Tools of Characterization
Characterization in Home Alone
Actions
The burglars' actions speak pretty loudly: they rob houses, and then flood them, causing extra needless property damage. They're not like Jean Valjean in Les Miz, stealing a loaf of bread in order not to starve. They're just bad guys, without much motivational depth. We don't know why they feel compelled to steal or what their childhoods were like or any of that stuff. The thefts they commit simply signify that they're the villains.
But Kevin's a more interesting case. We find him likeable, if initially a little snotty. After all, he helps old man Marley out, giving him friendly advice that leads him to reunite with his estranged son. That's a touching moment.
But Kevin has a dark side, which he puts at the service of good. Technically, he could probably go to the cops and bust Harry and Marv that way. (Though maybe he thinks the cops would send him into the hands of child social services, since Kevin thinks his family literally disappeared?) Instead of taking some less violent route, he intentionally goes all in on slapstick violence, to the audience's delight.
Harry Marv narrate all the things he does to them:
MARV: What are we gonna do to him, Harry?
HARRY: We'll do exactly what he did to us: we're gonna burn his head with a blowtorch!
MARV: And smash his face with an iron!
HARRY: How about slap him in the face with a paint can!
MARV: Or shove a nail through his foot.
HARRY: First thing I'm gonna do is bite off every one of these little fingers, one at a time.
Jeez.
Fortunately, Harry doesn't get to bite of Kevin's fingers—Marley smashes him in the head with a snow-shovel first. Even though Kevin's methods might be excessive, we feel that they're all in the service of poetic justice…and laughs.
Clothing
The costume doesn't always fit the person wearing it: for instance, we first see Harry dressed as a cop. We don't realize he's a burglar, but we can tell something's off. There's a discrepancy between Harry's appearance and the reality underlying it.
On the other hand, Marley offers up an opposing example. He wears black boots and a dark coat, and this image helps convince Kevin that Buzz is right and Marley's really a serial killer. Yet, again, the appearance deceives: Marley's actually a kindly old man who likes to hear his granddaughter sing in church—and he saves Kevin's life.
So really, clothing doesn't help us define these characters—their clothes trick the audience, keeping us off-balance. Sneaky move there, guys.
Family Life
Most kids would like to live in a big house with loving parents. The McCallister family seems to have this kind of warm, idyllic existence—and they do. But we're catching them at a tense moment. Everyone's caught up with packing to get to France, and Kevin, feeling ignored, acts like a pest.
This misleads us about Kevin's character, and—to some extent—his parents'. Kevin can act like a brat, but he's actually courageous and resilient. Kevin's mom really does care about Kevin, but she has to finish this whole traveling-to-France thing before she can give him her undivided attention.
When Kevin says, "I don't want another family. I don't want any family. Families suck!" he's just venting. Ironically, his wish comes true—but, being alone, he realizes how much his family really means to him.
This is actually a good thing, because, without his family around, Kevin's good qualities emerge as he struggles to survive. Without Buzz to bully him and his other siblings to pick on him for being "what the French call 'Les Incompetents,'" Kevin seems a lot less like a brat and a lot more like a hero.
Food
Kevin has a typical little kid's taste in foods. When the family orders pizza, they have to get a special plain cheese pizza with no toppings for Kevin—which Buzz eats anyway, causing Kevin to demonstrate the same aggression he'll later use against the burglars.
Later, he fakes out the pizza boy, paying him (though ripping him off on the tip), but also creating a ruse that makes it look like the pizza boy is being attacked by gangsters (he use the Angels with Filthy Souls VHS tape to accomplish this).
This shows Kevin's sense of mischief, a mild warm-up for his all-out assault on the burglars. Also, when Kevin goes shopping, he gets a microwaveable macaroni and cheese dinner—the dude loves carbs and cheese.
Location
Kevin isn't exactly Oliver Twist—he lives in a large, nice house in the Chicago suburbs. He doesn't have any reason to say, "Please, sir—I want some more!" because he's already got the good life.
He's either an upper class or upper-middle class American, defending his home from thieves. He's not really scrounging his way from the bottom to the top like Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire—he's just defending all the stuff people at the top have.
This risks making Home Alone sound like some sort of pro-rich people, anti-poor manifesto—but, really, the burglars are just burglars, and we don't know anything about their home life or social class experiences.
Occupation
Harry and Marv aren't noble criminals, like Jean Valjean from Les Miserables, or slick cool criminals like Jules in Pulp Fiction.
