Human nature is a complex characteristic best expressed by works of literature. Authors use a various literary devices such as dialogue and interior monologue to reveal human nature in their works; dialogue illustrates how people interact with each other while interior monologue allows the reader to access characters’ consciousnesses and genuine personality, and actions depict the character’s moral and express how they will act on their thoughts.
Action is a useful technique to use to express human nature because the reader can understand the character’s personality through the things that the character does. In the short story, “The Treasure of Lemon Brown,” a teenage boy, Greg, after fighting with his father, finds himself in an abandoned
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Mr. Brown’s action of throwing himself at the thugs indicates that Lemon is devoted to his family, since his treasure actually turned out to be newspaper clippings and a harmonica, symbolic of his late son and life with his spouse. The devotion is recognized through Lemon Brown’s actions because his behavior is something a reader can relate to, since the feeling of family devotion is an ideal in society. Through the story of Lemon Brown’s treasure, it is clear that action is one device that a writer can use to convey human nature to their readers because the reader can relate to the characters through their actions. Furthermore, actions reveal yet another character’s personality in the story “The Possibility of Evil”, where an old lady named Miss Strangeworth lives in a small town that loves her but begins to send rude anonymous letters to all the residents, because she thinks the is getting rid all evil in the town. When Miss Strangeworth writes her letters, the first one she writes is to a new mother who is worried about her unenergetic baby, and she writes “DIDN’T YOU EVER SEE AN IDIOT CHILD BEFORE? SOME PEOPLE JUST SHOULDN’T HAVE CHILDREN” (Jackson 5). Miss Strangeworth is clearly spiteful in the way that she acts, which is shown through