Character Profiles

In terms of characters, there is a lot going on in Dear America. Each letter writer is a character in their own right. For the purposes of our classroom study we are going to refer to four of the letter writers as main, tangible characters in the text. You need to understand though, that this is not a definitive interpretation of the text. In your own reading and understanding of the text there might be another letter writer that jumps out at you as being a central narrative voice. There would be nothing wrong about you choosing to discuss that particular person as one of the protagonists of the text in an essay.

Another reason I want you to be aware of this is because, when you undertake your own background reading and research of the text, you will undoubtedly read about letter writers being discussed as main characters that are different to the ones we have chosen. These are simply different interpretations of the text and, perhaps, ones that you might wish to draw from in your essay discussions. Ultimately, who you discuss as main and minor characters in response to an essay question will be up to you.

The four characters we will view as protagonists for our classroom learning are:

- Rodney Chastant
- George Olsen
- Fred Downs
- Sandy Kempner

These characters are authors of multiple letters throughout the text that appear across most of the chapters. We are going to take some time to get know these men individually by creating character profiles for them. Complete this character profile chart for each soldier:

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