Main Characters

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English Class Review: The Protagonist

Get Ready - Get Set - Read!

So here we are! You have chosen some books, and you are ready to read and talk! There is a lot to talk about, but we’ll start with the basics: the Main Character, or Protagonist. This is the main person that the story is about.

About a year ago, I was reading to my son the book Goonie Bird Greene by Lois Lowry. The main character, a new student with a funny outfit, announced that she wanted “a desk right smack in the middle of the room, because [she likes] to be right smack in the middle of everything.” (3).

This was a big Ah-Hah! moment for me. The main character is the one “in the middle of everything.” It’s so simple, so easy, so brilliant. It was in this moment that I realized I could teach my son to understand literature at a higher level. It was in this moment, sitting on the floor in my PJs right before bed, that the germ of the idea of Literary Littles was born.

Understanding literary concepts doesn’t have to be hard or lofty. My goal here is to make it so simple that our youngest children can understand. My son, at that first reading of Gooney Bird Green was only three years old, but the image of a girl in the middle of the room was so clear, so simple. He got it.

So let’s start there: our Main Character is standing in the middle of the room, on the middle of every page, in the center of the action. Can you find him?

Let’s Dive In!

What the main character wants and needs drives the action of the story. The character usually wants something external that is rather easy to identify. In more developed narratives, the character often needs something a little different than what they want. The character’s need is often more internal and harder to identify. 

In Peggy Rathmann’s Officer Buckle and Gloria, the main character, a police officer who does safety presentations at schools, really really wants the kids to like him. But they don’t. They think he is boring. When he gets a new side kick, a dog named Gloria, the kids LOVE her. Officer Buckle is angry and humiliated. He wants to be the one the kids like. But by the end, he accepts Gloria because he realized that he actually needed a friend.

As you are reading a book, the character’s wants will appear in the beginning. Ask your child if he can tell what the character wants. 

Not all picture books and early chapter books develop characters deeply enough to reveal true needs. But if your book does, those needs will often be revealed closer to the end of the narrative. Even if your child cannot identify them, you can still use them as a jumping off place for important conversations about the lesson the main character is learning. 

Multiple Main Characters

Many books (especially early chapter books) will feature a small group of kids doing everything together. If you read closely, you might notice that the author takes the point of view of one kid more frequently than the other, or that you can see into the thoughts of one kid more than another. But those distinctions are not particularly significant for your children to notice. 

Focus instead on talking about each main character distinctly. They may have the same objective in the narrative, but their distinct personalities should convey different wants or needs.

In the popular Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborn, brother and sister team Jack and Annie work together to find clues, save books, and help their friends in Camelot. Jack and Annie have the same mission and the same goal. Yet they have different personalities and are driven by different wants. Jack has a very ordered personality and generally wants to be in control and keep things neat and tidy. Annie has a very trusting personality and wants to take risks and make new friends. These competing wants create tension in the story and keep both kids in check.

Character Flaw

All characters have flaws, because all people have flaws. Stories that depict good people as all good and bad people as all bad don’t ring true and we often dismiss them, or in the cases of older folktales, we rewrite them to reflect the complexity of real people. In adult literature, the character’s flaw is often a deep-rooted personality quirk (to put it nicely), or a long-standing destructive habit, but in order for the character to achieve the thing he wants, he must completely change. He must overcome his flaw and be reborn, so to speak. 

In children’s literature, the character flaw often takes the form of an insecurity that must be overcome or a lesson that must be learned. Let’s try to identify the flaws in some well-known characters. I’ll just pull a few things from my shelf. You might have others that you’d like to try this with.

Llama Llama Red Pajama — Baby Llama throws a tantrum and must learn to trust his Mama.

Peter Rabbit — the naughty bunny disregards rules and must learn to obey.

Little Blue Truck — while the Little Blue truck tends to be an all-around-nice guy, the dump truck in the original book is very prideful, and learns the importance of friendship.

Sheep in a Jeep — very inattentive sheep repeatedly crash a Jeep. Since they don’t learn their lesson and change their behavior, their jeep ends up “in a heap.”

These characters’ flaws create an obstacle as the character tries to get what he wants in the narrative. Peter Rabbit wants to enjoy some cabbages, but since he has sought cabbages in an off-limits garden, he is chased off by the gardener, and ultimately is sent to bed without dinner of any sort. 

In the Magic Tree House series, Annie can often be a bit too trusting, and this puts her and Jack into some dangerous situations. Jack and Annie can’t complete the mission safely if they are stuck in a tomb, or held hostage by Gorillas, for instance. 

A character’s flaw must be overcome in order for them to get what they want or accomplish their goal.

Character Change

Change is a central element of good fiction. If the characters are, at the end, the same flawed, silly people they were at the start, the reader is left with an empty feeling: what was the point? Throughout a narrative, the character’s wants and needs drive the action forward, but that character flaw gets in the way of progress. There comes a point in films and adult literature that writers often refer to as the “Dark Night of the Soul.” This is a low point for the characters. It is often a dark scene. The characters wrestle with their internal nature, bad habits, and flaws. They have been pushed to this low point, and now they must change if they want to move forward.  

