Character Sketches

The Eyre Affair Unit Ms. Hoffmann

An Introduction to this Unit

In The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde adapts the work of other authors in a variety of ways. As you work your way through his novel, you will discover a number of direct references and allusions to many different works and characters. At some points, he summarizes key plot events of canonical works, and at others, he imagines alternative events and endings. His experiments with adaptation take him so far that he even paints a picture of what these characters would act like if ripped from the pages of their literary homes and dropped into the “real world.”

Your project for this unit will require you to complete a similar task. You will create your own adaptation of a literary figure (you will be asked to focus your re-appropriation on a single character—though you may choose to include occasional allusions and references to others at your own discretion). However, instead of completing a narrative in the fashion that Fforde does, you will be asked to create a blog in which you write various posts in the voice of this character.


Character Sketch Directions

As a first step towards this, you will need to choose a character whose identity you wish to assume through a blog. For the purposes of this activity, this needs to be a fictional, literary figure. This could be a character from a novel, novella, or lengthy short story. If the character is from a shorter work, it may be difficult to complete this task.

Once you complete some initial research to figure out which character you would like to use, you will need to let me know which character you have chosen. (If you have a lot of trouble, you may want to use a character from one of the novels that we have read for this class). Then, you can go ahead and start working on the following questions. You should perform some online research about these characters in order to provide informed answers. Your completed character sketch will be due at the end of the period.

This will count as one of the grades for the second marking period. In order to receive full credit, you will need to do the following:

1. Answer each question as thoroughly as possible in the time allotted. You should have enough writing to illustrate that you have been on task for the rest of this period as well as second period.

2. Reference the sites that you used to find out information about your character. There is a space for this at the end of the questions. However, if you want to include quotes from these sites, you need to put them in quotation marks and include a link to the site right after the quote.

3. Note that you will NOT receive full credit if your entire paper is made up of quotes or if you have copied text without attributing it to the site on which you found it. It is expected that you will mostly perform research on various sites and type up your synthesis of your findings for this activity.

4. Spellcheck and proofread

Please copy and paste the following questions into your own word document. Answer as many questions as thoroughly as possible.



Name:
Class:
Date:

Character Sketch

1. Character Name:

2. Name of the literary work from which the character originates:

3. Name of the author of this work:

4. Genre of this work:

5. Original publication date of this work:

6. The setting (both time and place) of this work:

7. What does your character look like? Write a rich, adjective-filled explanation. Include textual references to the character’s appearance. (Do what you can to find examples using Google Books, Project Gutenberg, and other online libraries. You will need to obtain some kind of a copy of the text for reference for the rest of this unit by Monday, November 21st.)

8. What is your character like? Is the character a hero, a villain, or neutral? What is your character’s occupation? What are your character’s habits? What are your character’s passions? What are your character’s dreams? Write a vibrant description that accurately captures your character’s personality. Describe him/her as you would to someone who has never read about him/her.

9. What does your character do? What/How does your character think?

10. Describe your character’s relationships with other characters that are from the same text. What do these others say about your character?

11. Is your character’s childhood depicted in the piece that you chose? Write about some significant events from his/her childhood.

12. Write about other significant events that happen to your character.

13. Write some important quotes that your character says. If you character never speaks, include some important quotes about your character.


14. Include the links from which you obtained your information. (You should have sites listed other than Wikipedia and those like SparkNotes. Do some real research; you need to get inside of this character’s head):


If you are having trouble:

1. Refer to one of the following resources:
-A reference to the importance of character traits and examples of them: http://character-in-action.com/character-traits-make-a-whopping-difference/

-More character traits:
http://cte.jhu.edu/techacademy/web/2000/kochan/charactertraits.html

2. A resource describing the basics of analyzing a literary character:
-http://www.enotes.com/topics/how-write-character-analysis

3. Think in terms of something that you know and work from there. For instance, assuming that this character has access to a Facebook page, think about the sort of things that they would post or include in their profile. You could include these sorts of things in your answers to the questions above.


