| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| behavior | A character's actions and conduct that reveal their personality, values, and motivations. |
| bias | A character's prejudice or tendency to favor certain viewpoints, revealed through their language and choices. |
| character motives | The reasons, desires, or intentions that drive a character's decisions and actions. |
| character perspective | A character's point of view, beliefs, values, and way of understanding the world as revealed through their thoughts, words, and actions. |
| description | Textual details that depict a character's physical appearance, qualities, or circumstances, which may come from a narrator, speaker, other characters, or the character themselves. |
| dialogue | Spoken words exchanged between characters that reveal their personalities, perspectives, and relationships. |
| narrator | The voice or character who tells the story and whose perspective shapes how events and subjects are presented to the reader. |
| relationships | Connections between characters that shape and reveal their perspectives, motivations, and development. |
| textual details | Specific words, phrases, descriptions, dialogue, and actions within a text that provide evidence about characters, their perspectives, and motivations. |
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| first-person narrator | A narrator who is a character involved in the narrative and tells the story from their own perspective using 'I' or 'we'. |
| narrator | The voice or character who tells the story and whose perspective shapes how events and subjects are presented to the reader. |
| omniscient narrator | A third-person narrator who has all-knowing perspective and can access the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of all characters and events in the narrative. |
| perspective | The viewpoint, background, and beliefs of a narrator, character, or speaker that shape how they perceive and present events or subjects. |
| point of view | The perspective from which a narrative is told, determined by the narrator's position, knowledge, and relationship to the events and characters in the story. |
| speaker | The voice presenting ideas or emotions in a text, particularly in poetry or non-narrative works, whose perspective influences the tone and content. |
| third-person narrator | A narrator who is an outside observer not directly involved in the narrative and refers to characters using 'he,' 'she,' 'it,' or 'they'. |
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| setting | The time, place, and social context in which a narrative takes place, which can function to establish conflict, reveal character, or drive plot development. |
| textual details | Specific words, phrases, descriptions, dialogue, and actions within a text that provide evidence about characters, their perspectives, and motivations. |
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| action | The events and movements that occur within a narrative's plot. |
| cause-and-effect relationship | A connection between events in which one event (the cause) directly leads to or influences another event (the effect). |
| character | A person or entity in a narrative whose actions, thoughts, and relationships drive the story forward. |
| conflict | A struggle or opposition between characters, forces, or ideas that drives the narrative forward. |
| dramatic situation | The combination of setting, action, and conflict that develops a narrative and places characters in opposition or struggle. |
| events | Individual occurrences or incidents that make up the sequence of a plot. |
| exposition | The part of a narrative that introduces background information, characters, setting, and context necessary for understanding the story. |
| falling fortunes | A progression in a narrative where a character's circumstances, status, or prospects decline. |
| narrative | A story or account of events presented in a text, including how those events are ordered and connected. |
| plot | The sequence of events in a narrative that are connected through cause-and-effect relationships, with each event building on the others. |
| rising fortunes | A progression in a narrative where a character's circumstances, status, or prospects improve. |
| setting | The time, place, and social context in which a narrative takes place, which can function to establish conflict, reveal character, or drive plot development. |
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| claim | A statement about a text that requires defense with evidence from the text. |
| literary analysis | The process of closely reading a text to identify details and make supported arguments about aspects of the text. |
| textual evidence | Specific details and quotes from a text that support and defend a claim in literary analysis. |