There are many literary devices that are covered in “Literature Craft and Voice”. One of the literary devices is character. Character plays a major role in any type of story. Character helps the readers to understand many things about a character, what they expect, what they are going through, why they act the way they do, among many, many other things. It can also be used to describe many different characters throughout the novel or story. It almost seems like without character there wouldn’t seemingly be a story to tell nor write about. In, “Who’s Irish?” by Gish Jen the text introduces the character who is a Grandmother from China whose daughter lived and grew up in the United States after they immigrated there. A “character” is defined as the people who live in the story (Cheuse, Delbanco, 235). In the short story, “Who’s Irish?” the main character is made up of many characteristics. The text defines these characteristics as characterization, or, “the way a writer …show more content…
The author used character by making the character be the first-person narrator, also another literary device. By using character and characterization, another facet of character, you learn that the author is obviously foreign from the way she speaks and narrates the short story, “In China, daughter take care of mother. Here it is the other way around. Mother help daughter, mother ask, Anything else I can do?” (Literature Craft and Voice, p. 224). Character is used in this story to help the reader understand, therefore, that the main character is foreign which helps you to understand the story as it goes on. She also is a rounded character. This facet of the literary device, character, is used in the story to help the reader connect with the character by making her seem real. This is used in the short story, “Who’s Irish?” to make the story and narrator seem real and therefore make the reader feel more connected to the
Gish Jen’s “Who’s Irish” tells the story of a sixty-eight-year-old Chinese immigrant and her struggle to accept other cultures different from her own. The protagonist has been living in the United States for a while but she is still critical of other cultures and ethnicities, such as her son-in-law’s Irish family and the American values in which her daughter insists on applying while raising the protagonist’s granddaughter. The main character finds it very hard to accept the American way of disciplining and decides to implement her own measures when babysitting her granddaughter Sophie. When the main character’s daughter finds out that she has been spanking Sophie she asks her mother to move out of the house and breaks any further contact
In the Bedford Introduction to Literature, Characterization is defined as "... the process by which a writer makes that character seem real to the reader"(2126). In order to do this a writer has multiple tools at their disposal that add to the depth of a character and simplify roles in a story. This includes the use of Protagonists and Antagonists, static and dynamic characters, showing and telling, and motivated and plausible action, as well as many others. The short story "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield is no exception to this and displays the main character of Miss Brill as the protagonist, who is confronted with the reality of her existence.
A character is someone portrayed in a novel, play, or movie that represents an person. An author can create characters in many ways to show the emotional, mental, and physical characteristics of that individual. An author has an infinite amount of choices of how he or she can construct characters. Zadie Smith does just that in “The Girl with Bangs.” In “The Girl with Bangs,” Smith represents the narrator as a normal college student that falls in love with a girl, named Charlotte because of her bangs. This representation sets up a series of conflict when Charlotte’s boyfriend, Maurice, moves and Charlotte hooks up with the narrator. Maurice then moves back months later to find out that she has cheated on him with the narrator and another unknown male. The narrator later finds out that Charlotte has cheated on her with the unknown guy and then was going to choose Maurice over her, which causes a small fight about who should actually have her. This gets resolved when she shaves her head in spite of all three men. Maurice is the only one who still wants her. The narrator has clear motivation about why she wants Charlotte, she is a dynamic character, and she is a round character.
