Character and narrative
Characterization
The methods through which a text constructs a character, including action, speech, thought, description, relationships, and other characters’ judgments.
Definition
The methods through which a text constructs a character, including action, speech, thought, description, relationships, and other characters’ judgments.
How it works
Use characterization as a claim about a pattern, not as a scavenger-hunt label. Identify the exact words, line breaks, scene conditions, narrative limits, or repetitions that justify the term; then explain what becomes possible because the work uses that choice here.
Strong analysis also tests alternatives. Ask whether a more precise neighboring term would describe the evidence better, whether the feature changes across the work, and how a reader or audience is positioned by it.
Questions to ask
- What exact textual evidence makes characterization the most precise term here?
- How does the feature change the reader’s knowledge, expectation, pace, or judgment?
- Does the pattern remain stable, or does a later use revise its earlier meaning?
Example from a literary work
Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and of situation.
— Persuasion, Jane Austen · Public-domain source ↗
The narrator’s compressed judgment directly establishes Sir Walter’s governing trait.