Unit 4 Overview: Character, Conflict, and Storytelling

Welcome to Unit 4. Today, we’re back in the world of Short Fiction, and we’ll be focusing on characters in action! In this Unit, we’ll be talking about some of the complexities of characters, conflict and storytelling, aspects that make it difficult — but also fun — to analyze stories. 

Without further ado, let’s take a look at what we’re analyzing in this unit.

4.1 Protagonists, antagonists, character relationships, and conflict

** Important Skill: Identify and describe what specific textual details reveal about a character, that character’s perspective, and that character’s motives.**

** Important Skill: Explain the function of contrasting characters.**

Describe how textual details reveal nuances and complexities in characters’ relationships with one another.

4.1 is about the nuances of character interactions with themselves, their allies and their enemies. Just like how people’s relationships are often deeper than what it may first appear to be, characters also have relationships that are more than they might first appear to be. 

4.2 Character interactions with setting and its significance

** Important Skill: Explain the function of setting in a narrative.**

** Important Skill: Describe the relationship between a character and a setting.**

In this guide, we’ll be talking about how characters interact with their setting and what the setting does for the narrative. It’s an extension of the conversation we started in 3.3.

4.3 Archetypes in literature

** Important Skill: Identify and describe how plot orders events in a narrative.**

** Important Skill: Explain the function of contrasts within a text.**

In this guide, we’ll be discussing archetypes: universal, recurring patterns or themes that are present in works of literature. Examples include the archetype of the hero, the mentor or the outcast.

4.4 Types of narration like stream of consciousness

** Important Skill: Identify and describe the narrator or speaker of a text.**

** Important Skill: Identify and explain the function of point of view in a narrative.**

This guide is about different types of narration! Narrators can be in first, second, and third person, as you probably know, but did you know there are also different types of narrations like stream of consciousness? In this guide, we’ll go through as many types as we can.

4.5 Narrative distance, tone, and perspective

** Important Skill: Identify and describe details, diction, or syntax in a text that reveal a narrator’s or speaker’s perspective.**

In this guide, we’ll talk about the nuances in the relationships between narrators and the story they’re telling. Although a lot of works are told in a distant third-person, narrators that do not fit this mold can oftentimes show that they have an opinion of their own, or suggest it in several ways.