Unit 4 · Topic 4.1

4.1 What characters' choices show about their values

What characters choose to do, especially under pressure, shows what they really value. In Unit 4 you move from noticing traits to reading values: inferring what a character cares about most from their speech, actions and silences, rather than from what the narrator tells you directly.

Key terms

values
choices
motivation
inference
character analysis

Choices reveal values

A value is something a person cares about enough to act on: loyalty, freedom, money, safety, approval, beauty, truth. Characters may claim to value one thing while their choices show another. When you analyze, trust the choices.

Choices come in three forms:

Speech: what a character decides to say, or not say, at a key moment.
Action: what they do, especially when it costs them something.
Inaction: what they refuse to do, or fail to do, when they could act.

Pressure makes values visible

Easy choices tell you little. A character who keeps a promise when it costs nothing hasn't shown much. A character who keeps it when breaking it would make them rich has shown what matters to them. Look for moments of pressure: a temptation, a threat, a deadline, a choice between two things the character wants.

When you find one, ask: what did the character give up, and what did they protect? The thing protected is the value.

Agency

Agency is a character's power to act and make choices. Some characters have lots of it; others are pushed around by family, money or circumstance. A character with little agency who still makes one meaningful choice can carry a story's whole meaning. Watch for the moment a passive character finally acts, or the moment an active character freezes.

Nuance

Writers rarely give you a simple hero. A good choice may be made for a mixed motive, or a selfish act may come from real pain. Nuanced descriptions, small details that complicate a first impression, are often the key to a character's significance. When a detail doesn't fit your first reading, don't ignore it; it may be the most important clue.

Writing about values

Avoid "she is a good person." Name the value and the cost: "She values the heron's life more than the money her family needs, and she knows it." That sentence is specific, arguable and ready for evidence.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
A choice made under pressure
In Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron" (1886), Sylvia, a nine-year-old girl living in poverty with her grandmother in the Maine woods, has climbed a giant pine at dawn and found the nest of a rare white heron. A young hunter, who collects birds by shooting and stuffing them, has offered ten dollars to anyone who shows him the nest. Sylvia has come to like him. When he and her grandmother wait for her answer, the narrator says: "No, she must keep silence! What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has she been nine years growing, and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird's sake?" What does Sylvia's choice reveal about what she values?
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Identify the choice: silence. She refuses to tell, which is a choice by inaction.
2. Step 2: Identify the pressure. The money matters to a poor family, she likes the young man, and her grandmother is scolding her. Everything pushes her to speak.
3. Step 3: Look at how the narrator frames it. The rhetorical questions present the cost honestly: "the great world" is offering her its hand, and she is pushing it away "for a bird's sake."
4. Step 4: Name the value: loyalty to the wild creature and the world of the woods, above money, approval and the outside world.
Answer: Model paragraph: Sylvia's silence is the strongest statement of her values in the story, because Jewett makes clear how much it costs her. The narrator's questions lay out everything on the other side: she has been "nine years growing," and now "the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her." Speaking would bring money her family needs and the approval of a young man she admires. Yet she "must keep silence," and the word "must" suggests a force inside her stronger than any argument. By choosing to "thrust it aside for a bird's sake," Sylvia shows that she values the life of the heron, and the wild world it stands for, above money, friendship and the outside world's attention. Her refusal is a small act with a large meaning.

Common mistakes

Taking a character's stated values at face value. Check them against what they actually do.
Ignoring choices made by not acting. Silence, refusal and delay are choices too.
Simplifying a character into "good" or "bad." Name the specific value and what it costs.

On the exam

Multiple-choice questions often ask what a character's decision "reveals" or "indicates." The best answer names a value or priority supported by the passage.
In the prose fiction essay, a key decision near the end of the passage makes an excellent focus for your thesis.

Connected topics

Videos

How to EXAMINE Characters and Complexity (3 Ways)
Garden of EnglishWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Characters' thoughts and feelings | Reading | Khan Academy
Khan AcademyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
How to Complete a Character Analysis
Ace Study GuidesWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Analyzing Characterization: Character Values and Beliefs
Barbra BloomingdaleWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Literary Analysis: "Araby" James Joyce (Lesson 2 - Character)
Professor MWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

4 questions on 4.1 What characters' choices show about their values. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

“Jose, come here.” Laura caught hold of her sister’s sleeve and dragged her through the kitchen to the other side of the green baize door. There she paused and leaned against it. “Jose!” she said, horrified, “however are we going to stop everything?”

