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HOW CHARACTERS ARE REPRESENTED IN THE NOVEL

Authors make deliberate language choices to develop characters and represent events.

The author builds up our knowledge of characters and events over the course of the narrative.

We are going to look at language features and apply this to our understanding of ‘Teen Inc.’.

The work you do here will be very useful for your assessment task.

POSITIVE & NEGATIVE REPRESENTATIONS

SOME PRACTICE FIRST…

A man on a park bench can be described in different ways to position the reader to make assumptions.

Man on a park bench

Noun group Verb group Adjectives

Positivean elderly gentleman

relaxingpeacefully

respectable

Negative the old man sitting alone scruffy

LET’S WRITE …

•Relaxing peacefully the respectable, elderly gentleman enjoyed the beauty of the gardens.

•Scruffy and sitting alone, the old man slept away his sorrows.

THE POWER OF LANGUAGE

Depending on which language features authors choose, they are able to create vastly different images of characters and events.

YOUR TURN: Let’s choose one of the following images. Together we will write a sentence about your chosen image in

two different ways (= 2 different sentences). Choose your language carefully to give contrasting messages

about each image.

IMAGES TO CHOOSE FROM…

BEFORE WE GO ANY FURTHER …You have just written a number of different sentences.

Sentence writing is an important skill to develop, just ask Jaiden…

“Another word. Say another word. Make a sentence.” (p23)

LET’S LOOK AT SENTENCES QUICKLY …

A sentence is a unit of written language consisting of one or more clauses (part of a sentence containing a verb- doing word)

that are grammatically linked.

A written sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, question mark ?or exclamation mark!

DIFFERENT TYPES OF SENTENCESThere are different types of sentences:

SIMPLE SENTENCE - it contains one clause and expresses a complete thought.

For example: ‘Jenny is beautiful.’ ‘The ground shook.’ ‘Take a seat.’

COMPOUND SENTENCE – contains two or more clauses that are linked in such a way as to give each clause equal status. In the following examples ‘and’ is the coordinating conjunction.

‘We went to the movies and bought an ice cream.’

COMPLEX SENTENCE – contains an independent (or main) clause and one or more dependent (or subordinate) clauses. The dependent clause is joined to the independent clause through coordinating conjunctions like ‘when’, ‘while’ and ‘before’ as in the following example. ‘We all went outside when the sun came out.’

The two sentences were We all went outside The sun came out

LOOKING FOR LANGUAGE FEATURESNovels use specific language features.

You will be looking for noun and verb groups and figurative language such as similes and metaphors that are used to describe characters.

Here is how you might do this for Mr Desmond Hammer III. (pp147-

NOUN GROUPS VERB GROUP FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

His curly hair; wild,mangy mess grow into

was more salt than pepper

his face; warm grin; his eyes

lit up sparkled

as always, sparkling with major insanity

He looked off like a cat focussing on something invisible in mid-air

His eyes narrowing like that tiger he liked to pretend to be

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN…

By now you should be familiar with the main characters in the novel.

Choose one and complete the following table:

Draw this table in your book first.

CHARACTER: __________________

NOUN GROUPS VERB GROUP FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

MORE WORK ON SENTENCES …

Now we are going to move on to the grammatical theme of a sentence.

This includes everything from the beginning of the sentence to the first verb.

The following paragraph is taken from a short story, ‘Be Nice to Dogs’ by Stephen Kimber.

This paragraph tells of Gallagher (a bullying victim) hiding from the bully (Brendan Heite) in some bushes.

Heite came over by the fence. He looked in, his eyes swept over my bush. Then he shook his head. He didn’t believe I could be in there. He turned his back to me and raised his hands to his mouth.

Heite came over by the fence. He looked in, his eyes swept over my bush. Then he shook his head. He didn’t believe I could be in there. He turned his back to me and raised his hands to his mouth.

Do you see how the theme position, which is underlined, makes us: focus on Heite, the bully feel hunted and uneasy feel empathy for Gallagher, who is powerless judge both characters

YOUR TURN…

Turn to page 223 and read the section of the story from when Bungrin arrives on the rooftop until when he shoots the disc (p225).

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

Who is the reader meant to focus on?

What effect does the writer create by placing this participant in the theme position?

What effect does the paragraph where Jaiden flings the disc like a frisbee have? (p225)

What inferences can we make about the power Bungrin has and its effect on Jaiden, Jenny and Nate?

TIME TO WRITE …

Your task is to write a paragraph describing Bungrin based on his behaviour in the section you have just read.

To do this, you need to use P.E.E.L. again

Point – make your main point in the first sentence.

This is the topic sentence.

Expand and elaborate – explain what you mean in more detail.

Evidence and examples – support your statement with facts, evidence and examples.

Link your point back to the topic statement.