At this level, “character analysis” means motivation: not what somebody is like, but why they do the specific thing they do at the specific moment they do it.
The four questions
- What do they want in this scene? Scene by scene, wants change.
- What is in the way?
- What do they do about it — and what does that cost?
- What do they refuse to do? The refusals define a character faster than the actions.
Characterisation, direct and indirect
Direct: the text tells you. Indirect: you infer it from speech, action, appearance, thought, and the reactions of others. Strong analysis lives almost entirely in the indirect, because that is where a reader can be shown to have read.
Foils
A foil is a character placed beside another to make something visible. Mercutio is Romeo’s foil: same age, same city, opposite relationship to language and to love. Every trait of Romeo’s that matters is easier to name once Mercutio is standing next to him.
Ask of any pair: what does this one make me see about that one?
Motivation in a play versus a novel
A novel can tell you what a character thinks. A play, mostly, cannot — so motivation has to be built out of what is said, in front of whom, and what is done immediately afterwards. Soliloquies are the exception, which is exactly why they matter: they are the only time the audience is trusted with the inside.
Motivation, written well
Weak: Tybalt is angry and violent. Strong: Tybalt reaches for a sword before he reaches for a sentence. Every one of his scenes begins with somebody else speaking and ends with him refusing to answer in words — which is why the play can kill him off in a single line and lose nothing.
Curriculum connection
B1.3
identify the most important ideas and supporting details in texts, including increasingly complex texts (e.g., flag key passages that reveal character in a text; highlight or make notes about ideas or details that support the author’s thesis; prepare a series of tableaux to represent key events in a story; determine what essential information is conveyed by the captions in a graphic text)
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B1.5
extend understanding of texts, including increasingly complex texts, by making appropriate connections between the ideas in them and personal knowledge, experience, and insights; other texts; and the world around them (e.g., recall similar structures of texts previously read to help in analysing a new text; with a partner, role-play a mock interview about a public personality’s reaction to a recent profile in a print or online source; explain how something in your own experience or background has influenced your understanding of a character’s behaviour)
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