Sympathetic/Unsympathetic Characters



Sympathetic/Unsympathetic Characters

A sympathetic character is a character with whom the audience feels a connection, either because the character is beautiful, kind, funny, brave or otherwise appealing, or because we pity them for their suffering, or because they are like us and we feel like they represent us. The author uses this sympathetic character to show the reader how they should behave or how they should feel about a real-world issue. Because we like the sympathetic character, we want to be like them, so the author can use this character as a kind of puppet to demonstrate what he wants us, the readers, to think, believe, know, understand, realize or do.

Examples of Sympathetic Characters:

|Name and Title of Text|How you can tell they are sympathetic |What the author teaches us through that character |

|Cinderella |She is beautiful, kind and (in the Disney movie) has a |Cinderella is patient (“Someday my prince will |

| |beautiful voice. Even when she is wearing rags she still looks |come…”), so we should be patient, letting love find |

| |pretty. She is also the victim of cruelty from her step-family,|us rather than searching for it. She responds to |

| |so we pity her, and she is popular with the cute mice, so we |cruelty with kindness, so we are supposed to do |

| |admire her. |that, too. |

|Violet, in the novel |She is beautiful, young, intelligent, well-spoken and admired |Violet values intelligence and learning, and she |

|Feed by M.T. Anderson |by the main character, and she is more like us (the readers) |recognizes that her society is losing interest in |

| |than any other character. She is also a rebel, which inspires |those ideas, which fills her with fear, so we are |

| |us, and she is rejected by her society, which makes us pity |also supposed to recognize these tendencies in |

| |her. |American society and fear them, and to work to |

| | |change it, to preserve our love of learning and |

| | |thinking, rather than just entertainment and instant|

| | |gratification. |

Traits to Look for to Determine Whether a Character is Sympathetic

• Funny or witty

• Physical beauty

• Well-liked by other characters

• Beautiful voice

• Coloring- light colors, bright shades, appealing combinations of skin and hair color.

• Tendency to stand in the light (rather than lurking in the shadows)

• Kind to others

• Similar to the intended audience

• Brave

• Victim of fate or the cruelty of other characters (so we pity them)

Once you determine who the sympathetic character is, you can usually tell what the author’s purpose is; whatever that character does, believes, understands, realizes, feels or learns at the end of the story is what the author wants the reader to do, believe, understand, realize, feel or learn after reading the text. That is the author’s purpose.

This rule is always true in Disney movies --where even Quasimodo, the hunchback who is supposed to be hideous and repellant, manages to be ugly in an adorable, charming way—and it is usually true in other types of literature. Some authors, however, deliberately play with these expectations-- giving a physically-unattractive character sympathetic qualities of personality, perhaps to send a message about the importance of inner beauty over outer beauty—or making the main character or the narrator unsympathetic. This can create confusion about the author’s message, but don’t be alarmed! That confusion can make a great topic for an essay or discussion because it adds complexity to the author’s message.

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