METHODS OF CHARACTERIZATION

ACTION Excerpt A I turned on a light in the living room and looked at Rachels books. I chose one by an author named Lin Yutang and sat down on a sofa under a lamp. Our living room is comfortable. The book seemed interesting. I was in a neighborhood where most of the front doors were unlocked, and on a street that is very quiet on a summer night. All the animals are domesticated, and the only night birds that Ive ever heard are some owls way down by the railroad track. So it was very quiet. I heard the Barstows dog bark, briefly, as if he had been waked by a nightmare, and then the barking stopped. Everything was quiet again. Then I heard, very close to me, a footstep and a cough. I felt my flesh get hard you know that feeling but I didnt look up from my book, although I felt that I was being watched. from The Cure John Cheever Excerpt B I wonder if it is possible to prepare yourself for anything. Of course I lay there saying, This is the flu, it isnt supposed to last more than two or three days, I should find the Tylenol. In the moment I didnt feel bad, really, a little queasy, a degree feverish. The disease wasnt a mystery to me. I know what a virus looks like, how it works. I could imagine the invasion and the resistance. In fact, imagining the invasion and the resistance took my attention off the queasiness and the feverishness. But when I opened my eyes and my gaze fell upon the bookcases looming above me in the half-light, I shuddered reflexively, because the books seemed to swell outward from the wall and threaten to drop on me, and my thoughts about the next few days had exactly that quality as well. I did not see how we could endure, how I would endure. from The Age of Grief Jane Smiley Excerpt C When he returned to the kitchen the cat was scratching in her box. She looked at him steadily for a minute before she turned back to the litter. He opened all the cupboards, and examined the canned goods, the cereals, the packaged foods, the cocktail and wine glasses, the china, the pots and pans. He opened the refrigerator. He sniffed some celery, took two bites of cheddar cheese, and chewed on an apple as he walked into the bedroom. The bed seemed enormous, with a fluffy white bedspread draped to the floor. He pulled out a nightstand drawer, found a half-empty package of cigarettes and stuffed them into his pocket. Then he stepped to the closet and was opening it when the knock sounded at the front door. from Neighbors Raymond Carver

METHODS OF CHARACTERIZATION SPEECH

Direct expressions of emotion Laughing Leering Shaking hands Screaming Making love Shouting Language Vows News Essays Talk Laws Notes Letters Symbolic and emotionless communication Chemical formulae Maps Checkbooks Credit cards Mathematical equations

Excerpt A In fact, he hardly stopped talking, and we kids watched the spit foam at the corners of his mouth . . . . It was more like a lecture than a conversation . . . . Actually these arent dreams or plans, Uncle Bun said. Im making predictions about ineluctabilities. This Beautiful Nation, this Gold Mountain, this America will end as we know it. There will be one nation, and it will be a world nation. A united planet. Not just Russian Communism. Not just Chinese Communism. World Communism. He said, When we dont need to break our bodies earning our daily living any more, and we have time to think, well write poems, sing songs, develop religions, invest customs, build statues, plant gardens and make a perfect world. He paused to contemplate the wonders. Isnt that great? I said after he left. Dont get brainwashed, said my mother. Hes going to get in trouble for talking like that. from China Men Maxine Hong Kingston Excerpt B Can I go out and get sardines for you tomorrow? No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net. I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you, I would like to serve in some way. You brought me a beer, the old man said. You are already a man. How old was I when you first took me in a boat? Five and you were nearly killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces. Can you remember? I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me. Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you? I remember everything from when we first went together. The old man looked at him with his sunburned, confident loving eyes. If you were my boy Id take you out and gamble, he said. But you are your fathers and mothers and you are in a lucky boat. from The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
SUMMARIZING SPEECH 1) After that, Samantha told us everything we had never wanted to know about the lost art of ormolu, and Marlene gave us the play-by-play account of her last bridge game. 2) Carefully, playing down the danger, Len filled her in on the events of the long night. 3) They whispered to each other all night long, and as he told her all about his past, she began to realize that she was falling in love with him.
2

