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Character Analysis Paper Assignment
The following assignment idea is to teach analysis with a literary focus. Students will be analyzing one character from a chosen piece of fiction. Begin the character analysis paper with the following steps:
Read the short story thoroughly the first time to formulate a basic opinion.
Upon the second reading highlight every reference to the character that you choose to analyze.
Now read through the highlighted sections and label each section according to the six elements of character analysis: appearance, speech, actions, words of others, environment, thoughts/feelings.
As a prewrite, now make a list of each of the six areas (each on a separate sheet of paper), writing down the quotes you highlighted and the page # for each.
Review the pages and select those elements with the most detail for your paper (of course, the short story may not exhibit all six of the characteristics, or you may only find one or two examples for a characteristic that will not be used in the paper).
Of the selected character analysis traits, read over them carefully and at the bottom of the page write your interpretation of this character—or what these examples tell us about the character.
Now use the interpretations you wrote as the topic sentences of your body paragraphs and use the examples from the text (which should now be paraphrased as much as possible) to support your interpretations.
The Intro and Conclusion of the paper:
The intro should of course give the name of the short story and the author.
It should give an overall impression (your interpretations) of the character.
It will also need background information as well, which can be a summary of the story