"Blues Ain't No Mockin Bird" Character Traits

Activity Overview

This activity allows for a more in depth look at one or more characters with a focus on character traits. Students should provide textual evidence to support the character trait they choose. Students can support their ideas with dialogue, thoughts, or actions of the character they are portraying.

Here is an example of a character trait storyboard using the grid layout. This example features two character traits for Granny and Granddaddy, but students can analyze the character traits for any or all of the characters in the story.

Example Traits for Blues Ain’t No Mockin' Bird Characters

Granny

• Strict, proud, and intelligent

“Good mornin,” Granny cut him off. And smiled that smile...“I don’t know about the thing, the it, and the stuff,” said Granny, still talkin with her eyebrows. “Just people here is what I tend to consider.”...“I do indeed,” said Granny with no smile.

Granddaddy

• Stoic, respected, and strong

“They didn’t know what to do. But like Cathy say, folks can’t stand Grandaddy tall and silent and like a king. They can’t neither. The smile the men smilin is pullin the mouth back and showin the teeth. Lookin like the wolf man, both of them. Then Granddaddy holds his hand out—this huge hand I used to sit in when I was a baby and he’d carry me through the house to my mother like I was a gift on a tray. Like he used to on the trains. They called the other men just waiters. But they spoke of Granddaddy separate and said, The Waiter. And said he had engines in his feet and motors in his hands and couldn’t no train throw him off and couldn’t nobody turn him around. They were big enough for motors, his hands were. He held that one hand out all still and it gettin to be not at all a hand but a person in itself.”