The Importance Of Individual Choices

Individual choice is an important part of a character’s identity and it shows how they make decisions while contrasting with the central plot and situations of that story. Even choices made unconsciously from a larger to smaller scale matter tremendously to the core theme of the character and that character’s connection with the stories pace. With that being said, lets analyze three different characters from three stories from this current semester. Let’s look at characters from Adventures of the German Student, The Masque of Red Death and Clotel. The character’s individual choices will be examined and why they made these specific choices and how they choices limited them. Washington Irving’s Adventures of the German Student is a tale narrated

The main character’s individual choices hold him back tremendously and are the cause of his current mental state. As described in the story, “His secluded life, his intense application, and the singular nature of his studies, influenced both mind and body” (Page 1). This shows how his choice to bury himself deep in his academics caused him to begin to wither away both mentally, physically and socially. But you can also make the claim that the pressure of succeeding and appeasing his family and peers in his academics limited him to his choice of secluding himself. The slow descent that the character experienced with hallucinations and sexual desires become staples on the how things progressively take a horrific turn for him. The narrator reveals at the

This story is told from the perspective of a less than likeable monarch who hides himself and the rest of the nobility in his castle to avoid contact with a deadly plague that is ravaging his kingdom and the citizens themselves. The prince seemed unmoved by his actions as evident in the follow quote, “But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were, half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys” (Page 1). The choice to close off himself and the rest of the nobility was limited by his want to stay alive but the choice to feel nothing towards the suffering of his citizens is one he made on his own without a limiting factor. This specific choice was chosen out of malicious, selfish intent to maintain his extravagant lifestyle. This is evident again from a quote that stated “The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime, it was folly to grieve, or to think” (Page 1). This displays the naïve motion that the prince believes that the world will fix itself and to think about the outside tragedy was useless. That only made the choice to not feel sorry for the prince when he meets his untimely demise at the end of the story easier for the reader. This choice was