Where a Character Comes From
Introduced| English |
|---|
| Perspective/pəˈspektɪv/ |
A character is made of details, not of a summary
- "He is proud" is your conclusion, not the text's.
- The text gave you description, dialogue and behaviour — three kinds of detail.
- Analysis means naming which detail produced the conclusion.
“He is proud” is a verdict; first let the description, dialogue and actions testify.
Select all three kinds of detail that reveal characters.
The author's life is outside the text and outside the analysis.
Who is doing the describing?
- Descriptions of a character may come from a speaker, a narrator, other characters, or the character themselves.
- The same sentence means different things depending on the source.
- A rival's description of a character is evidence about the rival as well.
When one character describes another, the description is evidence about both.
The source of a description is part of what the description means.
Perspective
- Perspective 视角 is how narrators, characters or speakers understand their circumstances.
- It is informed by background, personality traits, biases and relationships.
- So perspective is not opinion — it is the position from which the character's opinions make sense.
What kind of detail, and whose?
Sort each piece of evidence by the kind of textual detail it is.
Perspective is best defined as...
The third option defines point of view, which the next lessons separate from perspective.
Select all the things the CED says inform a perspective.
All four — which is why a perspective can be read off the text around a character.
A description is evidence about its source as well as its subject. When one character describes another, the passage tells you about both — and an analysis that treats a rival's description as neutral fact has missed the more interesting half of the evidence.
A character's perspective is both shaped and ____ by relationships, environment and plot.
Those things made it what it is, and they are where you can read it.
Perspective is both shaped and revealed
- A character's perspective is shaped and revealed by relationships, the environment, the events of the plot, and the ideas in the text.
- Shaped: those things made the perspective what it is.
- Revealed: those same things are where you can read it.
Reading for motive
- Point at a detail. Say which of the three kinds it is. Say who supplied it.
- Then say what it reveals about the character's perspective.
- Every step is checkable against the page, which is what makes it analysis.
"She always did know best," said her brother. As a description of her, it may be admiration or complaint. As evidence about him, the always is the tell — he has been living with this judgement for a long time.
Description, dialogue and behaviour reveal characters, and a description's source matters: a speaker, a narrator, another character or the character themselves. Perspective is how someone understands their circumstances, informed by background, traits, biases and relationships — and it is both shaped and revealed by the text around it.