1. Examine how the author describes characters or people. How does she make them "real", "approachable", or use CHARACTERIZATION to allow the reader to sympathize or empathize with the character? Pick one character and examine him/her.
The writer takes characters and she slowly develops them, but in doing so she manages to make them very vivid in their personalities and descriptions. With Alison, she started off about how she was really close to her brother, and she continued to play off of that emotion so that we'd feel sympathy for her when her brother died. Then she made the character become a person who wanted to be around people who didn't always pity her and worry about her, which I find to be a very good way to develop a character. Characters that just feed off of other people's pity are not interesting at all. In fact, they're the type you'd like to kill if you could. But the author decided not to make Alison into someone like this and made her seem stronger by having her want to be around those who either hadn't known her brother (Terry) or those who knew, but didn't mention it (Mary Elizabeth). Also, the writer contrasts Alison with her father, who is seen as a sort of depressed character who can't get over his son's death. It's a nice contrast to make it so that the daughter seems to be a stronger character than the father is.
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