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Do You Know What’s a Character Essay?

Are you sure you understand what is character essay and how to write it. Take a seat and read this post to find out everything you need.

Mar 28, 2023 | By Joseph Low

Receiving a task to prepare new writing is always stressful, especially if it’s something people have never written before. However, an experienced essay writer may understand the purpose of the writing, identify its structure and decide how to distribute the information by text considering the volume. That’s how good analysis could be written.

However, these are only basic statements. A task like a character analysis requires proper guidelines. In other cases, students do something wrong, miss core elements, and receive low marks for their writing. To ensure nothing is missed, we ask you a question: do you know what a character analysis essay is and how to write it? If you’re feeling overwhelmed with such assignments or need expert assistance, consider clicking on “write my dissertation for me” for professional help.

A Definition of Character Analysis Essay

To understand the character analysis better, we first may understand what it is. A character analysis essay is a written work where a character of a specific story is analyzed. This is made to clarify a character’s traits, motivation, and role in the story and highlight events this character went through during the story.

You do more than just elaborate on the character’s role in the story. You also define the personality type by looking at the engagements, behaviour, mental and moral qualities, and decisions made during the story. How do you understand these decisions and how they affected the storyline? By performing character analysis, you build a detailed profile and describe each point in detail. Writing helps to comprehend the character and situations they face.

Making an Outline for Character Analysis Essay

A well-written character analysis essay includes many points and details that may not be missed. However, as happens many times, students forget, ignore, or skip some of them, missing core information. It definitely differs from what teachers expect when receiving the character analysis essay sample. To ensure that nothing is missed, it’s good to outline the main points of the writing. Character analysis is separated into three core parts: introduction, body part, and conclusion.

  • Introduction: This part of the character analysis should be brief and catchy as it holds together the entire exposition. Create a short portrait to intrigue the readers and make them read on. Later, they will discover whether the character has mental and moral qualities, good manners, etc.
  • Body part: It’s the biggest and the most valuable piece of the whole character analysis essay. In it, you may describe the character’s path through the story, analyse connections with other personalities, and explain how these relationships impact the story. For example, if you see a character murdering the best friend for a specific reason, what impact will it have on the story in the future? Why did the character do this despite being a good person during the plot? Was their motivation strong enough? Are they still good people? What character traits were matched, and how are they shown during the analysis? Consider answering these questions in the body part of the writing.
  • Conclusion: This is part of a character analysis essay where you summarise all your thoughts and thesis in the main part. You can say a particular character is good or bad after everything they did during the story or did they deserve the status of a major character. It’s important not to repeat the information already mentioned in writing.

The best way to write a structured and consistent character analysis essay is to have an example in front. It helps to see how the writer provides information about a character and keeps the structure intact. Examples, where people analyse personalities like Harry Potter, Tyrion Lannister, or Hamlet may be very valuable for your new analysis.

Starting Character Analysis Essay Right

Before getting started, choose a character you would like to analyse carefully. It may be the one you sympathise with or someone with qualities or important character traits. Then, read the story focusing on the particular character. Pay attention to words, actions, and how this person communicates with others. Choosing a writing you already know is good; you don’t need to read a whole play, novel, or comic book. Instead, take notes about the character (core episodes, phrases, actions, etc.) to discover important character traits and other things.

Describing Different Types of Characters

Ensure you determine the one you choose to analyse. Understanding a variety helps to describe moral qualities, emotions, choices made, and other things. Now, let’s quickly run through each type and identify the main differences for better character analysis essay writing.

The protagonist is the main person in the story. Every story has at least one protagonist, as the author builds the plot around this character. Moreover, you can choose a protagonist for a character analysis. Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins, Ariel — these are protagonists. Such characters often face challenges and learn valuable lessons. Keep in mind that an anti-hero could be a protagonist as well. Distinctive moral qualities may not be his advantage, but he is a central figure of the whole story. The antagonist is the one who is usually opposed to the protagonist. However, it’s not always the enemy, but not a good person as well. It can be a person who stays in the protagonist’s way (Lex Luthor is the antagonist for Superman). Pick him for a character analysis essay if you don’t want to choose a super complicated case.