4. Ask!

Agenda Thurs. Oct. 2 Fugitive Pieces

Thank you for making the effort to finish reading Fugitive Pieces. Those of you who have not finished the book have the weekend to complete it. We will have a short essay test on Tuesday and your short stories will be due then.

The next book we will read is a poetry cycle by Rita Dove that won her the Pulitzer Prize.

The cycle consists of 31 poems about her grandparents. It's called thomas and Beulah. Rita dove's daughter attended the university of rochester and she has spoken here several times. She's an interesting and challenging poet. She was the first African-American woman to be Poet Laureate of the United States.

Please visit her website:

http://people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/

More info Equivel

Like Water for Chocolate's full title is: Like Water for Chocolate: A novel in monthly installments with recipes, romances and home remedies.

The phrase "like water for chocolate" comes from the Spanish "como agua para chocolate". This phrase is a common expression in some Spanish speaking countries and was the inspiration for Laura Esquivel's novel title (the name has a double-meaning). In some Latin American countries, such as Mexico, hot chocolate is made not with milk, but with water instead. Water is boiled and chunks of milk chocolate are dropped in to melt thus creating the hot chocolate. The saying "like water for chocolate," alludes to this fact and also to the common use of the expression as a metaphor for describing a state of passion or -sometimes- sexual arousal. In some parts of Latin America, the saying is also equivalent to being "boiling mad" in anger.[8]

This is the story of Tita (Lumi Cavazos), a young woman growing up during the Mexican Revolution. Tita lives with her mother and two sisters, Rosaura and Gertrudis, on a
large ranch; her father died shortly after her birth. As the youngest daughter of the family, Tita, by long-standing tradition, can never marry; it is her responsibility to care for her mother into old age. Tita is raised in the kitchen, learning to cook and take care of household responsibilities from early childhood, and she is aware of the family tradition. She falls in love anyway, with a young man named Pedro (Marco Leonardi). When Pedro asks for Tita's hand in marriage and is refused, he agrees to marry Rosaura instead -- so he can be near Tita, the true love of his life. Tita pours heartbreak and anger into her cooking, and her feelings are magically transferred to the rest of her family.

In literature, magic realism often combines the external factors of human existence with the internal ones. It is a fusion between scientific physical reality and psychological human reality. It incorporates aspects of human existence such as thoughts, emotions, dreams, cultural mythologies and imagination

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/likewater/


http://www.salon.com/oct96/interview961104.html
An interview with the author...

SparkNotes
Like Water for Chocolate is a popular novel, published in 1989 by first-time Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel. The novelLaura Esquivel follows the story of a young girl named Tita who longs her entire life for her lover, Pedro, but can never have him because of her domineering mother's traditional belief that the youngest daughter must not marry but take care of her mother until the day she dies. Tita is only able to express her passions and feelings through her cooking, which causes the people who taste it to experience what she feels.The novel was originally published in Spanish as Como agua para chocolate and has been translated into thirty languages; there are over three million copies in print worldwide.

The novel makes heavy use of magical realism. The novel was made into a film in 1993.[4] It earned all 11 Ariel awards of the Mexican Academy of Motion Pictures, including the Ariel Award for Best Picture, and became the highest grossing foreign film ever released in the United States at the time.
Laura Esquivel Biography
Like Water for Chocolate (Criticism): Information and Much More ...
As a site for the crucial link between food and life, .... In Like Water for Chocolate, magic realism becomes an appropriate vehicle for the expression of ...
www.answers.com/topic/like-water-for-chocolate-novel-7 - 47k

Laura Esquivel Website

Laura Esquivel Website

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.writingresource.info/esquivel_laura.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.writingresource.info/likewater.html&usg=__Ks7Ft8how0eID3LYKei8L-7G1JA=&h=171&w=130&sz=9&hl=en&start=34&tbnid=WH7tR6DIGncOhM:&tbnh=100&tbnw=76&prev=/images%3Fq%3DLaura%2BEsquivel%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20&safe=on

Laura Esquivel bio

Esquivel was born in 1951 in Mexico, the third of four children of Julio Caesar Esquivel, a telegraph operator, and his wife, Josephina. In an interview with Molly O'Neill in the New York Times, Esquivel explained, "I grew up in a modern home, but my grandmother lived across the street in an old house that was built when churches were illegal in Mexico. She had a chapel in the home, right between the kitchen and dining room. The smell of nuts and chilies and garlic got all mixed up with the smells from the chapel, my grandmother's carnations, the liniments and healing herbs." These experiences in her family's kitchen provided the inspiration for Esquivel's first novel.

