters:

• Dynamic characters – they change during the story
• Static characters – they don’t change during the story
• Round characters – they are fully developed and show a range of emotions
• Flat characters – they only have one side to their personality

Teach Parts of a Paragraph

Before students can write a paragraph, they need to know the parts of a paragraph: topic sentence, body and conclusion. To help students organize their paragraphs, try the fill-in-the-blank topic sentence and concluding sentence. In addition, make a list of three supporting details for the body so that students can successfully organize their first characterization paragraph.

Students should write out the three parts of the paragraph on notebook paper by following the directions.

Topic Sentence

The topic sentence should tell the reader what the “topic” of the sentence is and include a controlling idea. An example of a topic sentence for the characterization paragraph is as follows:

In the novel Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan, Jake Semple is a dynamic character.

For the characterization paragraph, the students could try this fill-in-the-blank topic sentence to get started.

In the novel, (book title) __________________ by (author)_____________________ the character (name of character) ________________________ is a (type of character: dynamic, static, round, or flat) _______________________ character.

In the body of the paragraph, students need to include detail sentences that support their topic sentence. If students tell that a character is dynamic, they need to give specific examples from the novel to support this statement.

Have them first make a list of three reasons why the character is the type of character they chose.

For example, three reasons to support the example topic sentence in this lesson, which states that Jake Semple is a dynamic character, are as follows:

• When Jake first comes to the Applewhite home called Wit’s End, he is a juvenile delinquent who has been thrown out of many schools. He is a chain-smoking, spiky-haired punk. At first he enjoys the “bad boy” image, but by the end he does change by enjoying helping Destiny, an annoying four-year-old.
• At first he does not get along with E.D., who is super organized and is close in age. However, they are homeschooled together and have to create their own projects. He actually enjoys finding butterflies and finds the one that she cannot find. They learn in the end to appreciate each other’s talents.
• Also, Jake finds that he has a talent for acting in the Appelwhite’s staged production of the Sound of Music . He has success on the stage and has a place where he thrives.

The conclusion should wrap up the essay. An example concluding sentence for the Jake Semple paragraph could be as follows:

Jake Semple goes from a smoking, juvenile delinquent teen to a star of the Sound of Music , and he truly changes into a better person.

For first time writers, they can fill in the blanks of this concluding sentence:

In conclusion, (character’s name) ____________ is a (type of character) ___________ character who (a summary of the character’s actions) _________________.

Once the topic sentence, detail sentences and conclusion are written, students can put together the parts and write a complete paragraph. The paragraph should be at least five sentences, but it can be up to ten sentences. A good paragraph will generally be around six to eight sentences.

Sample contents.

This post is part of the series: Teach Pagraph Writing

The following series shows teachers how to teach students how to write different kinds of paragraphs.

• A Lesson on Writing a Characterization Paragraph
• Novel Theme Paragraph
• Descriptive Paragraph Writing Activities Using Cookies