Dynamic and Static Characters

1. Dynamic and Static Characters Short Story Unit

2. Dynamic Characters • Experience a change or shift in attitude and behavior during the course of a literary work. • (not literal change, like a haircut, but a change in values or beliefs—sometimes a new understanding or sense of awareness)

3. Static Characters • Do not change. Attitudes and behavior remain essentially stable or the same throughout the literary work. • Hold the same beliefs or opinions in the end as they did at the beginning of the story.

4. Important difference: • Change in circumstance does not produce a dynamic character – only if the changes in one’s circumstance (whether good or bad) causes the change in the character. • If a character inherits a million dollars from a rich aunt in a story, this may or may not result in the sort of change in his personality or values that would make him count as a dynamic character, but his inheritance is not the “change”. • He might remain the same bitter, selfish person he had always been. This would be an instance of static character.

5. Change =  or  • Change in identity can be a good or bad thing • Examples?? • Important to look at the story’s plot in terms of the characters’ decisions • Going through trials and making progress vs. falling to temptation and resulting in failure

6. Understanding the Change • What motivated the change? Is it a good or bad thing? • What is the extent of the change? • Based on the change or lack/unwillingness to change, what can we infer about the focus of the story? What is it trying to teach or show us as a reader?