C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe provides a good example of this. The most deeply flawed sibling, Edmund, runs away and submits himself to the service of the White Witch. His flaw is selfishness and arrogance, and he believes she will dote on him and make him a prince. She does not. She enslaves him. About three quarters of the way through the narrative, Edmund finds himself tied to a tree and utterly helpless. This is Edmund’s dark night. It is actually a dark night in a cold forest and Edmund is at the mercy of a wicked witch. And what’s worse, he has put himself in this position. He is not a martyr. He is a traitor, and he knows it. 

Aslan, the True King, sends a rescue party, and Edmund is brought home. But for Edmund to be restored, he must present himself in complete humility and repentance. And Aslan must pay a price. Edmund is changed by the end. Completely and wholly changed. No longer is Edmund arrogant. Here, standing before Aslan with his head down, he is humble. No longer is Edmund self-serving. Here he is, bowing to the True King. 

Now C. S. Lewis is a literary master. It is no surprise to see such richly developed characters and plots in his work. It can be a little harder to find these moments in much of children’s literature. Partly that is because picture books and early chapter books must be pared down so tightly. They also (often) reflect the real experiences of children. A contemporary picture book won’t show a naughty boy tied to a tree. But we should still get that emotional arch that includes an essential change.

Alternative Endings Common in Children’s literature:

A. Other Characters Learn a Lesson

Admirable, or Good characters affect change on other characters and teach lessons. Consider the Little Blue Truck. He is always friendly and timely and wise. The dump truck learns a lesson from him in the original narrative, and in Little Blue Truck Goes to the City, the whole city learns to be more patient during traffic jams. Another example is Kate DiCamillo’s Mercy Watson series. The lovable and oblivious pig never changes, but her antics cause the other characters to grow and change. 

B. The Reader Learns a Lesson

Some stories end in a comic reversal, in which the characters end up back at the starting point. In this case, the reader has learned a lesson and can laugh at the silly characters who have not learned anything. In the classic Give a Mouse a Cookie series, the mouse ends up at the same place where the story began. The narrator and the reader, however, both observe this foolishness and learn not to give a mouse a cookie. 

Putting it All Together: The Character Arch 

The character wants something, but his or her flaw gets in the way. Events lead to a dark night of the soul, after which the character is changed. Now he or she can get what he wants. Or alternately, what he or she needs. Let’s circle back to Officer Buckle and Gloria and see how this works out.

In Officer Buckle and Gloria, the Police Officer desperately wants the children to like him. This flaw (would you call that vanity?) causes him to be devastated when he finds out that the children have been admiring Gloria, not him. His dark night of the soul moment comes when he sends Gloria alone to do the safety presentation (she’s the one the kids like anyways, he reasons). Now Officer Buckle and Gloria are both alone. Then a friendly note from a child reminds Officer Buckle about his need for a friend, and he changes his attitude towards Gloria. In the end, he finds out that what he needed was a friend. 

Let’s take another example. In Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,  the whole family unit functions as a character. In fact, if you notice, the family isn’t actually in the text at all. Michael Rosen’s character is “We.” The illustrator, Helen Oxenbury invented the family. So in contrast to our discussion of the differences between Annie and Jack in The Magic Tree House, we can’t separate out these characters looking for individual motivations. We take them as a whole. 

So Let’s look for our elements of the character arch. A Family wants to have a pleasant adventure and see a bear. They probably need to learn a bit of prudence. Their flaw of naiveté puts them in considerable danger. Their dark night of the soul comes in the dark bear cave. We can tell that is the low point, because that is the point that causes repentance, or a turning away. The literally turn around and run the other way. Notice that the illustrations for the dark night moment are literally so dark. This is often the case. Finally, at home again, the family has changed: they will never again seek out a bear. 

Okay, I’ve got it! Now what?

Now that you understand the ways that characters develop and change, you can begin talking with your children about these changes. A two year old is going to understand at a much more basic level than a five year old, but the ideas are the same. 

Little ones, in particular, are very in touch with their emotions. Start there. Talk about the emotions that a character is experiencing. Look at faces. Look at mouths. Look at hands. Look at the colors of the illustrations. How is this character feeling today?

You want to, ideally, have some sense in your mind of the character’s initial wants or needs so that you can choose a page near the beginning of the book in which the illustration shows this emotional state. Sometimes the first page gives you a good initial image, but it might not come until the second, or maybe the cover image is a better starting place. 

Choose your initial image and talk about the emotions. What does this character want? Why is he feeling this way?

Then jump all the way to the end. Find an ending illustration that shows the changed character. Look at the face and emotions again. 

Depending on the age of your child, you can begin to ask why the character changed. What happened that caused him to be happy, or proud, or peaceful?

It’s okay if your child says she doesn’t know. My son’s stock answer is “I dunno.” I usually share my idea, but in a conversational way, “Maybe carrying that big pot all by himself made him feel proud. What do you think?” 

It is important to remember that kids do not like to be quizzed and that talking about literature should be a conversation. Your three-year-old might not be able to analyze character change and development, but by listening to you do day in a day out, he will soon learn how to make those connections.