2. Character Analysis Sample Answers

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Alex Rogo Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Alex Rogo . Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Alex Rogo , including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Alex Rogo, the protagonist of the story, manages a failing manufacturing plant for the corporation UniCo in the small American town of Bearington. Although Alex’s plant appears efficient on paper and is full of knowledgeable, hard-working people, all their customer orders are months overdue and they struggle to maintain any sort of production schedule. In the beginning of the novel, Alex’s division manager and boss, Bill Peach , tells Alex that he must turn the plant around in three months or Peach will close the whole thing down. Meanwhile, Alex is so preoccupied with business that he often neglects his wife, Julie , and his kids, Dave and Sharon ; Julie feels so overlooked by him that she threatens divorce. Unsure of what he is doing wrong, Alex asks a former mentor, Jonah , for advice on how to reform his business. Jonah teaches Alex about maintaining clear goals in any endeavor, especially in business, and he provides Alex with simple metrics to measure his progress toward that goal. Furthermore, Jonah teaches Alex how to identify the bottlenecks or constraints in his manufacturing system and utilize them to his advantage. With Jonah’s principles and his management staff’s support, Alex manages to make his plant the most profitable plant in the entire division. He also learns to share his life with Julie and begins to mend their relationship and to set aside more time for his kids. Rather than fire him, Bill Peach is so impressed by Alex’s progress that when Peach is promoted into the next corporate level of management, he promotes Alex to take over his role as division manager. In the final chapters of the 1

Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ story, Alex works with his staff to utilize Jonah’s business advice to help him manage a massive organization and learn to approach business problems as Jonah does: like a scientist. Alex’s transition from failing manager and husband to successful manager and family man ultimately demonstrates the power of using clear goals to manage all aspects of one’s life. 2

Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Jonah Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Jonah. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Jonah, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Jonah is a scientist who becomes a business theorist and helps Alex save his plant. Alex, Jonah’s former student, reconnects with Jonah randomly in an airport. When Alex talks about his plant, Jonah intuits all the problems that the plant has, even without Alex mentioning them. Throughout the story, Jonah uses the Socratic method—asking questions and pushing someone to reach a conclusion on their own—to lead Alex to see his business differently, maintain clear goals, and work within the manufacturing system’s natural constraints. Jonah constantly travels, so he only appears in the story occasionally through brief meetings or phone conversations. Jonah represents author Eliyahu Goldratt in the story—significantly, both Jonah and Goldratt are Israeli business theorists who take a scientific approach to manufacturing problems—and Jonah voices Goldratt’s ideas, concepts, and definitions. Because of this, Jonah functions more as a sage or guru than a fully-developed character. Beyond the fact that he smokes cigars frequently, Jonah has no background, no characterization, and no personal story arc beyond disseminating Goldratt’s theories and advice. When Alex’s plant becomes profitable again and Alex advances to become the division manager, Jonah disappears from the story. 3

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Julie Rogo Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Julie Rogo. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Julie Rogo, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Julie is Alex ’s wife. Both in the years preceding and during the story, Julie resents Alex’s over-commitment to his career and feels that he neglects her, representing the negative impact that a corporate career can have on one’s family members. Although Alex believes his work should come before family, Julie expects him to place his duties as a husband and father over his career. After he breaks promise after promise to spend time with her, Julie leaves him, moves in with her parents, and considers divorce. As Alex learns to better manage his life, he starts taking Julie on weekly dates. Julie and Alex talk about their differing expectations of marriage and decide to compromise. They agree that raising their kids and sharing their lives are apt goals for their marriage, and Julie moves back in with the family. In the end of the story, Julie starts reading Socrates and helping Alex find solutions to his workplace challenges. 4

Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Bob Donovan Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Bob Donovan. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Bob Donovan, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Bob is Alex ’s production manager at the plant. Although Bob has decades of production experience, he feels loyal to their traditional manufacturing practices. When Jonah proposes changing how the plant measures its productivity, advocates for letting some workers stand idle, and challenges Bob’s current understanding of expenses and profits, Bob puts up more resistance to the changes than anyone else. However, as Alex and his staff reform the plant and make it profitable again, Bob sees the wisdom in Jonah’s principles and cooperates with the new measures. When Alex is promoted to division manager, he offers Bob the chance to oversee production for the entire division. However, Bob decides that he wants to master plant-level production instead and chooses to take over Alex’s old job as manager of the Bearington plant. 5

Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Stacey Potazenik Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Stacey Potazenik. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Stacey Potazenik, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Stacey is Alex ’s inventory control manager at the plant. Even before Jonah arrives, Stacey recognizes that the plant’s steadily-growing inventory is problematic. When Alex wants to implement Jonah’s principles and change the way they manufacture, particularly regarding bottlenecks, Stacey is very receptive to the change. During meetings, she often contributes ideas and insight, including helping Alex refine his tagging system for bottleneck parts. When Alex becomes the division manager and Bob moves up to plant manager, Stacey steps into Bob’s former role as the production manager so that she can devise new protective measures to keep the plant’s flow from faltering. 6

