Study Guides Flashcards Online Courses. Hi, and welcome to this video lesson on character traits. What are character traits? Everyone has character traits, both good and bad, even characters in books. Character traits are often shown with descriptive adjectives , like patient, faithful, or jealous.
None of the following in itself falls into the category of "character traits":. Any of these attributes might or might not like various physical traits be an essential element of a given person's "personal identity," for himself or herself, or for others. But they from the standpoint of one's "character" lit-crit sense 2 , they are like physical traits "external.
But this they can do only in virtue of the fact that they are not identical with each other. This is one of those situations, with a piece of technical vocabulary, where we have to take care not to let the language we inherit from our language community mislead us! It turns out that not all traits that attach to a character a fictional personnage qualify as what we call "character traits. The traits that are not properly speaking character traits may, however, relate in one or another important indirect way to character traits.
Why these distinctions are so important to keep in mind. Thinking of a physical feature or of a social attribute as a character trait will block important potential insights, because doing so makes it impossible to ask how the physical or social trait in question contributes to, or reflects if it does , this or that personality trait. Indeed, it may inhibit us from even noticing that certain character traits are present, and need to be taken into account -- for example, in arriving at an adequate conception of the story's overall theme.
The centrality of "character" in much narrative and dramatic fiction. For some writers, the central subject of interest in fiction is the variety and workings of "character" in what we have tagged the "lit-crit 2" sense. They are deeply curious about why people act the way they do.
This leads them to be interested in figuring out the various ways it is possible for people to misunderstand each others' behavior, either causally "why would he insult his niece that way?
Such authors will expect us to be willing to embark on complicated explorations of their characters' motivation and assumptions. They will also typically spend a lot of energy trying to construct or portray their characters' lit-crit sense 1 in ways that endow them with interesting convincing and insightfully informative characters lit-crit sense 2, the central one. Often this is an expression of their sharing their readers' interest in issues pertaining to the responsibility of agents for actions and their consequences.
This deep interest in the element of character is one of the characteristic traits of the genre known as "the short story," which is a comparatively recent literary phenomenon "merely" a couple of hundred years or so old. For a discussion of come of the choices writers make in approaching the task of characterization , see the articles in our Glossary of Critical Concepts on.
Not all fiction cares about character. We need to remind ourselves that many authors well worth knowing are little concerned with exploring the complexities of this dimension of life. All fiction may involve characters lit-crit sense 1 , but not all fiction is focused on character lit-crit sense 2.
Some writers are instead interested in what can be done by playing with plot contrapuntality, say, or co-incidence that turns out to be rigorously fatalistic or providential or with the formal aspect of art frames, stories-within-stories, etc. Or they may prefer to explore the implications of a metaphysical "possibility" "what if time, like space, could by labyrinthine, so that there were such a thing as divergent, parallel, and convergent times?
Still others regard the whole notion of character in the sense at hand as an illusion fostered by certain cultures and notably by Western European culture since the last half or so of the 18th Century or, in other theories, since St. Augustine of Hippo [d. There are thinkers who argue that the notion of "character" as something to be postulated as "behind" behavior as its cause is not merely mythology but pernicious in its effects.
The French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre d. Language Arts and Writing. Manage My Favorites. Featured Middle School Resources. Related Resources. Save Word. Essential Meaning of trait. Full Definition of trait. Synonyms for trait Synonyms affection , attribute , attribution , character , characteristic , criterion , diagnostic , differentia , feature , fingerprint , hallmark , mark , marker , note , particularity , peculiarity , point , property , quality , specific , stamp , touch Visit the Thesaurus for More.
Examples of trait in a Sentence This dog breed has a number of desirable traits. Biden even when his policies fail to generate positive results. First Known Use of trait , in the meaning defined at sense 2a. History and Etymology for trait Middle French, literally, act of drawing, from Latin tractus — more at tract.
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