Unit 1 · Topic 1.1

1.1 What details reveal about a character

Writers rarely tell you outright who a character is. They show you through what the character says, does and thinks, how they're described and how other people treat them. Reading those details and turning them into an inference about the character is the most basic skill in AP Lit, and it's behind a big share of the multiple-choice questions.

Key terms

characterization
direct characterization
indirect characterization
perspective
inference

Showing versus telling

Direct characterization is when the text simply tells you a trait: "She was proud." Indirect characterization is when you have to work it out from evidence. Most good fiction leans on the indirect kind, because it trusts you to notice.

Watch for five kinds of evidence:

Description: how a character looks, dresses, moves or keeps their room.
Dialogue: what they say, and how they say it (formal, nervous, bossy, joking).
Actions: what they do, especially when no one is watching or when something is at stake.
Thoughts: what the narrator lets you see inside their head.
Reactions: how other characters talk to them, avoid them or talk about them.

Who is doing the describing?

A description is only as trustworthy as the person giving it. A character can be described by the narrator, by another character or by themselves, and each source has its own angle.

If a jealous sister calls someone "vain," that tells you something about the sister, too. If a character describes herself as "perfectly content" while she does something sad and lonely, the gap between her words and her actions is the real evidence. Always ask: who is saying this, and why might they see it that way?

Perspective: how a character sees their own situation

Perspective is how a character (or narrator, or speaker) makes sense of the situation they're in. It comes from who they are: where they come from, what they're like, what they're inclined to believe and who they're close to. Two characters can stand in the same room and see completely different situations.

You can also see perspective in action: in how a character treats the people around them, how they feel about the place they live and how they react when something happens. A character who brushes off a friend's warning, or who feels at home in a run-down place everyone else hates, is revealing how they see the world.

From detail to inference

An inference is a conclusion you reach from evidence. A good inference goes beyond the obvious but stays anchored to the words on the page. Use three steps: notice a detail, ask what it suggests, then check it against other details in the passage.

Notice that each detail has more than one possible meaning. That's normal. The surrounding details tell you which reading fits best.

Detail in the text	What it might suggest
A character straightens a picture frame in a stranger's house	Needs order, or is anxious in new places
Her friends stop talking when she walks in	She's an outsider, or they're hiding something from her
He describes his tiny apartment as "my kingdom"	Pride, humor or a way of coping with having little
A narrator lists everything a character owns but never her feelings	Distance, or a world that values things over people

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Reading a character through one object
Read this passage from Katherine Mansfield's story "Miss Brill" (collected in The Garden Party and Other Stories, 1922). Miss Brill, an older woman who lives alone, is getting ready for her weekly Sunday visit to a public park: "Miss Brill put up her hand and touched her fur. Dear little thing! It was nice to feel it again. She had taken it out of its box that afternoon, shaken out the moth-powder, given it a good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes." What does this passage suggest about Miss Brill? Write a short paragraph with a claim and evidence.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Notice what she does. She talks to an old fur stole (a fur wrap with a little animal head) as if it were a pet: "Dear little thing!"
2. Step 2: Ask what that suggests. Someone who pours this much affection into an object may not have many people to share it with. The narrator never says "lonely," so this is an inference, which is exactly what the exam asks you to make.
3. Step 3: Check other details. The fur has been shut away in a box with moth-powder, and its eyes are "dim." That matches the picture of a woman whose own life is quiet and a little faded.
4. Step 4: Write the claim so a reader could disagree, then back it with the exact words.
Answer: Model paragraph: Mansfield never calls Miss Brill lonely; she lets us see it in the way Miss Brill treats her fur. She greets the worn stole with "Dear little thing!" and remembers how she "rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes," as if she were reviving a sleepy pet rather than brushing an old coat. A woman who gives this much tenderness to a piece of clothing seems to have few people to give it to. The fur's long stay in a box of moth-powder also mirrors Miss Brill herself: kept out of sight most of the week and brought out, carefully tidied, only for her Sunday in the park.

Common mistakes

Calling a character "nice" or "mean" and stopping. Name a more precise trait (lonely, guarded, proud, self-deceiving) and point to the detail that shows it.
Treating every description as fact. Check who is describing the character; a biased narrator or rival can mislead you.
Making an inference the text can't support. If you can't point to a word or detail, the inference is too much of a stretch.
Mixing up perspective and point of view. Perspective is how someone sees their situation; point of view is the position a story is told from (see 1.6).

