Character analysis is not difficult, but it does take time. There are three main steps to character analysis that can be remembered with the acronym CID: Comprehend, Interpret, and Draw conclusions. Comprehension is a basic understanding of the characters: who are they, what are their personalities like, how do they behave? For instance, in The Caretaker, there are three main characters: Aston, who is brain-damaged and has trouble communicating; Mick, who is Aston’s quick-tempered and impatient brother and who has dreams bigger than his ambitions; and Davies, a homeless man Aston rescues from a bar fight who manufactures his life moment by moment to jibe with his perceptions of others’ expectations. But this is not an analysis, it is simple comprehension of the facts as presented by the author, so the next step is to move toward an interpretation of these facts, and we can do that by expanding the questions we ask. For example, we know that Aston is brain-damaged and that his big dream is to build a shed, so something we may ask here is why he wants to build a shed and how building that shed helps us to understand Aston. Aston also speaks very little, so we may ask how he deals with this obstacle. The answer can help us understand his personality as well as how he perceives himself and how the other characters perceive him. Davies lies about almost everything in an attempt to please or impress others, but he is also very critical of Aston and Mick, as well as the home they offer him. What we don’t necessarily know yet is why he feels the need to lie as he does and why a homeless man, instead of being grateful, is so critical, so asking ‘why’ questions may lead us to an answer. Another good interpretive question here may be, “How does Davies’s social standing affect his relationships with others?” As we can see, these more detailed questions lead us to deeper understanding of how characters’ personalities may have developed over time, as well as motivations for their behaviors. Once we have thoroughly investigated the characters, it is time to draw conclusions. For example, we can perhaps conclude that the shed Aston so badly wants to build represents the permanence and structure his life currently lacks. So to summarize, we have comprehended that Aston is brain-damaged but good-hearted (because he rescued Davies), has trouble communicating, and wants to build a shed. We have interpreted that his focus on building the shed represents something important, and we have concluded that importance is a permanence and structure for Aston that life currently lacks. All we need now is a good thesis born from that conclusion in order to flesh out the analysis with textual evidence.
We can also use the same kinds of questions to look at the characters as a whole unit rather than as separate beings. Both these plays are considered absurdist plays, so examining the characters through the lens of Theater of the Absurd conventions can lead to good analysis, too. For instance, plays considered part of the Theater of the Absurd focus on characters who are trapped in an incomprehensible world. Sometimes, like in Aston’s case, this manifests as a physical impairment; sometimes, also in Aston’s case, it is a physical confinement. The characters in absurdist plays are also often in crisis as a result of the chaotic, disordered world around them, so life has little or no meaning. Also characteristic of absurdist plays, language, which is the way our species makes meaning, is often nonsensical, which leads to characters’ inability to have meaningful, logical, or comprehensible conversation(s). One way to analyze the characters in these two plays, then, is to examine how they meet the expectations for characters written for absurdist conventions.
Whichever approach you take, if you take the time to first comprehend, then interpret, then draw conclusions based on what you have learned through the process of the first two steps, you should end with a strong character analysis.
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