7.3 Relationships between characters and groups

TLDR

In literature, a group or a force can act like a character, and the way a character interacts with other people, groups, or forces reveals who that character is. When a group includes or excludes a character, you learn how the group feels about that person, and often how that person feels about the group.

Why This Matters for the AP English Literature Exam

Characters rarely exist alone on the page. They push against families, towns, crowds, and even nature itself. When you can explain what those interactions show, you move past "this character is lonely" toward a reading that shows how the text builds that loneliness through specific details. That kind of reasoning helps you on multiple-choice questions about character and relationships. It also gives you strong, concrete evidence to use in your written analysis of prose fiction.

Key Takeaways

• A group (a town, a family, a crowd) or a force (nature, society, fate) can function as a character in a story.
• To understand a character, look at how that character interacts with other characters, groups, and forces, and ask what those interactions suggest.
• Inclusion or exclusion of a character tells you the group's collective attitude toward that character.
• The same relationship can also reveal the character's attitude toward the group.
• Textual details carry the evidence: who speaks to whom, who stands where, who is invited, who is ignored.
• Relationships are often complex. A character can be both part of a group and pushed away by it.

When a Group or Force Acts Like a Character

Groups as characters

Sometimes a whole community behaves as if it has one mind. It has opinions, makes decisions, and acts. When that happens, you can treat the group as a character with its own attitudes and motives.

William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is a classic example. The narrator is "we," the townspeople of Jefferson. The town gossips about Emily, pities her, sends a delegation about her unpaid taxes, and watches her house for decades. The town has a personality. It is curious, judgmental, and bound by old customs. Emily's relationship with that collective character is the center of the story.

Forces as characters

A force can also take on the role of a character, especially when a person struggles against it. In Jack London's "To Build a Fire," the extreme cold of the Yukon works almost like an opponent. The man ignores the warning of an experienced old-timer and travels alone. The cold steadily defeats every effort he makes to survive. The force does not speak, but it acts, and the man's interactions with it reveal his overconfidence.

When a setting or natural force shapes a character's choices, you are close to the territory of 7.4 Character interactions with changing and contrasting settings. That guide covers how settings work in more depth.

Reading Interactions to Understand a Character

Ask what each interaction shows

Every time a character deals with someone else, the text gives you information. Track these interactions and ask a simple question each time: what does this suggest about the character?

Useful details to notice:

• Dialogue: Who talks to the character, and how? Warmly, coldly, with respect, with mockery?
• Physical placement: Is the character at the center of a scene or at the edge of it?
• Invitations and rejections: Is the character welcomed into a home, a ritual, or a conversation, or turned away?
• Reactions: How does the character respond when a group accepts or rejects them?

Complexity, not labels

Relationships in good fiction are rarely simple. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the creature secretly watches the De Lacey family. He learns language from them and quietly helps them by gathering firewood. He feels deep affection for them even though they do not know he exists. When he finally reveals himself, the blind old De Lacey listens kindly, but Felix attacks him on sight. That one scene shows two attitudes inside the same group. The father is open, and the son is fearful and violent. The creature's love turns to bitterness. The interaction reveals his longing for connection and how much rejection damages him.

Inclusion and Exclusion: What They Reveal

The group's attitude

Whether a group includes or excludes a character tells you how the group, as a whole, sees that person. A community that gives someone a place at the table values or accepts them. A community that shuts someone out may fear, resent, or look down on them.

The character's attitude

The relationship can also reveal how the character feels about the group. Does the character want to belong, reject the group, or feel torn? Watch how the character responds to being let in or kept out.

Worked example: "The Lottery"

In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," the villagers gather for their yearly ritual. At first, Tessie Hutchinson is fully included. She arrives late, jokes with her neighbors, and the crowd makes way for her with good humor. She is clearly one of them.

Then her family draws the marked slip, and Tessie draws it in the second round. She protests that the drawing was unfair. The crowd does not listen. Her neighbors, her friends, and even her own family take part in stoning her.

What does this shift reveal?

• The group's attitude: The village is loyal to tradition above any single person. Tessie's warm place in the community vanishes the moment the ritual selects her. Old Man Warner's earlier defense of the lottery shows how strongly the group clings to custom.
• Tessie's attitude: She accepted the ritual and its violence as long as it targeted someone else. Her protest only comes when she is the one excluded. Her relationship with the group exposes her complicity as well as her fear.

A strong reading connects both sides: the details of inclusion, then exclusion, reveal the village's collective values and Tessie's hidden assumptions about belonging.

Another quick example: Things Fall Apart

In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo has built his identity around being a respected man of Umuofia. Near the end, he kills a messenger, expecting the clan to rise with him. Instead, the people let the other messengers escape, and Okonkwo realizes they will not fight. The clan's refusal to follow him reveals that the group has changed its stance toward resistance. Okonkwo's despair reveals how completely his sense of self depended on the group.

How a character changes over a story is its own skill, covered in 7.1 Sudden and more gradual change in characters.

How to Use This on the AP English Literature Exam

Multiple Choice

Expect questions asking what an interaction suggests about a character or how a group views someone. The best answer is tied to specific details: a pause in conversation, a character standing apart, a group's sudden silence. Be careful with answers that make a relationship sound simpler than the passage shows. If a group is both welcoming and suspicious, the correct choice will usually capture that mix.

Free Response

When you write about prose fiction, relationships give you strong material. Try this approach:

• Identify the character and the group or force they deal with.
• Point to specific details of inclusion, exclusion, or interaction.
• Explain what those details reveal about the group's attitude toward the character.
• Explain what they reveal about the character's attitude toward the group, if the text supports it.
• Connect both to your overall interpretation of the passage.

Common Trap

Don't only describe the relationship ("the town dislikes Emily"). Show how the text reveals it and why it matters. Name the details, then explain what they suggest. Also, don't assume the character feels the same way the group does. A character excluded by a group may still long to belong, or may scorn the group entirely.

Common Misconceptions

• Misconception: Only individual people count as characters.
  Actually: A group or a force, like a town or a brutal winter, can function as a character with its own attitudes and actions.
• Misconception: You understand a character just by reading what they say and think.
  Actually: How a character interacts with others, including groups and forces, often reveals as much as their own words.
• Misconception: Exclusion only tells you about the excluded character.
  Actually: It also reveals the group's collective attitude, such as fear, prejudice, or loyalty to tradition.
• Misconception: A group's attitude toward a character always matches the character's attitude toward the group.
  Actually: These can differ sharply, and the gap between them is often where the complexity lives.
• Misconception: A group always thinks with one mind.
  Actually: Some texts show members of a group reacting differently, like old De Lacey and Felix in Frankenstein. Notice those differences.

Related AP English Literature Guides

• 7.1 Sudden and more gradual change in characters
• 7.2 Epiphany as a driver of plot
• 7.4 Character interactions with changing and contrasting settings
• 7.7 Interpreting texts in their historical and societal contexts
• 7.6 Setting as a symbol