There are two seemingly contradictory sides to this situation.
And therefore: you need to FIND the two seemingly dichotomous sides.
If the AP prompt asks you to discuss a complex character, you need to find two seemingly-opposite sides to the character. (He is both insecure AND arrogant. / The author shows that she feels both love AND animosity towards her brother.)
If the AP prompt asks you to discuss the author's complex attitude towards [whatever], you need to find two seemingly diametric attitudes present in the text. In John Donne's poem about love, "The Broken Heart" (we read this in class), the imagery reveals that he considers love both destructive AND irresistable. We might say that Lutie had a complex relationship with the city's urban environment in that, though the city antagonizes Lutie, she nevertheless relies on it for her survival.
Good authors portray their characters and their themes as complex, because life IS complex. Good AP Lit students likewise identify complexities in texts because they're smart, and they know that life is complex.
So! To help you internalize this concept and simultaneously help you understand better how authors use direct and indirect methods to provide characterization, you are going to write about YOURSELF as a complex character.
Here are the rules:
1.) You may not write in first person as yourself. You can write in first person as someone else observing you, but you cannot simply describe yourself in first person.
2.) You can also write in limited 3rd person, in omniscient 3rd person, or in 2nd person. (If you can't remember what these different points of view are, refer to the "Point of View" chapter in your brown textbook.)
3.) You need to reveal two apparently diametric sides of yourself.
4.) You need to employ mostly indirect methods of characterization. (Try your best.)
If you need an example, I've provided one below.
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Note: yours doesn't have to be this long. I started having fun with this and just kept it going.
The waiters must have puzzled over the sight. There, in the middle of the Chinese
restaurant at approximately 4:30 in the afternoon, sat three senior citizens
and one young woman. The girl was too
old to be under the guardianship of any of her elderly tablemates, but too
young to have any plausible reason for being there. One waitress speculated that she was the
trophy wife of the man seated next to her, but was quickly rebuffed by the
hostess who pointed out that there was no flashy jewelry on her hands. Someone else guessed she might be a hired
nurse for one of the others, yet that theory too was challenged when it was
observed the elder guests appeared to be relatively spry--even lively. A snippet of conversation finally revealed
the mystery; the girl was overheard asking her “Grandpa” to pass the water
pitcher. The wait staff rolled their eyes at the disclosure;
it was a disappointingly ordinary explanation.
At one
point, the girl furtively examined her phone, sneaking it past the watchful
gaze of her dinner partners, who would certainly have declaimed the device as a
sign of her generation’s imminent demise.
She scowled at the words on the screen and pushed it back into her purse
with a shove. Her participation in the
conversation noticeably dwindled; her head bowed in a sulk as she listlessly
pushed her food across her plate, only raising her head to eventually acknowledge
the arrival of the check—not that she was paying.
Later,
the girl and her grandfather would travel to their shared home; he would chat
happily about the musical they had seen and make various proposals for how they
might spend their evening. She, in turn,
would listen to his movie suggestions—always political thrillers—and continue
brooding. His comment about the lead actor’s
antics drew a half-hearted smile; then, she turned away to look out at the
fading afternoon. She hoped he didn’t notice
her sigh.
Once
arriving home, there was only one thing to do.
The political thriller could wait.
“Grandpa? I’m going for a bike ride. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“It’ll
be dark soon sweetheart,” he responded, ever mindful of his granddaughter’s
well-being.
“I
know. I’ll be back before then.” She pushed the garage door open, and reminded
herself to call back to him. “Love you
Gramps.”
“Love
you sweetheart.”
The
Burke-Gilman trail opened up beneath the rubber tires which churned over the cement. She gulped in the air, tasting the crispness
of summer slipping away. “Why be angry?”
she demanded of herself. It had been her
choice to stay with her grandpa, after all.
The thought made her legs push the pedals down harder and the bike leapt
forward, jolting her body over potholes, gobbling up dried leaves foolish
enough to drift in its way. The burning
of her muscles only seemed to increase her frustration. It was just a weekend-- just a stupid
weekend. She mentally berated
herself. “So ungrateful.”
She
rode past the Metropolitan Market, impatiently maneuvering her bike through the
slow pedestrians dawdling at the crosswalk.
On through the shadowy stretch, the long gradual hill where it always
got darkest first. Then past the
University building with the inexplicable waterfalls, great sheets of water on
the second story, pounding down from what appeared to be the underside of the
brick ceiling. She didn’t have the
patience to wonder about its presence or purpose today, and pushed on.
The
goal had been to make it to Gasworks Park, but the sun’s low sling in the sky
wouldn’t give her time for that. With a
sigh, she decided to push the bike up into campus instead. Maybe the fountain would be on. The rhythm of her breathing offered up a
mantra: let it go, let it go, let it go.
Keeping
her eyes on the crunching gravel path which stretched uphill towards campus,
she didn’t notice the roses until their scent accosted her. She glanced up at
her surroundings and instinctively squeezed the hand brake to stop.
It was
beautiful.
The
late summer sunshine had left the wide circle of roses in shadow, but its
warmth hadn’t left their petals; their sweet perfume wafted around her. The fountain in the center of them all burst
up its tall pillar of spray, each droplet falling and rippling into the pool
below.
It was
so beautiful.
Slowly,
she eased the bike forward with the same solemn awe one finds in museum
visitors as they take in priceless works of art. Riding her bike in a slow circle around the
fountain, she gazed at the full roses surrounding it—lavender, magenta, yellow
and orange, the palest pink, and the deepest red. Then she looked up towards the great height of
the fountain’s spray. The stream’s highest
18 inches managed to reach above the long shadows cast by the surrounding brick
buildings, and where it leapt up into the fading sun, it became miraculous. The prism of water caught all the rich colors
of the light and refracted them in beams, in rainbows, in tosses and whirls of
color. The girl sucked in her breath,
and stared at the pillar’s summit with rapt concentration.
Suddenly, the phrase beamed into her
head, without prompting, without reflection.
It didn’t even seem to belong to her, but its message was more insistent
and clear than her own tangle of thoughts ever managed to be.
This is here for you to find, every
day.
She
turned the phrase over in her mind, testing it.
She tasted the words, and let their message work peace into her synapses,
her marrow, her red and white cells, her fibers and tendons and pores. It was like waking from a heavy sleep.
Breathing deeply, she slowly rode
once more around the path encircling the fountain, doing her best to drink in
the medicinal beauty that surrounded her.
Then, she pointed the bike towards
home.
The lightness that had eluded her
all weekend clipped along beside her. With
her head raised and her eyes bright from either cold or revelation, the pedals
moved readily beneath her feet. She
grinned as she pushed the bike into the garage, and pulled her helmet off.
“Grandpa?”
she called eagerly, entering the house.
“Hiiii!”
he called, in the way he always did. “Perfect
timing! ‘Dancing with the Stars’ just ended!”
“Oh
good!” she called back. “Do you have
your dessert yet? I can warm up the
applesauce if you want.”
“I’ll
do it,” he said, thumping lightly down the stairs in his slippers and
sweats. “You go ahead and change, and then
you can help me with the cookies.” He
passed her on the landing and grinned. “What
do you think about ‘Pelican Brief’ tonight?”
“A political thriller?” she grinned, feigning
surprise. “You? Want to watch a political thriller?”
“You
know how I love political thrillers,” he called from the kitchen.
She
did. And she was once more able to love
him for it.
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