6.2 Understanding and interpreting character complexity

Welcome to 6.2! In this guide, we’ll be discussing how to understand and interpret character complexity.

Characters in literature are often complex, with a wide range of emotions, motivations, and desires that drive their actions and decisions. Understanding these complexities is essential to understanding the characters themselves and the impact they have on the story as a whole. In this guide, we will explore how a character's own choices, actions, and speech reveal complexities in that character, as well as the function of those complexities.

You know the saying “actions speak louder than words?” This line also applies to characters. A character may claim to be one thing, but actually be another. When you want to analyze a character, look at their actions, and choices, first. 

A character's choices reveal a great deal about their motivations, desires, and beliefs. These choices also highlight a character's priorities and values, as well as their level of moral complexity. 

Ask yourself, why did this character make this choice? What did they have to gain or lose from it? What influences were they under when they made the choice? 

Example: In the play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus decides to find the killer of the last king of Thebes himself in order to end a plague afflicting his people. As a king, he could have ordered one of his subjects to find this killer, but his determination to do it himself illustrates a sense of personal responsibility and his motive to help his people however he can.

A character's actions also reveal a great deal about their inner thoughts and feelings. A character's actions can reveal their level of ambition, their capacity for violence or aggression, or their willingness to compromise. Characters may act in a way different from their intentions if they’re placed in an unexpected situation, and how they handle that situation tells us a lot about them and their motives. 

Example: In Wuthering Heights, we are introduced to a character called “Mrs. Heathcliff” who is introduced as hot-tempered, irritable, and selfish much like all the other characters we’ve met. However, when the narrator’s life appears to be at risk because he cannot find his way back to his lodgings, she insists that someone accompany him: 

Through this action, we can see that Mrs. Heathcliff has hidden depths, and that she’s not simply a mean character. 

Although actions speak louder than words, words also speak quite a bit. Speech can be a powerful tool for revealing a character's complexities.

A character's words can reveal their level of intelligence, their beliefs, or their level of honesty. For example, a character who speaks with wit and charm may be seen as clever, while a character who speaks in a straightforward manner may be seen as honest or straightforward. A character's speech style can reflect a character's background. Speech can also reveal the level of confidence a character has, or their capacity to be sincere or insincere.

Example: A famous example of this is the speeches that Brutus and Marc Antony give after the death of Caesar in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Brutus speaks simply and in prose, while Antony speaks in a now famous poetic speech, filled with rhetorical flourishes. Brutus has been established up to this point as an honorable man, and his honest, simple speech reflects that; Antony’s speech establishes him as a powerful orator and formidable threat. 

These complexities serve a number of functions in the story. 

First, they help to create a more realistic and relatable character. Characters who are complex and multi-dimensional are often more interesting and engaging than those who are one-dimensional or simplistic. The most famous works of literature — Hamlet, Anna Karenina, The Odyssey, are famous because of their complex, lively characters. 

Second, these complexities serve to create tension and conflict in the story. Characters who are torn between competing desires or motivations, for example, will often be at odds with one another and themselves, creating tension and conflict that drives the story forward. In Hamlet, Hamlet’s complex character makes him reluctant to act, and his efforts to confirm his father’s tale drive most of the play. 

Third, the complexities in a character's own choices, actions, and speech often serve to highlight the themes and motifs of the story. For example, a character's struggle to reconcile their selfish desires with their sense of duty may reflect the theme of sacrifice in the story. 

Finally, these complexities serve to help the audience understand the characters and their motivations more deeply. By understanding the complexities that drive a character's actions, the audience is better able to understand their actions, the reasons behind them and make the audience more empathetic towards the character. In Hamlet, Claudius’s monologue (in which he describes how guilty and tormented he is) turns him from an evil antagonist to a more complex, sympathetic character. 

Analyzing these complexities for us AP English Literature students will not only help us earn points on the AP Test for complexity, but also gives us a richer understanding of the author's work. Complex characters make for more complicated, realistic and thought provoking stories. Being able to understand how and why those characters are complex is key to understanding those stories, and they're what can make English fun.

That’s all we have for 6.2! In 6.3, we’ll discuss ways the narrative structure itself can be complex.