Sympathetic Characters: What Makes a Character Sympathetic?

Writers use sympathetic characters in storytelling, playwriting, and screenwriting to elicit readers' sympathy and attach them to the course of a story. The protagonist of a story is often a sympathetic character, though secondary characters can also be sympathetic.

Authors orchestrate feelings of sympathy for these characters the first time readers encounter them. For example, in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, the titular character is pitiable because bad things have happened to him: He’s a friendless orphan working in a factory. Antagonists can also be sympathetic characters if they have redeeming qualities; for example, Elphaba in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995) has a rich backstory before she became known as the Wicked Witch of the West. The sympathetic villain’s green skin and outsider status give her relatable, redeeming qualities.

Sympathetic and unsympathetic characters are categorically opposites. Sympathetic characters often face challenges and experience unfair treatment, making it easy for readers to pity them. Sympathetic characters can also be characters whose qualities ring true to real life or whose experiences mirror the readers’ own lives.

Usually, readers classify sympathetic characters as “good guys,” those you root for and support. Unsympathetic characters are often the “bad guys,” or those whom readers and audiences do not care for or dislike. Unsympathetic characters do not simply have to be villainous or mean—they may be flat or less interesting. Readers cannot easily empathize or emotionally invest in these characters.

There are a few ways authors and writers construct sympathetic characters. Creators will often rely on some key traits and facets, such as:

• Aspirations: Readers might have an easier time siding with characters with precise wants because they can invest in their journeys. In the film Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Olive Hoover is a sympathetic character with big dreams.
• Depth: Audiences care for and sympathize with richly textured characters who exhibit deep feelings. Kathy H. in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) is a clone; however, her emotional depth and complex humanity make her an endearing, sympathetic character.
• Marginalization: Characters who experience some form of marginalization—because of their race, gender, sexuality, or other qualities—come off as generally appealing, likable, and sympathetic to readers. The title character in Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo (2022) lives in a hostile and homophobic environment, making it difficult to express his whole identity and romantic feelings for other boys.
• Obstacles: Characters striving to come up from behind or overcome significant obstacles are underdogs. As a meek hobbit who sets out on a grand adventure, Frodo Baggins from J. R .R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series is an example of an underdog.
• Social status: Class is often a theme in literary works, and characters who identify as part of the “have-nots” can more easily arouse sympathies. Celie in The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker is an example of a character who evokes sympathy because of her social status.

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