Esquivel grew up in Mexico City and attended the Escuela Normal de Maestros, the national teachers' college. After teaching school for eight years, Esquivel began writing and directing for children's theater. In the early 1980s she wrote the screenplay for the Mexican film Chido One, directed by her husband, Alfonso Arau, and released in 1985. Arau also directed her screenplay for Like Water for Chocolate, released in Mexico in 1989 and in the United States in 1993. First published in 1989. the novel version of Like Water for Chocolate became a best seller in Mexico and the United States and has been translated into numerous languages. The film version has become one of the most popular foreign films of the past few decades. In her second, less successful novel. Ley del amor, published in English in 1996 as The Law of Love, Esquivel again creates a magical world where love becomes the dominant force of life. The novel includes illustrations and music on compact disc to accompany it. Esquivel continues to write, working on screenplays and fiction from her home in Mexico City.

Like Water for Chocolate Laura Esquivel

First published in 1989, Laura Esquivel's first novel, Como agua para chocolate: novela de entregas mensuales con recetas, amores, y remedios caseros, became a best seller in the author's native Mexico. It has been translated into numerous languages, and the English version, Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments, with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies, enjoyed similar success in the United States. The film version, scripted by the author and directed by her husband, Alfonso Arau, has become one of the most popular foreign films of the past few decades. In a New York Times interview, Laura Esquivel told Manalisa Calta that her ideas for the novel came out of her own experiences in the kitchen: "When I cook certain dishes, I smell my grandmother's kitchen, my grandmother's smells. I thought: what a wonderful way to tell a story." The story Esquivel tells is that of Tita De la Garza, a young Mexican woman whose family's kitchen becomes her world after her mother forbids her to marry the man she loves. Esquivel chronicles Tita's life from her teenage to middle-age years, as she submits to and eventually rebels against her mother's domination. Readers have praised the novel's imaginative mix of recipes, home remedies, and love story set in Mexico in the early part of the century. Employing the technique of magic realism, Esquivel has created a bittersweet tale of love and loss and a compelling exploration of a woman's search for identity and fulfillment.
First published in 1989, Laura Esquivel's first novel, Como agua para chocolate: novela de entregas mensuales con recetas, amores, y remedios caseros, became a best seller in the author's native Mexico. It has been translated into numerous languages, and the English version, Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments, with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies, enjoyed similar success in the United States. The film version, scripted by the author and directed by her husband, Alfonso Arau, has become one of the most popular foreign films of the past few decades. In a New York Times interview, Laura Esquivel told Manalisa Calta that her ideas for the novel came out of her own experiences in the kitchen: "When I cook certain dishes, I smell my grandmother's kitchen, my grandmother's smells. I thought: what a wonderful way to tell a story." The story Esquivel tells is that of Tita De la Garza, a young Mexican woman whose family's kitchen becomes her world after her mother forbids her to marry the man she loves. Esquivel chronicles Tita's life from her teenage to middle-age years, as she submits to and eventually rebels against her mother's domination. Readers have praised the novel's imaginative mix of recipes, home remedies, and love story set in Mexico in the early part of the century. Employing the technique of magic realism, Esquivel has created a bittersweet tale of love and loss and a compelling exploration of a woman's search for identity and fulfillment.

Week 4/13-17 The Hours

Monday, 4/13---View more of of film The Hours. Discuss how the film adapts and changes elements of the novel--i.e. Clarissa and Louis scene

Wednesday, 4/15 ---Continue work on The Hours short story assignment.
Continue reading The hours. Finish the book over the break.
Check out the videos on this web page about Michael Cunningham.
Check out our writing workshop page: contempwriters.forumotion.net