On the exam

Multiple-choice questions often ask what a detail "suggests" or "reveals" about a character. The right answer is usually a reasonable inference, not a word-for-word restatement and not a wild leap.
In the prose fiction essay (Question 2), small details make the strongest evidence. Quote a few precise words and explain what they show; don't summarize the plot.

Connected topics

Videos

AP English Literature Exam: How to Write About Character in the Literary Analysis Essay
Marco LearningWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
"What is Characterization?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers
OSU School of Writing, Literature and FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Direct and Indirect Characterization: Show and Tell
The ELA ConnectionWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
How Authors Describe Characters: Direct vs Indirect Characterization
The Learning DepotWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Characterization in Literature
Educational TutorialsWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

5 questions on 1.1 What details reveal about a character. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.

The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes under one of which I found the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.

When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan’s sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed and I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.

Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

James Joyce, “Araby,” from Dubliners (1914)

Question 1 of 5

In paragraph 4, the boy's habit of lying on the parlour floor “watching her door” and then following Mangan's sister down the street chiefly reveals that he

Question 2 of 5

In paragraph 5, the narrator says he “imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.” This comparison suggests that the boy

Although it was so brilliantly fine—the blue sky powdered with gold and great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques—Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur. The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting—from nowhere, from the sky. Miss Brill put up her hand and touched her fur. Dear little thing! It was nice to feel it again. She had taken it out of its box that afternoon, shaken out the moth-powder, given it a good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes. “What has been happening to me?” said the sad little eyes. Oh, how sweet it was to see them snap at her again from the red eiderdown!... But the nose, which was of some black composition, wasn’t at all firm. It must have had a knock, somehow. Never mind—a little dab of black sealing-wax when the time came—when it was absolutely necessary.... Little rogue! Yes, she really felt like that about it. Little rogue biting its tail just by her left ear. She could have taken it off and laid it on her lap and stroked it. She felt a tingling in her hands and arms, but that came from walking, she supposed. And when she breathed, something light and sad—no, not sad, exactly—something gentle seemed to move in her bosom.

There were a number of people out this afternoon, far more than last Sunday. And the band sounded louder and gayer. That was because the Season had begun. For although the band played all the year round on Sundays, out of season it was never the same. It was like some one playing with only the family to listen; it didn’t care how it played if there weren’t any strangers present. Wasn’t the conductor wearing a new coat, too? She was sure it was new. He scraped with his foot and flapped his arms like a rooster about to crow, and the bandsmen sitting in the green rotunda blew out their cheeks and glared at the music. Now there came a little “flutey” bit—very pretty!—a little chain of bright drops. She was sure it would be repeated. It was; she lifted her head and smiled.

Only two people shared her “special” seat: a fine old man in a velvet coat, his hands clasped over a huge carved walking-stick, and a big old woman, sitting upright, with a roll of knitting on her embroidered apron. They did not speak. This was disappointing, for Miss Brill always looked forward to the conversation. She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn’t listen, at sitting in other people’s lives just for a minute while they talked round her.

She glanced, sideways, at the old couple. Perhaps they would go soon. Last Sunday, too, hadn’t been as interesting as usual. An Englishman and his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hat and she button boots. And she’d gone on the whole time about how she ought to wear spectacles; she knew she needed them; but that it was no good getting any; they’d be sure to break and they’d never keep on. And he’d been so patient. He’d suggested everything—gold rims, the kind that curved round your ears, little pads inside the bridge. No, nothing would please her. “They’ll always be sliding down my nose!” Miss Brill had wanted to shake her.

Katherine Mansfield, “Miss Brill” (1920), from The Garden Party, and Other Stories (1922)

Question 3 of 5

Miss Brill's treatment of her fur in paragraph 1 (calling it “Dear little thing!” and “Little rogue!”) suggests that she

Question 4 of 5

The details about the band in paragraph 2 chiefly convey Miss Brill's

Question 5 of 5

Miss Brill's response to the Englishman's wife in paragraph 4 (“Miss Brill had wanted to shake her”) reveals that Miss Brill

0 of 5 answered