AP® English Literature and Composition · Character (CHR) — Skill Category 1, Prose Fiction
1.A Comparing a Character to Something Else (CHR-1.J)
When a character compares another character to something else, like calling a man a wolf, the comparison reveals as much about the speaker's perspective and values as it does about the person being described.
A comparison made inside a story has two sides. One side is whatever it claims about its target. The other, quieter side is what it exposes about the person making it: what that person fears, values, or has decided to believe before the evidence is in. Call a man a wolf and you have said something about danger and appetite, but you have also shown that the speaker sees the world in terms of predators and prey, and has already cast this particular man as a threat. The comparison is evidence of a mind at work, not a neutral label.
This is why the same figure can mean opposite things depending on who is speaking it, or when. A man called steady as a clock can be praised by one person and marked for replacement by another, using the identical word. The comparison does not change; the perspective behind it does. When a character extends a comparison over time, returning to it in letter after letter or scene after scene, watch for the figure to shift or strain, since that drift usually tracks a change in the speaker's own feeling, even before the speaker admits it outright.
This sits next to how the narrator handles figurative language more broadly, and next to what direct speech and action reveal about character. A comparison spoken by a character is dialogue, filtered through that character's limits and blind spots, and it should be read with the same suspicion you'd bring to anything else that character says about somebody else.
Key terms
- Figurative comparison
- A moment where one character describes another through metaphor or simile rather than plain statement.
- Perspective
- The particular viewpoint, shaped by a character's values and history, from which they see and judge others.
- Extended comparison
- A figure a character returns to and develops over the course of a story, often revealing a shift in feeling.
- Characterization
- The means by which a text reveals a character's qualities, including through what that character says about someone else.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does a comparison one character makes reveal that character's own perspective?
- Worked exampleShow me both sides of: my aunt called him a stray dog, and she has never once fed a stray.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't a comparison made inside a story simply the author's own view of the character?
Check yourself
End of topic.