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Lou Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Lou. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Lou, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Lou is Alex ’s plant controller (chief accountant). Although Lou is both intelligent and experienced, Alex notes that he initially makes the same wrong assumptions as anyone else about why the plant fails (poor workers, labor union interference, and so on), suggesting that those flawed assumptions are ubiquitous among businesspeople. However, when Alex and his staff begin implementing Jonah ’s new ideas, Lou quickly realizes that the traditional corporate metrics he uses to measure the plant’s performance are deeply flawed and outdated. Even after adopting Jonah’s guiding metrics of throughput, inventory, and operating expense, Lou recognizes that their cost accounting measures provide inaccurate data. As a result, Lou spends much of his time developing better ways to calculate expenses and measure efficiency, even going against corporate guidelines to do so. When Alex becomes division manager, Lou asks Alex to make him his division controller so that he can reform the division’s cost accounting methods and implement a new, more accurate system for all of their plants. Alex grants Lou’s request, and they prepare to take over the division together. 7

Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Ralph Nakamura Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Ralph Nakamura. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Ralph Nakamura, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Ralph is Alex ’s data coordinator at the plant, measuring statistics and operating the computers. Although Ralph is part of Alex’s senior staff and participates in implementing Jonah ’s ideas, he plays a lesser role in the group. When they start looking for trends in operations data, Ralph quickly realizes that the plant’s data collection systems are years out of date, and he spends much of his time trying to set up better data collection measures. In the end of the story, when Alex and his staff are figuring out how to organize the new information Alex gathers as division manager, Ralph recounts the story of Dmitri Mendeleev, the chemist who established the periodic table of elements. Ralph posits that, just as Mendeleev discovered an “intrinsic order” to the elements, perhaps such an “intrinsic order” exists in any set of data. 8

Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Bill Peach Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Bill Peach. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Bill Peach, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Bill Peach is Alex ’s boss and UniCo’s division manager for most of the story. In the opening of the novel, Peach confronts Alex about his failing plant and tells Alex that if he can’t turn it around in three months, Peach will close the entire plant. Although Peach appears infrequently in the story, Alex recalls that they used to be friends until the division started performing poorly, at which point Peach became high-strung and fearsome. However, Alex learns that just as he is at risk of losing his plant, Peach is at risk of losing the entire division, thus explaining his changed demeanor. Although Peach is slow to recognize Alex’s success, when Alex’s plant has several profitable months in a row, Peach admits that Alex has done a great job and that his methods are clearly effective. At the end of the story, rather than close the plant, Peach elects to keep it open and promote Alex as his new division manager, since he and his staff are moving up the corporate ladder as well. 9

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Hilton Smyth Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Hilton Smyth. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Hilton Smyth, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Hilton Smyth is a plant manager for UniCo, Alex ’s rival, and the story’s only true antagonist. Smyth adheres strictly to traditional corporate methods and metrics, making him a foil for Alex, who embraces new ideas and revolutionizes his approach to management. Throughout the story, Smyth actively tries to undermine Alex and turn Peach against him, hoping to see Alex fail. However, when Alex’s plant succeeds and Smyth’s plant continues to struggle, Peach promotes Alex to a higher position than Smyth. Alex’s victory over Smyth thus represents the superiority of Goldratt ’s innovative manufacturing practices over traditional corporate methods. 10

Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Dave Rogo Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Dave Rogo . Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Dave Rogo , including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Dave is Alex and Julie ’s young son and Sharon ’s brother. Because of his career, Alex struggles to spend time with Dave. However, when Dave takes Alex on the Boy Scout overnight hike, Alex realizes that the hikers (who all hike at different speeds and thus delay one another) symbolize his manufacturing process, and that he can use them as a model for how to work with bottlenecks in the factory. As Alex learns to manage his plant better, he also starts spending more time with Dave and inviting him to help him solve theoretical problems at the plant. 11

Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Sharon Rogo Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Sharon Rogo. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Sharon Rogo, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Sharon is Alex and Julie ’s daughter and Dave ’s sister. Because of his career, Alex struggles to spend time with Julie, even though Julie yearns for attention from him. However, as Alex learn to manage his plant and personal life, he begins spending more time with Julie and letting her brainstorm solutions to problems at the plant with him. 12

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Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Ethan Frost Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Ethan Frost. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Ethan Frost, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Ethan Frost is Bill Peach ’s division controller (chief accountant). Although Frost initially chastises Lou for abandoning traditional corporate metrics and devising his own, Lou eventually convinces Frost that the methods they use are deeply flawed. When Ethan Frost sees the revenue that Alex’s plant generates and listens to Lou’s explanations, he supports all of the innovations that Alex implements. 13

Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Johnny Jons Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Johnny Jons. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Johnny Jons, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Johnny Jons is Bill Peach ’s head of sales. Although Jons is skeptical when Alex asks him to generate more sales by promising quick delivery times, after Alex starts shipping complex orders in record time, Jons supports Alex in almost anything he wants to do. He also vouches for Alex’s effectiveness to Bill Peach. 14

Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______ Alex’s Mother Sample Answers Evidence and Analysis Directions : Gather quotes and other examples from the text to use as evidence that provides insight into Alex’s Mother. Then write a paragraph that describes and analyzes Alex’s Mother, including relationships, traits, motivations, fears, and how (or if) they develop over the course of the text. Evidence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Character Description and Analysis Alex ’s mother lives in Bearington, the town in which Alex grew up and now runs his manufacturing plant. As a widower, Alex’s mother lives alone and rarely sees Alex or his kids, Dave and Sharon . However, when Julie leaves Alex, Alex’s mother moves in to take care of Dave and Sharon, since Alex is rarely home. Alex’s mother encourages Alex to start sharing his life and his concerns more frequently with his children. 15

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2. Character Analysis Sample Answers

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