Dr. Roberta D. Raymond __________________________________________________________
Building Stronger Readers and Writers through Character Analysis The students were scattered around the room with their classmates. Some were working alone, others with a partner, and some in a small group. The classroom was alive with constructive conversation as students actively discussed the characters from the books they were reading. The conversations were animated and sometimes intense. Dozens of students had their character trading cards clipped to their pants and they were discussing the latest books they had read. As I continued a student conference, two voices rose from the back of the classroom; the character literary mock trial was getting heated. There were also several students grouped on the floor developing wanted posters, creating a character analysis activity, and sharing their stories with each other. The students were bringing the elements of fiction to life in the classroom. The scenario above is not always the scene that is playing out in the classroom. Students are not always able to connect to the character, even when reading books of choice. Students do not know how to analyze the characters in the stories they were reading. This cripples their enjoyment of and connection to the characters in the story; this can create both conversational and instructional obstacles in literature circles and reader’s workshops. Character Type and Reader Motivation Different characters drive the plot of different stories, and a reader's enjoyment of a character may be dependent on the character type. Typically, a story consists of a main character, or protagonist. The story's plot is centered around the protagonist, hence a reader who cannot relate to the protagonist may experience difficulty engaging in the story's plot. Such a situation provides an opportunity for an instructor to enhance a student's background knowledge through further exploration and analysis of the protagonist, including their motives, decisions, and relationships to other characters in the story. One of the other characters in the story may be the antagonist, or character who challenges the protagonist by influencing or creating the story's central conflict. Analyzing and discussing how the protagonist responds and interacts with the antagonist is another approach to increasing a reader's engagement with the text. Because a wellwritten character demonstrates complex and multi-faceted layers of interpretation, a student's initial opinion of a character can change throughout a story, allowing for additional instructional opportunities; character type matters.
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