Essay Assignment #5

Literature Humanities
J. O’Neal
Spring 2008
Essay Assignment #5: Character Studies

Nuts and Bolts
Deadlines: March 31^th (11:59pm) for draft, comments by April  4.
April 9^th for final essays (by 11:59pm)
Length: 1000-1200 words

Prompt
For this assignment, choose a character from Hamlet, Don Quixote, or Pride and Prejudice and analyze their role in the story. You may NOT choose Hamlet, Ophelia, Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Elizabeth Bennett, or Charles Darcy.

Suggestions and Guidelines

1. As always, I want you to focus on a specific question or problem. Some ideas: How does this character influence one of the major characters? If the character does not directly influence the events of the texts, why are they included? What idea/argument/worldview does this character represent? How would the text be different without them? There are other general tactics, but these can get you started.

2. If a character is central to the plot, fine, but merely chronicling a characters contribution to plot will make for a dull and formulaic essay. If you need/want to address plot issues, it might be interesting to think hypothetically—such as “Why does THIS character perform this action?,” “How else could have the author advanced the plot without this character? Would it have changed anything?”

3. Remember, you are not expected to come up with a beautiful and perfect reading of a character. The idea, rather, is that you try to enlarge our understanding of a text, if even in a small way.

4. Look, of course, for what the character does or says, but don’t overlook what other characters say about them or how they are described by the narrator. Cervantes and Austen are not always telling it to us straight, so think of how even third-person description might be illuminative.

Inspiration
The character that lasts is some ordinary guy with extraordinary qualities.
- Raymond Chandler

Characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.
- Isaac Bashevis Singer

That trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as quills. My characters are galley slaves.
- Vladimir Nabokov

Character is fate.
- Heraclitus

Our characters are a result of our conduct.
- Aristotle

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.
- Ernest Hemingway

A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at  all sure about what he’s supposed to be doing.
- Anthony Burgess