Complexity revealed through choices, actions and speech: Study Guide (English Literature 9.2)

Complexity: when a character pulls in more than one direction

Some characters are simple: one trait drives everything they do. Many of the characters worth writing about are complex: they want two things that cannot both be had, believe one thing and do another, or surprise us (and sometimes themselves). Complexity does not mean difficulty or likeability. It means that the character’s motives, values and behaviours do not all point the same way, and that the work gets meaning from the pull between them.

The way to find complexity is to look at what the character actually chooses, does and says, not at what the narrator or the character claims about them.

• Choices matter most when they cost something. Ask what the character gave up, risked or refused, and what the alternatives were. A choice made at no cost shows little.
• Actions are what the character does, and they can contradict words. A person who says they do not care but irons two tablecloths for a visitor has told you something by acting.
• Speech reveals not only content but manner: what a character avoids saying, how they justify themselves, and whether their tone fits their words.
• Responses to the resolution are especially revealing. When the story’s central conflict reaches its end, how a character reacts, in words or actions, shows what they truly value. That reaction may be inconsistent with how they behaved earlier.

Inconsistency is not an error in the writing; it is evidence. Inconsistencies and unexpected developments in a character shape how we interpret that character, other characters, the events of the plot, the conflicts, and the perspective of the narrator or setting. The skill is to notice the tension and then say what it does.

A method: tension, evidence, effect

1. Locate the tension. What two things (motives, beliefs, loyalties) is the character pulled between?
2. Gather evidence from choice, action and speech. Look for moments of cost, of contradiction between word and deed, and of response to the story’s outcome.
3. Say what it reveals. What do the choices show the character truly values, and what do they show they conceal or deny?
4. Say what it does. What is the function of this complexity in the work? It may create irony, sympathy, moral questioning, suspense, or a criticism of a society.
5. Connect outward. How does it affect your reading of another element: another character, the narrator, the conflict, the setting, the ending?

Worked example 1: a choice that contradicts what the character believes (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is narrated by Huck, a boy who has been raised to believe that helping an enslaved man escape is a sin that will send him to hell. By Chapter 31 he has travelled for weeks with Jim, who has run away. Huck has written a letter to Jim’s owner, telling her where Jim is, and feels “as light as a feather” and “all washed clean of sin”. The novel’s period language includes racist terms for Jim; this guide does not repeat them. Read the chapter in an annotated edition.

Locate the tension. Huck believes what his society has taught him, that returning Jim is right and helping him is wicked. But he has also lived beside Jim, who has treated him with loyalty and kindness.

Evidence.

• Speech and thought. Huck tries to pray and cannot: “I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right.” He decides, “You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.”
• The cost of the choice. He holds the paper and says, “It was a close place.” He is “a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.”
• The action. “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tears the letter up.

What it reveals. Huck’s words and his actions point in different directions. By his own belief, tearing up the letter is a damning act, and he says so. But by the novel’s standards, and the reader’s, it is the most moral act he performs. His loyalty to Jim, built from experience, outweighs a conscience made by his society. The complexity is that Huck is good by acting against what he thinks is good.

What it does. The gap between what Huck says he is doing (“go to hell”) and what he is actually doing (refusing to betray a friend) creates irony: the reader understands more than the narrator does. The irony criticises a society whose moral teaching is so distorted that a decent act feels like a sin. It also shows the limits of Huck’s perspective as narrator, and it makes the reader trust his actions more than his explanations.

Connect outward. Because we have seen this choice, we read earlier episodes differently: Huck’s lies to protect Jim, his small acts of care and his apologies become the evidence that this moment is the culmination of a pattern, not an accident.

Model commentary: “Huck’s ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’ is complex because it pairs a sentence of condemnation with an act of loyalty: he believes he is choosing damnation, yet the choice is the novel’s most moral moment, so Twain makes the reader see a goodness that Huck’s own conscience cannot recognise.”

Worked example 2: a response to the resolution (Macbeth)

In Act 5 of Macbeth, a character brings Macbeth news that his wife is dead. Earlier, in a letter to her, he had called her his “dearest partner of greatness”. The quotations below follow a public-domain edition.

She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time

Locate the tension. Macbeth is torn between what we expect of a husband (grief) and what the man he has become can feel. A few lines earlier he says, “I have almost forgot the taste of fears”, so he has been numbed.

Evidence. His first response is not grief but a remark that is deliberately ambiguous: “She should have died hereafter” could mean she ought to have died later (so that there would be time for mourning) or she would have died sometime anyway. The following line, “There would have been a time for such a word”, speaks of “such a word” (the word that death requires) without saying it. Then the speech turns inward: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” and “Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage”.

What it reveals. His response is inconsistent with the partnership he once valued. The relationship that was the centre of the ambition now produces only a postponed grief, then a statement that life is “full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing”. The reaction shows that his values, built around achievement and power, cannot give meaning to loss: when the partner for whom he achieved is gone, the achievement empties.

What it does. It creates sympathy and horror together. He is shown to be capable of a profound perception (that time is meaningless) at the very moment he is least able to act well. The unexpected response makes him tragic rather than merely villainous.

Connect outward. The speech colours the play’s ending. His fight with Macduff is no longer a contest for a throne he cares about but the last act of a man who has said that nothing matters. It also casts back on Lady Macbeth, whose death arrives without a scene of mourning from the man she helped to create.

Model commentary: “Macbeth’s response to his wife’s death, ‘She should have died hereafter’, is ambiguous between regret and indifference, and its movement into ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow’ reveals a man whose values have collapsed into emptiness, which turns the play’s resolution from a triumph of justice into a study of lost meaning.”

Weak and strong versions side by side

Weak	Why it falls short	Stronger
“Huck is a complex character.”	A label; no evidence.	“Huck’s complexity lies in the gap between his belief that he will go to hell and his decision to protect Jim anyway.”
“Macbeth is sad when his wife dies.”	Misreads the ambiguity; describes a mood.	“Macbeth’s ‘She should have died hereafter’ withholds the grief we expect and replaces it with a reflection on time, revealing a man hollowed out by his ambition.”
“Huck changes his mind.”	Summary of an event.	“Huck’s tearing up the letter, despite believing it damns him, shows that his experience of Jim outweighs the morality he was taught.”
“The character does two things.”	No tension or effect named.	“The character says he does not care but sets out two cups, so his speech conceals the loneliness his actions admit.”

Common misconceptions

• “A complex character is a likeable one.” Complexity is about layers of motive. Some of the most complex characters are villains.
• “If a character is inconsistent the author made a mistake.” Inconsistency is evidence: ask what it reveals.
• “What a character says about themselves is the truth.” Compare it with what they choose and do.
• “The narrator’s description is enough.” A narrator may be partial or mistaken; Huck’s own narration misjudges his goodness.
• “I only need to find the contradiction.” You also need to say what it reveals and what it does for the work.
• “Complexity only matters in the ending.” Patterns earlier in the work often make the later choice meaningful.

Where this leads

Try the practice questions, the revision notes and the checklist. Topic 9.3 moves from characters to the plot events where their values collide.