1.Task: Identify and describe what specific textual details reveal about a character, that character’s perspective, and that character’s motives. Which words, phrases, and details contribute to a character’s characterization? How is a character described physically, emotionally, and/or psychologically? Which aspects of a character’s background contribute to how the character perceives his or her world? What drives the character to think, feel, and/or act in the manner he or she does? 2.Task: Explain the function of a character changing or remaining unchanged. What provokes a character to change or remain unchanged? What are the comparable traits of a character before and after he or she changes? To what degree does the text covey empathy for those characters who change or for those who remain unchanged? To what degree does a character’s changing constitute progress or decline? How does a character’s changing or remaining unchanged affect other elements of the literary work and/or contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole? 3.Task: Explain the function of contrasting characters. How do comparable traits of two or more characters contrast? What do the differing traits between characters reveal about them individually, their relationships with one another, and their relationships with other characters? How does considering the significance of a contrast between characters contribute to the meaning in the text? 4.Task: Describe how textual details reveal nuances and complexities in characters’ relationships with one another. Which particular images, character speech, and textual details are relevant for examining characters’ relationships? How do images, character speech, and other textual details reveal how characters interact? How do diction and the details that a narrator or speaker offers (or does not offer) convey a particular perspective, ambiguity, and/or inconsistency and convey nuances and complexities in character relationships? 5.Task: Explain how a character’s own choices, actions, and speech reveal complexities in that character, and explain the function of those complexities. Which character choices, actions, and/or speech seem contradictory or inconsistent? How does a character’s contradictory or inconsistent traits contribute to a reader’s understanding of the character’s complexity? How does a character’s contradictory or inconsistent traits contribute to meaning in a text? Link: https://www.sps186.org/downloads/basic/764573/contents_of_the_dead_mans_pockets_jack_finney.pdf