The Open Question Essay.

Prompt: "By their deeds shall ye know them." We often judge people by what they do; therefore, we consider people who commit cruel or reprehensible acts corrupt, base or amoral. In literature, however, authors often introduce us to characters whom we learn to like or even respect, despite their deeds.

Write an essay about one such character for whom you developed admiration or compassion. Briefly explain why you felt his or her behavior to be condemnable or contemptible, and how the author's techniques influenced you to admire that person. Do not summarize the plot. (40 minutes)


Practically every author tends to create a character(s) who can relate to the reader. This helps the reader connect and feel admiration for them. In the novel "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker for example, I had developed compassion and admiration for the main character Celie due to her experiences and the use of the author’s techniques.

Throughout the novel, Celie’s actions and her personal experiences played a major role on developing compassion and admiration for this particular character. Reading about her experiences of being raped and having the children of the man who raped her are such tragic situations to imagine. This developed compassion for her because for someone to go through this is unimaginable and tragic. While reading about her situations I was also able to realize how strong of a person she is. This is what made me begin to feel admiration for her. For someone to have these types of experiences in reality and continue to keep their head up shows how strong of a person they are.

The author’s techniques also played major role. The style that the author used showed how much hope the main character had. By the way of her writing letters to God expressed how she hoped for everything to get better and was her way of asking for help. This created a sense of compassion in the way of wanting to help her get out of the problems she was going through. Another technique was the author’s tone which was a sense of misery that expressed how much these situations affected her life dramatically and helped create a sense of compassion towards her.

In conclusion, the main character in the novel "The Color Purple" was a character in who I gained a sense of compassion and admiration for. By reading the types of situations she had to experience and the use of different techniques the author used were different ways in gaining such feelings towards the character.