A major character is vital to the story. However, this type of person is not always a protagonist. It could be a best friend, assistant, love interest, parent, or relative. For example, Alfred from Batman is a major character. He always supports Bruce Wayne, advising him, constructing gadgets, repairing suits, etc. The story is not about him, but Batman won’t be Batman without this man. It can be a good thesis for character analysis.

Minor characters usually don’t make a lot of impact on the story. However, sometimes they appear alongside the protagonist or antagonist to progress the plot. For example, Viktor Krum from “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” is a minor character. A big strong man who works out competes in the challenge and shows sympathy to Hermione. If you can find enough information about the minor character, you can pick one for the essay. However, ensure you can cover all aspects of the analysis.

A dynamic character evolves and changes through the story. Remember that dynamic character is not always positive. For example, let’s choose detective Ralph Anderson from Stephen King’s “The Outsider” for character analysis. During the plot, he truly believes he is right and wants justice. However, as the plot goes on, the situation gets more complicated, so the officer changes his mind. We can’t say he is a good character, but we can’t name him bad, especially when looking at the character traits. Static characters usually don’t change or grow during the story.

Static characters don’t have much background information or facts about their lives. Unfortunately, people choose them for character analysis one time out of ten. They are like symbols and have a specific role in a narrative. For example, these persons may embody the best mental and moral qualities.

Last but not least on the list are foils. They usually exist in contrast to the protagonist. Usually, this method shows certain qualities or aspects of personality. Foil is not always a villain. It’s the one whose ideology and character traits differ from the protagonist (for example, this character has distinctive moral qualities while the protagonist doesn’t).

What Character Analysis Questions to Use?

The usage of questions is needed to form the right direction of the writing. Having an outline may not be enough to complete proper writing. How to ensure you provide enough information in the character analysis? Use questions to close gaps. Below are samples of the questions that can help while performing a comprehensive character analysis.

  • How did the character change throughout the story?
  • How do other characters communicate with the main hero? Can we trust what they say?
  • Does the character’s background affect the decisions made in the present?
  • How does the character react to the core events? How have these events changed them? Did they show distinctive moral qualities?
  • What lesson did the character learn?

When looking through the text, try to find answers to those questions. They will help you to form core theses for analysis. Use quotes to provide more substantial arguments. For example, if the character’s background wasn’t described well enough, try to find episodes where someone mentioned past events. Dialogues are valuable as they help discover character traits and narratives hidden behind the lines. The more you tell about the person in your essay, the higher mark it will get.

Notice These Writing Tips for Character Essay

How to raise the value of a character analysis essay? First, activate critical thinking and discover what else you can say. Then, how to understand what exactly needs to be mentioned in writing? Use the tips below to improve the quality of the assignment.

  • Articulate the main thesis

The character analysis is not only about the character itself. It sounds strange, but this writing should have a central theme or topic. For example, the novel “IT” by Stephen King shows a generation gap when characters have to deal with the enemy after 27 years. After time skips, they look different, conquering their fears. As they get older, each character’s actions get more intelligent. They use new methods to fight the biggest evil they’ve ever seen. Why not put an accent on this in the character analysis?

  • Be consistent when describing a character

The core information from the whole analysis comes in the body part, and your task is to provide everything that may be important while discussing the central theme. For example, you start with the life story (character’s background, childhood, etc.), which is essential for dynamic character description. Then switch to the relationship with other personalities. From this point, moving to the language the hero uses makes sense. Finally, say a few words about the character’s actions.

  • Show the character’s evolution

In case someone you choose for the character analysis is a dynamic person, it’s essential to show how they evolve. Evolution could be described in specific examples (decision-making moments, plot twists, enemy attacks). In some writings, characters fail to pass the challenge for the first time. However, they learn, become stronger, and overcome everything the second time. Moreover, the character’s traits are seen even better than before.

Final Thoughts About Character Essay

As you can see, writing a good character analysis essay requires much work — research, planning, outlining, writing, and double-checking. You walk near the character during the story watching them doing things, talking with others, making decisions, etc. You also see the character’s actions. Some episodes require two or three reviews to understand what the author wants to say. However, identifying the purpose will be like a treasure, and the character analysis will become more valuable.

Following all these points may be too complicated for some individuals, so they ask for help. For example, they ask, “can I pay someone to write my paper?” It’s an intelligent decision, but finding a reliable writing specialist who will complete the task is crucial.

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