Character Motivation
Motivation is the reason characters do things. The stated or implied reason behind a character's behavior. When reading, you can look at clues to help you find out a character's motivation.
1. Look for stated reasons in the text.
2. Look for clues in the story details.
3. Consider human behavior.
4. Infer the motives.
Close Reading
- Read the text slowly and ask what the gist is of what you are reading.
- Circle words and phrases you are certain about.
- Use the text to help yo answer questions.
- Gather evidence from the text.
- Re-read passages to help you summarize or answer specific questions.
- Use the text to help you answer questions.
- Gather evidence from the text.
- Gather evidence from the text.
- Re-read passages to help you summarize or answer specific questions.
It will help you if you annotate your text. Annotate is to supply with critical or explanatory notes; to comment upon
Circle powerful words or phrases.
Underline those words or phrases you don't understand.
Write important thoughts you have about the text in the margin.
"The Moustache"
Before you read the entire short story, look at the excerpt from "The Moustache."
Let me tell you what the visit to Lawnrest was all about. My grandmother is seventy-three years old. She is a resident -- which is supposed to be a better word than patient -- at the Lawnrest Nursing Home. She used to make the greatest turkey dressing in the world and was a nut about baseball and could even quote batting averages, for crying out loud. She always rooted for the losers. She was in love with the Mets until they started to win. Now she has arteriosclerosis, which the dictionary says is "a chronic disease characterized by abnormal thickening and hardening of the arterial walls." Which really means that she can't live at home anymore or even with us, and her memory has betrayed her as well as her body. She used to wander off and sometimes didn't recognize people. My mother visits her all the time, driving the thirty miles to Lawnrest almost every day. Because Annie was at home for semester break from college, we had decided to make a special Saturday visit. Now Annie was in bed, groaning theatrically -- she's a drama major -- but I told my mother I'd go anyway. I hadn't seen my grandmother since she'd been admitted to Lawnrest. Besides, the place is located on the Southwest Turnpike, which meant I could barrel along in my father's new Le Mans. My ambition was to see the speedometer hit seventy-five. Ordinarily, I used the old station wagon, which can barely stagger up to fifty.
Character Motivation
Can you infer about the grandson just by reading this passage? Infer is to judge based on evidence from the passage.
Answer: The grandson goes to see his grandmother primarily so he can drive really fast on the turnpike.
Read another excerpt from "The Moustache."
Finally, I saw a beautiful girl approaching, dressed in white, a nurse or an attendant, and I was so happy to see someone young, someone walking and acting normally, that I gave her a wide smile and a big hello and I must have looked like a kind of nut. Anyway, she looked right though me as if I were a window, which is about par for the course whenever I meet beautiful girls.
What can you infer about Mike by reading this passage?
Answer: Mike expects that any pretty girl he passes will simply ignore him. He is used to girls 'looking right through him' as though they actually couldn't see him or didn't care to acknowledge him.
Read Robert Cormier's "The Moustache."
Character Traits
Choose the character traits below that represent Mike.
- Mature
- 'Her voice was so sad, so mournful, that I made sounds of sympathy, not words exactly but the kind of soothings that mothers murmur to their children when they awaken from bad dreams.'
- Frustrated
- 'The money was a reference to the movies. The Downtown Cinema has a special Friday night offer-half-price admission for high school couples seventeen or younger. But the woman in the box office took one look at my moustache and charged me full price. Even when I showed her my driver's license. She charged full admission for Cindy's ticket, too, which left me practically broke and unable to take Cindy out for a hamburger with the crowd afterward. That didn't help matters, because Cindy has been getting impatient recently about things like the fact that I don't own my own car and have to concentrate on my studies if I want to win that college scholarship, for instance. Cindy wasn't exactly crazy about the moustache, either.'
- Confused
- 'I was beginning to feel uneasy because she regarded me with such intensity. Those bright eyes. I wondered-are old people in places like this so lonesome, so abandoned that they go wild when someone visits? Or was she so happy because she was suddenly lucid and everything was sharp and clear? My mother had described those moments when my grandmother suddenly emerged from the fog that so often obscured her mind. I didn't know the answers, but it felt kind of spooky, getting such an emotional welcome from her.'
- Insecure
- 'Frankly, I wasn't too crazy about visiting a nursing home. They reminded me of hospitals, and hospitals turn me off. I mean, the smell of ether makes me nauseous, and I feel faint at the sight of blood. And as I approached Lawnrest-which is a terrible, cemetery kind of name, to begin with-I was sorry I hadn't avoided the trip. Then I felt guilty about it. I'm loaded with guilt complexes. '
- Hopeful
- 'Her voice was so sad, so mournful, that I made sounds of sympathy, not words exactly but the kind of soothings that mothers murmur to their children when they awaken from bad dreams.'
Character traits help readers find out who that person really is; in turn, it may help readers establish why the character makes certain choices.
You can also look for clues to help you find out the reason for the character’s action.
- age,
- description,
- home life,
- speech,
- thoughts, and
- action.
Look for situations where characters interact. What motivates them in these significant moments?
The author may state the character's motivation directly, or the author may imply it.
You can figure out a character's motivation by noticing what the character does, says, or thinks.
You can even use your own knowledge of how people behave.
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