8.22 ANALYZING CHARACTER AND THEME

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READING WORKSHOP

Novelist Suzanne Collins said:

You know what’s sad about reading books? It’s that you fall in love with the characters. They grow on you. And as you read, you start to feel what they feel—all of them—you become them. And when you’re done, you’re never the same.

You may or may not have ever had quite the same experience as Collins when reading a book, though you may have felt something similar after watching a movie or television show, or even after finishing the final level of a video game. Characters in literature, film, and other texts often seem real to us, even if they live in the fictional or distant worlds of Middle Earth, medieval Verona, or dystopian Panem. How an author creates these characters, brings them to life, and gives those lives meaning is what we’re going to think about in this Reading Workshop.