“Stop everything, Laura!” cried Jose in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

“Stop the garden-party, of course.” Why did Jose pretend?

But Jose was still more amazed. “Stop the garden-party? My dear Laura, don’t be so absurd. Of course we can’t do anything of the kind. Nobody expects us to. Don’t be so extravagant.”

“But we can’t possibly have a garden-party with a man dead just outside the front gate.”

That really was extravagant, for the little cottages were in a lane to themselves at the very bottom of a steep rise that led up to the house. A broad road ran between. True, they were far too near. They were the greatest possible eyesore, and they had no right to be in that neighbourhood at all. They were little mean dwellings painted a chocolate brown. In the garden patches there was nothing but cabbage stalks, sick hens and tomato cans. The very smoke coming out of their chimneys was poverty-stricken. Little rags and shreds of smoke, so unlike the great silvery plumes that uncurled from the Sheridans’ chimneys. Washerwomen lived in the lane and sweeps and a cobbler, and a man whose house-front was studded all over with minute bird-cages. Children swarmed. When the Sheridans were little they were forbidden to set foot there because of the revolting language and of what they might catch. But since they were grown up, Laura and Laurie on their prowls sometimes walked through. It was disgusting and sordid. They came out with a shudder. But still one must go everywhere; one must see everything. So through they went.

“And just think of what the band would sound like to that poor woman,” said Laura.

“Oh, Laura!” Jose began to be seriously annoyed. “If you’re going to stop a band playing every time some one has an accident, you’ll lead a very strenuous life. I’m every bit as sorry about it as you. I feel just as sympathetic.” Her eyes hardened. She looked at her sister just as she used to when they were little and fighting together. “You won’t bring a drunken workman back to life by being sentimental,” she said softly.

“Drunk! Who said he was drunk?” Laura turned furiously on Jose. She said, just as they had used to say on those occasions, “I’m going straight up to tell mother.”

“Do, dear,” cooed Jose.

“Mother, can I come into your room?” Laura turned the big glass door-knob.

“Of course, child. Why, what’s the matter? What’s given you such a colour?” And Mrs. Sheridan turned round from her dressing-table. She was trying on a new hat.

“Mother, a man’s been killed,” began Laura.

“Not in the garden?” interrupted her mother.

“No, no!”

“Oh, what a fright you gave me!” Mrs. Sheridan sighed with relief, and took off the big hat and held it on her knees.

“But listen, mother,” said Laura. Breathless, half-choking, she told the dreadful story. “Of course, we can’t have our party, can we?” she pleaded. “The band and everybody arriving. They’d hear us, mother; they’re nearly neighbours!”

To Laura’s astonishment her mother behaved just like Jose; it was harder to bear because she seemed amused. She refused to take Laura seriously.

“But, my dear child, use your common sense. It’s only by accident we’ve heard of it. If some one had died there normally—and I can’t understand how they keep alive in those poky little holes—we should still be having our party, shouldn’t we?”

Laura had to say “yes” to that, but she felt it was all wrong. She sat down on her mother’s sofa and pinched the cushion frill.

“Mother, isn’t it terribly heartless of us?” she asked.

“Darling!” Mrs. Sheridan got up and came over to her, carrying the hat. Before Laura could stop her she had popped it on. “My child!” said her mother, “the hat is yours. It’s made for you. It’s much too young for me. I have never seen you look such a picture. Look at yourself!” And she held up her hand-mirror.

“But, mother,” Laura began again. She couldn’t look at herself; she turned aside.

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

Question 1 of 4

Laura's insistence that the party be stopped (paragraphs 1–5) reveals that she

Question 2 of 4

Mrs. Sheridan's response of putting the new hat on Laura and holding up a mirror (paragraph 22) mainly serves to

Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:

“He is in Melbourne now.”

She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.

“Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?”

“Look lively, Miss Hill, please.”

She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.

But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married—she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence. She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages—seven shillings—and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad of a Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work—a hard life—but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

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

Question 3 of 4

In paragraph 3, Eveline “tried to weigh each side of the question.” The details she weighs suggest that she values

Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.

But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a new-comer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.

As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o’clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.

At the man’s heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, grey-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man’s brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man’s heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.

Jack London, “To Build a Fire” (1908), from Lost Face (1910)

Question 4 of 4

The narrator's comment that the man “was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances” (paragraph 2) suggests that he

0 of 4 answered