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!