Expectation, Comparison and Motive
IntroducedA description sets a bar
- The description of a character creates certain expectations for that character's behaviours.
- How a character does or does not meet those expectations affects a reader's interpretation.
- So a description is a promise, and the interesting cases are the broken ones.
A description is a promise; when the “patient” character slams a door, the promise wants a meeting.
A description of a character matters partly because it...
The interesting cases are the broken promises.
Associated details count too
- Details associated with a character — as well as those used to describe them — contribute to a reader's interpretation.
- A room, an object, a habit, a job: none of these is a description, and all of them are evidence.
- In a long novel this is often the strongest evidence available, because it accumulates.
Match each evidence type to what it is.
In a long novel, associated details are often the strongest, because they accumulate.
Perspective comes through the narrator
- Readers' understanding of a character's perspective may depend on the perspective of the narrator or speaker.
- You never meet a character directly; you meet them through whoever is telling.
- And a character's perspective may shift during the course of a narrative — so a reading taken from chapter two may be out of date by chapter twenty.
What kind of character evidence is this?
Sort each observation by the CED's category.
A character's perspective stays the same throughout a narrative.
It may shift — so an essay must say when in the narrative its evidence comes from.
A character's perspective may shift during a narrative. An interpretation built on how they appeared in the opening chapters can be flatly wrong about the ending — which is why an essay on a long text must say when in the narrative its evidence comes from.
Select all the things a comparison to another character can reveal.
The CED names exactly those two; the author's opinion is outside the text.
Comparisons reveal twice
- When narrators, characters or speakers compare another character to something or someone else, they reveal their perspective on the compared character — and may also reveal something innate about that character.
- So a comparison is evidence about the comparer and about the compared.
- Both readings are legitimate, and the strongest answers take both.
Readers can infer motives from a character's actions or ____.
A refusal to act is often the clearest motive evidence a novel supplies.
Motive is inferred from action or inaction
- Readers can infer a character's motives from that character's actions or inactions.
- Inactions is the word students skip: not writing back, not attending, not objecting.
- A refusal to act is often the clearest evidence of motive a novel supplies.
A narrator calls his cousin "a small clerk of a man." As evidence about the cousin, it suggests caution and narrow horizons. As evidence about the narrator, it shows he ranks people by occupation — and the novel spends four hundred pages proving that ranking wrong.
A description creates expectations, and meeting or failing them shapes interpretation. Associated details count as evidence. A character's perspective reaches you through the narrator's and may shift. A comparison reveals the comparer and the compared. Motives are inferred from actions or inactions.