ENGL 102

Crystal Baker

English 102

Character Analysis

For the Character Analysis, choose a character from one of the stories we've read and tell three personality traits that character has.  In your introductory paragraph, be sure to name the character, whether the character is a protagonist or flat, the title of the story, the author, and the traits you're going to discuss. Each paragraph will have a particular trait in the topic sentence. You will then justify your choices of traits with detail and a quotation. After three body paragraphs, you will have a concluding paragraph in which you briefly summarize the traits.

BELOW IS AN EXAMPLE OF AN ESSAY. THE CHARACTER NEEDS TO BE BUB FROM THE CATHEDRAL BY Raymond Carver.

THE ESSAY NEEDS TO BE AT LEAST 2 ½ PAGES. double space.

In the short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Conner, the grandmother is considered the protagonist. The grandmother has terrible traits that cause the downfall of her family. She was a considered a racist, conniving, yet stylish person.

Throughout the story, you can see that the grandmother has her own issues going on. She has been portrayed as a racist. A racist is someone that is derogatory or demeaning to another race or person that doesn’t look like them. “Oh, look at the cute pickaninny!” she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of the shack” (O’Connor 243). This statement was not a nice thing to say about someone else. She called him a degrading nickname they call poor black people.

Another trait the grandmother showed was being conniving. A conniving person is someone who doesn’t tell the whole truth in order to get what they want. They are very good at persuading people without the person knowing they are doing wrong. “Here this fellow that calls himself Misfit is aloose from the Federal Penn and towards Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (O’Connor 242).

The era of the story goes back to slavery days around 1955. During this era prominent, prestigious people dressed differently from people that worked for them. The grandmother made sure that when she left to go somewhere, she is put together well. Her dress matched her hat, she wore gloves and pumps. The grandmother even made sure her make-up was flawless.

“The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves…but the grandmother had on a navy-blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs wee white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (O’Connor 243).

In conclusion, a protagonist is the leading character or one of the major characters in a story. As mentioned above, it can clearly be seen that the grandmother is the protagonist in the short story. Although the grandmother is older than the rest of the people in the story, she has an eye for fashion. However, do not let the fashionista fool you she is also conniving and a racist.