CONFLICTING METHODS OF CHARACTERIZATION

Excerpt A When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the next fellow. So at least he thought, and there was a certain amount of evidence to back him up. He had once been an actor no, not quite, an extra and he knew what acting should be. Also, he was smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has the advantage: it is harder to find out how he feels. He came from the twenty-third floor down to the lobby on the mezzanine to collect his mail before breakfast, and he believed he hoped he looked passably well: doing all right. from Seize the Day Saul Bellow Excerpt B She came speeding down the stairs one step at a time, her feet going so fast that she seemed on little caterpillar wheels, her forefinger sawing horribly at her craw for Celias benefit. She slithered to a stop on the steps of the house and screeched for the police. She capered in the street like a consternated ostrich, with distracted rushes towards the York and Caledonian Roads in turn, embarrassingly equidistant from the tragedy, tossing up her arms, undoing the good work of the samples, screeching for police aid. Her mind was so collected that she saw clearly the impropriety of letting it appear so. Miss Carridge from Murphy Samuel Beckett Excerpt C Sixty years had not dulled his responses; his physical reactions, like his moral ones were guided by his will and strong character, and these could be seen plainly in his features. He had a long tube-like face with a long rounded open jaw and a long depressed nose. from The Artificial Nigger Flannery OConnor Excerpt D Mr. Woodhouse was fond of society in his own way. He liked very much to have his friends come and see him; and from various united causes, from his long residence at Hartfield, and his good nature, from his fortune, his house, and his daughter, he could command the visits of his own little circle in a great measure as he liked. He had not much intercourse with any families beyond that circle; his horror of late hours and large dinner parties made him unfit for any acquaintance but such as would visit him on his own terms . . . Upon such occasions poor Mr. Woodhouses feelings were in sad warfare. He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his youth; but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him rather sorry to see anything put on it; and while his hospitality have welcomed his visitors to everything, his care for their health made him grieve that they would eat. from Emma Jane Austen

METHODS OF CHARACTERIZATION DIRECT ANALYSIS OF A CHARACTER BY THE AUTHOR

Excerpt A The most excellent Marquis of Lumbria lived with his two daughters, Coraline, the elder, and Luisa, and his second wife, Doa Vicenta, a woman with a dull brain who, when she was not sleeping, was complaining of everything, especially the noise . . . . The Marquis of Lumbria had no male children, and this was the most painful thorn in his existence. Shortly after becoming a widower, he had married Doa Vicenta, his present wife, in order to have a son, but she proved sterile. The Marquis life was as monotonous an as quotidian, as unchanging and regular, as the murmur of the river below the cliff or as the liturgic services in the cathedral. from The Marquis of Lumbria Miguel de Unamuno Excerpt B Mrs. Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her behavior on returning to her husbands house after many months was a notable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although it was by no means without benevolence, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of softness. Mrs. Touchett may do a great deal of good, but she never pleased. from A Portrait of a Lady Henry James
CHARACTER ANALYSIS BY ANOTHER CHARACTER

. . . there is something about Fanny, I have often observed it before, she likes to go her own way to work; she does not like to be dictated to; she takes her own independent walk whenever she can; she certainly has a little spirit of secrecy and independence and nonsense about her, which I would advise her to get the better off. As a general reflection on Fanny, Sir Thomas thought nothing could be more unjust, though he had been so lately expressing the same sentiments himself, and he tried to turn the conversation, tried repeatedly before he could succeed. Mrs. Norris and Sir Thomas from Mansfield Park Jane Austen

METHODS OF CHARACTERIZATION APPEARANCE

Excerpt A Mrs. Withers, the dietician, marched in through the back door, drew up a, and scanned the room. She wore her usual Betty Grable hairdo and open-toed pumps, and her shoulders had an aura of shoulder pads even in a sleeveless dress. from The Edible Woman Margaret Atwood Excerpt B My grandmother had on not just one skirt, but four, one over the other. It should not be supposed that she wore one skirt and three petticoats; no, she wore four skirts; one supported the next, and she wore the lot of them in accordance with a definite system, that is, the order of the skirts was changed from day to day. . . The one that was closest to her yesterday clearly disclosed its pattern today, or rather its lack of pattern: all my grandmother Anna Bronskis skirts favored the same potato color. It must have been becoming to her. from The Tin Drum Gnter Grass Excerpt C As soon as I entered the room, a pungent odor of phosphorus told me shed taken rat poison. She lay groaning between the quilts. The tatami by the bed was splashed with blood, her waved hair was matted like rope waste, and a bandage tied round her throat showed up unnaturally white . . . The painted mouth in her waxen face created a ghastly effect, as though her lips were a gash open to the ears from Tajinko Village Masuji Ibuse Excerpt D How beautiful Helen is, how elegant, how timeless: how she charms Esther Songford and how she flirts with Edwin, laying a scarlet fingernail on his dusty lapel, mesmerizing. She comes in a chauffeured car. She is all cream and roses. Her stockings are purest silk; her underskirt, just briefly showing, is lined with lace. from Female Friends Fay Weldon