Analysis Of Brownies By Zz Packer

Characterization is a literary device that is used in literature to show and explain the details of a certain character in a story. The character could be described by the author directly or even indirectly through the speech, thoughts and actions of the character. A protagonist is the central character in the story who is usually considered the hero of the story. The protagonist is the character the reader and writer emphasizes with, while antagonist is a character who is against the protagonist and everything they stand for. An antagonist character is usually considered the villain of the story, who always tries to defeat the protagonist. The character I choose to analyze comes from the story Brownies who was written by ZZ Packer. The character's

name is Arnetta, she is young black girl who’s in an all black girls scout troop.

The girls go camping as they are passing through they see another group of girls made up of white girls. The author uses Arnetta to create drama in the story, Arnetta is the one who suspects that the white girls said a racial slur but never heard them actually say it. This character is has so much hatred for the white girls, that she makes up the lie. She pressures one of the characters to agree with her, she says “Daphne? Didn’t you hear them call you a nigger?” As Arnetta was asking the question she gave Daphne a nudge, which indicates that she wanted Dahne to agree with her and say yes. She pressured the girl to agree with her, she wanted to start trouble by going to beat up the young white girls.

The author gave Arnetta a dominant personality, where if she said something or was speaking the other girls would be quiet

listening to everything she has to say. She tells the other girls that the white girls have to pay for what they said. The author made this character determined to carry out her actions, the character makes a plan to punish the white girls, she plans to ambush them while they are sleeping, she tells her fellow campers “ They gone be sleeping,” she whispered conspiratorially, “than we gone sneak into they cabin, then we’ll put daddy lolegs in they sleeping bags. Then they’ll wake up. Then we gone beat’em up till they’re as flat as frying pans!” This character is filled with hatred, jealousy and is very rude to her fellow campers. When another girl in her group tried to say something she called her “Miss Caucasoid” because she was white and had a country accent, whenever she said something Arnetta would look at her with an arrogant smile all the time. Arnetta would be considered an antagonist in this story because she is jealous of Daphne who is the protagonist of the story. She is the opposite of Daphne in many ways, Arnetta has a strong personality, is very loud and gets her point across while Daphne is quiet and shy. Arnetta was jealous of Daphne when she won a competition in school, where she wrote a poem that had a deep meaning but she never understood it. Arnetta brought trouble, action and mischief to the story, she’d be the one who would come up with nasty comments about the white girls and all the other girls would follow her and say what she says and do what she does. This character creates and causes so much drama in the story.