They're more like cartoon characters—clown burglars who exist to be clobbered. Admittedly, they also have a sadistic streak, which helps the audience root against them. When Marv leaves the faucets on in the houses they rob, Harry responds with disapproval:
HARRY: You're sick, you know? You're really sick.
MARV: I'm sick…?
HARRY: Yes, you are.
MARV: I'm not sick.
HARRY: It's a sick thing to do!
But Harry's not going back in and turning the faucets off. He doesn't really care. These guys are purely destructive, so we don't mind when Kevin leads them through his House of Pain.
Physical Appearances
Like clothing, physical appearances also help fake the audience out. Marley's a good example—he's a nice guy, but the fact that he has a semi-intense stare makes Kevin think he's the serial killer Buzz claims him to be. But, when Kevin encounters him under different circumstances—watching the choir in a church—Marley's true nature becomes evident: he's a perfectly nice person.
As for less deceiving appearances: John Candy's character, Gus Polinski, is a robust figure whose jolliness overflows with Christmas spirit—kind of like Santa.
Harry's gold tooth doesn't necessarily say anything about his character, but it's something that helps Kevin recognize him, and provides an interesting token at the end of the movie when Kevin's dad finds it.
Props
A snow shovel has lots of uses, shoveling snow and killing people, among them.
Fortunately, Marley uses it to shovel snow, salting the neighborhood's sidewalks in the process—that's classic good guy behavior. But Buzz flips this around, making it sound like Marley's a serial killer, and assigning a false use to his snow shovel as a murder weapon.
Additionally, the burglars carry around crowbars which they clink together, signifying that they (of course), break into houses and rob them. Kevin totes a BB gun, which he uses to blast Harry in the crotch and Marv between the eyes—indicating Kevin's own courage and tenacious tendencies. He's not afraid to use violence to defend himself and his house.
Social Status
There's a veritable social chasm between the McCallister family and the burglars trying to rob them. The McCallisters are clearly pretty well off and respectable—Kevin's parents are seated in first-class as they fly to France, and their house is large and evidences their prosperity (that's why Marv and Harry want to rob it).
By contrast, society tends to look down on avowed burglars. Yet, since we don't see Harry and Marv's home lives, we don't really know much about their social class. After all, considering that they're robbing all these houses, they should probably have put away a decent amount of cash by now…
Speech and Dialogue
The things some of the characters—especially the secondary characters—say, helps make them more vivid. Like, when Buzz tells Kevin, "I wouldn't let you sleep in my room if you were growing out of my ass!" his lack of generosity and his crudeness are pitch perfect.
When Gus Polinski comforts Kate, the dialogue is pretty hilarious. It shows how kindly and well-intentioned Gus is, but also demonstrates his woeful inability to comfort Kate. The thing he tells her is bound to have the exact opposite effect:
KATE: Have you ever gone on vacation and left your child home?
GUS: No, no. But I did leave one at a funeral parlor once. Yeah, it was terrible too. I was all distraught and everything. The wife and I, we left the little tyke there in the funeral parlor all day. All day. You know, we went back at night, when we came to our senses, there he was. Apparently he was there all day with a corpse. Now, he was okay. You know, after six, seven weeks, he came around and started talking again. But he's okay. They get over it. Kids are resilient like that.
Thoughts and Opinions
Ah, the simple wisdom of Home Alone…
When Kevin expresses his deeper philosophy of life, it demonstrates his increasing fearlessness—something that helps him defeat the burglars. Kevin, urging Marley to reconcile with his family, tells him of how he conquered his fear of the basement:
KEVIN: I made myself go down to do some laundry, and I found out it's not so bad. All this time I've been worried about it, but if you turn on the lights, it's no big deal.
That's how Kevin solves his burglar problem, too—he's ducked the issue by scaring them away a couple times, but now he confronts them head on.
On the other hand, Buzz's opinions show that he's not the brightest bulb in the McCallister household. He tells his sister why he thinks Kevin will be okay while he's left at home, alone:
BUZZ: No, for three reasons: A, I'm not that lucky. Two, we use smoke detectors and D, we live on the most boring street in the whole United States of America, where nothing even remotely dangerous will ever happen. Period.
Leaping from A to 2 to D, Buzz is both wrong and right—Kevin is okay, but lots of dangerous things happen, Harry and Marv being the most salient examples.