Characterization is the creation or constriction of a character. In, “Mericans”, the grandmother is characterized as being awful and very religious. Cisneros writes, “We’re waiting for the awful grandmother who is inside dropping pesos into la ofrenda box before the altar to La Divina Providencia…Blessing herself and kisser her thumb”. The narrator does not like how religious
If there was no characters, there would be no story. Characters make up a story, along with other aspects of course, but characters come with different types of personalities. With the characters and their personalities it can create different types of moods for the readers. The characters bring these moods in stories such as a scary story, which is very important. Characters make the story have mystery and suspense. In the story Where is Here, by Joyce Carol Oates, the author uses one of the characters in the story to create a mysterious mood because he was very strange. With the character being strange it builds mystery by making the reader want to know what his next move is. The author uses characters to establish many characteristics
Characterization is a literary element used by the author to present qualities of characters in a literary piece, the purpose of characterization is to make characters credible and make them suitable for the role they play in the work. Authors present various characters possessing dissimilar qualities, to emphasize different aspects of the work. In the novel “The Scarlet Letter”, the author Nathaneil Hawthorn’s depiction of the two male characters, Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth, emphasizes the moral problems of the seventeenth century puritan society. Hence, their different characters contribute vitally to the plot of the novel.
Characterization is the creation or construction of a character by the author. Characterization can be used effectively when the author is describing the actions or emotions or thoughts of a character to the audience. In the story the Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe, he uses characterization to show that people are afraid of death, because he wants to show that everybody is going to die, and that people can't hide from it.
In “Who’s Irish”, Gish Jen demonstrates a family that has Chinese root and American culture at the same time. The main character is a fierce grandmother who lives in with her daughter’s family, and then ironically forced to move out because of her improper behavior during she raises her granddaughter. The author uses some unpleasant language and contents to describe the situation, which are effectively demonstrate how difficult and how struggle for people who lives in the gap between two different cultures. I can’t say who is right or who is wrong, but feel sorry for the grandmother.
Characters are those who add the spice to book and make it much more fun to read, they bring all
The literary technique of characterization is often used to create and delineate a human character in a work of literature. When forming a character, writers can use many different methods of characterization. However, there is one method of characterization that speaks volumes about the character and requires no more than a single word - the character's personal name. In many cases, a personal name describes the character by associating him with a certain type of people or with a well known historical figure. Therefore, since the reader learns the character's name first, a personal name is a primary method of characterization; it
Character: The verbal representation of a human being—through action, speech, description, and commentary, authors portray characters who are worth caring about,
Character descriptions are used to give a first and usually last impression of a character. The novel "Lord of the Flies" is a typical example. When Ralph is first mentioned he is described as a big solid boy who is confident when he talks, which indicates the qualities of a leader. As soon as Piggy is introduced he starts suggesting witty ideas that are thrown back in his face, which parallel throughout the novel. Piggy is also described as a fat little boy with asthma and glasses, which indicates straight away that he will be stereotypical of society and be cast away as a nobody. There is significant conflict between Jack and Ralph in the first chapter which also continues to grow throughout the novel. A character profile is used to involve the reader and give a character more depth into their personality thus creating a more intense storyline.
What is character? Character is something that is hard to explain. It is who we are, the way we act, and the kind of person we truly are and want to be. Character is what you are in the dark. But if character is the kind of person you are when no one is looking, then why does it matter? Character matters because even when we think no one is looking, they are. People are always watching us and the way we behave and many will look to us in admiration and inspiration, so it is our job to constantly be a role model of good character. A couple of ways that we can show our character are through gratitude and respect, but we can also look up to others, such as Benjamin Franklin, as role models for good character.
Characters reveal a lot about a work some are symbols and some are just there to help complete the story line, when it comes to The Handmaids Tale by Margret Atwood There is no shortage of great characters. The depth surrounding the characters is so grand even their Names are perfectly picked, which show that the women are owned without their digression this can be seen in this quote “This woman has been my partner for two weeks. I don 't know what happened to the one before. On a certain day she simply wasn 't there anymore, and
Characterization is a literary device that is used step by step in literature to highlight and explain the details about a character in a story. This has been used as a literary tool for about five hundred years. However, older forms of Literature were focused more on the plot rather than the characters. The usage of characterization in Literature became popular after scholars began to consider psychology as a scientific field around the 19th century, which resulted in why readers started getting interested in “why the characters acted a certain way”, “how did the character react” and so on. Authors use characterization in their literary work, to give substance to their characters, show the characters’ motivation, and allow the readers to connect with the characters.