What the exam asks
- Section I (Multiple Choice): Questions ask what a character’s decision—or refusal to act—implies about their underlying motives and priorities, how two characters’ contrasting behaviors highlight differing value systems, or what force actually opposes the protagonist.
- Section II (Free Response): Question 2 regularly asks you to analyze a complex relationship between two characters or a character’s internal tension. Question 3 prompts frequently center on characters who rebel against societal expectations, face moral dilemmas, or clash with an opposing value system.
Core ideas
Significance and agency (CHR-1.O)
A character’s significance (central vs. minor) is signaled by how richly the narrator describes their interior life and by their agency—their capacity to make independent choices and affect the plot.
- Nuanced description: Major characters receive multi-layered characterization (contradictory traits, shifting thoughts, specific diction), whereas minor characters may be sketched briefly to serve a structural role.
- Agency: When a character actively chooses a path—or finds their agency restricted by poverty, gender roles, or institutional power—that struggle reveals what is at stake in the story.
Speech, action, inaction, and values (CHR-1.P)
A value is whatever a character treats as important (duty, autonomy, wealth, reputation, loyalty). You infer values from choices:
- Speech: What they defend, boast about, or conceal.
- Action: What they sacrifice other comforts to achieve.
- Inaction: Deliberate silence, hesitation, or refusal to intervene. Inaction is still a choice; failing to speak up against an injustice often reveals that a character values self-preservation or social approval over moral courage.