Connect Across the Curriculum

Literary Analysis: Analyze Character’s Motive
Academic Vocabulary

  • • contrast (kun-trast) verb When you contrast two things, you tell how they are different.

How Do Characters Affect the Story? Characters often do things for good reasons. These reasons are the characters’ motives. Characters’ motives affect the events in a story. To understand characters’ motives, you can study what the characters are like and what they want.

One way to do this is to compare and contrast characters. Read the text to see how Peter and Angela are different.

I went to the same school as Peter, and we walked to the school bus together every morning. Like many Chinese parents, mine made sure that I worked very hard in school.

In spite of all I could do, my grades were nothing compared to Peter’s. He was at the top in all his classes. We walked to the school bus without talking because I was a little scared of him. Besides, he was always deep in thought.

Practice Together

Make a Venn Diagram The Venn Diagram shows how Angela and Peter are alike. How are they different? Look at the passage, and complete the diagram.

Use the diagram to help you answer this question: Why does Angela want so badly to win the writing contest?

Venn Diagram

Venn Diagram

Try It!

Analyze Motives Look back at the selection, and add more information to your Venn Diagram. Use it to answer this question: Why does Peter let Angela use his time machine?