Analyzing characters is an essential part of teaching literary analysis. Characterization is the process that an author uses to reveal the personality of characters in a literary text. Character traits, motives, choices, and psychology help readers identify author’s message, theme, tone, mood, and propel the plot in a narrative forward.
Character traits include attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, mannerisms, or habits that make up an individual in literature. These attributes can be perceived as positive or negative. Often, authors will reveal character traits through the following methods: physical description, how/what the character thinks, what the author directly states, what the character says, what the character does/how they act, and dialogue with other characters/what other characters believe.
Click the link below to download a free PDF of 500 character traits to assist your students with character analysis.
