UNIVER SITATEA PETROL GAZE DIN PLOIE ȘTI [614513]

UNIVER SITATEA PETROL – GAZE DIN PLOIE ȘTI
DEPARTAMENTUL PENTRU PREGĂTIREA
PERSONALULUI DIDACTIC

Lucrare metodico -științ ifică pentru
obținerea gradului didactic I

Coordonator:
Conf. univ. dr. Toma Irina
Candidat: [anonimizat] “Constantin Cantacuzino ”,
Târgoviște, Dâmbovița

PLOIEȘ TI
2017

UNIVERSITATEA PETROL – GAZE DIN PLOIEȘTI
DEPARTAMENTUL PENTRU PREGĂTIREA
PERSONALULUI DIDACTIC

Modern Techniques of Approaching
Literary Characters in EFL C lasses

Coordonator:
Conf. univ. dr. Toma Irina

Candidat: [anonimizat] “Constantin Cantacuzino ”,
Târgoviște, Dâmbovița

PLOIEȘTI
2017

Contents

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….. ………………………….1
Chapter 1
The literary character throughout the his tory of English literature – A
possible t axonomy …………………………………………………………………………………… …..4
Chapter 2
Modern techniques of teaching literary characters …………………………… ……..15
2.1 Using fairy tales to teach virtues…………………………………… ………………………….15
2.2 Discovering literary characters through their journals…………………………… ………………28
2.3 Literary characters on trial………………………………………….. ……………. ………………………36
2.4 Adapting sociograms to teach l iterary characters………………………………………42
2.5 Deciphering teenage skaz to understand literary characters…………………………..48
2.6 Teaching literary characters through eleme nts of psycho analysis …………………….54
Chapter 3
The challenge of teaching literary characters – A methodological
approach …………………………………………………………………………… …..62
3.1 Modern techniques of teaching literary terms related to characterization ……………. ….65
3.2 Modern ways of presenting the narrator’s points of view in terms of teaching literary
characters……………………….………………………………………………………… 83
3.3 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters ……………………………………….. ………93
3.3.1 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through fairy tales ………………. …99
3.3.2 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through journals…………. ………106
3.3.3 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through tr ial…………………….. …..110
3.3.4 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through sociograms…………… ….11 7
3.3.5 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through skaz……………………… …127
3.3.6 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through elements of
psychoanalysis …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 131
Conclusion ………………………………………… …………………………………………….. 141
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………. 143
Appendices ……….. ……………………………………………………………………………………… …146

Appendix 1 Optional Course – The Literary Character – Modern Approaches
Appendix 2 Annex 1 Defining characterization
Annex 2 Picture Books
Annex 3 Narrator’s perspective – Flash Card Activity
Annex 4 Point of view Practice
Annex 5 Character Analyses – Worksheet
Annex 6 Characterization bubbles
Annex 7 Literary character’s silhouette
Annex 8 Comparing two literary characters
Annex 9 Literary characters – graphic characterization
Annex 10 and 11 Visual aids in teaching literary characters
Annex 12 Little Red Riding Hood – Profile Template
Annex 13 Roles of the Members of a Trial
Annex 14 Schematic characterizatio ns
Annex 15 Understanding “Character” Analyses
Annex 16 Character Analysis Chart
Appendix 3 Lesson plans

List of tables and figures
Table 1 Cultural comparisons ………………………………………………………… .…81
Table 2 Little Red Riding Hood – exercise …………………………………………… ….101
Table 3 Knowledge chart ………………………………………………………………..104
Table 4 Double entry journal ……………………………..…………………………… ..107
Table 5 Graphic Organizer – Hamlet …………………..……………………………… ..108

Figure 1 Good basket or trash? ……………………………… ………………………… ..101
Figure 2 Literary character sociogram …………………………………………………..117
Figure 3 Characterisation bubbles ……………………………………………………….118
Figure 4 Twelfth Night Sociogram ……………………..……………………………….122
Figure 5 Literary character sociogram – graphic organiser ……………………………..126

1
INTRODUCTION

During my 13 years of teaching English, I, and not only, have noticed a decline of
students’ interest in literature and reading. There are many reasons for this, the main being
the fact that literature is mandatory in the Romanian school curriculum and so students do
not have a continuity and, therefore, it is difficult to draw their attention to it and enjoy it.
Teachers have the tendency to focus their work on the development of oral and writing
skills, because these are requested by the nowadays society, and mainly because of the lack
of time and the huge amount of informati on the teachers have to teach. These are the
reasons why reading and literary text comprehensions are not well and enough cultivated .
From my point of view , English literary classes have a big utility in the students’
future development and I h ave constantly tried to give my students the opportunity to
re/discover literature. It is important to teach students how to read first and after that how
to write. Unfortunately, in thi s process, teachers are usually alone, because parents do not
give a helping hand , as they do not read to their children, mainly because they d o not read
themselves too . I consider that a child that has never read a book is deprived of a huge
source of sel f education, he/she is not aware of the advantages of “stepping into another
world” or “living someone else’s life” for a couple of hours.
I have always been interested in finding the most efficient, modern and i nvolving
means of teaching literature, becau se this is the way of getting students closer to reading
literary texts. In order to succeed, teachers should be aware that this Face book and
Instagram generation does not enjoy old -fashioned classical methods whe n introducing a
piece of reading . The first thing the teachers have to fight against is the prejudices the
students have related to reading, as they see and understand it as a waste of time. If we, as
teachers, do not take this into consideration , then the fight and struggle are lost.
The modern teacher’s hardest job is to make teenagers feel that reading can be
“cool” and “chillin’ “, if it is done with passion, determination, purpose and interest. A
huge mistake that English teacher do is to impose their choice of favourite literary
characters, role models or prototypes and do not let students find their own or not to update
their knowledge on what is new. For example, the students will be more eager to learn
about Harry Potter than about Huck. But if we find a way to connect the two her oes and
make students discover the last , then our aim is achieved. A good ally for teachers is the

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use of the latest learning high -tech gadgets, because it is with their help that they bring the
spark a class needs in order to arise students’ interest.
The aim of this paper was to find those modern and attractive techniques which can
make literature classes more interesting in order for the students to get closer to literary
characters, to use their vivid imagination to ‘draw’ the portrait of those they rea d about. It
is this important quality that teachers should use to help them wake up their students’
interest. Due to the fact that teaching literature is not contained in the school curriculum,
teaching literary characters can be a real and big challenge f or teachers who have to think
about new perspectives to apply in class. If the teacher is good enough to find them, their
goals are to enable the students to acquire the skills of reading, analyzing and
understanding meanings in order to enlarge their abil ity to express themselves.
Through this paper I have tried to present some techniques and methods of teaching
the literary character which, in the opinion of the literature teachers’ community, are
considered modern and more captivating to the contemporary students, despite the age of
the book or of the reader.
In the first chapter, ’’The Literary Character throughout the History of English
Literature ’’ (A Possible Taxonomy) , I made a short presentation of the types of literary
characters, seen from different points of view: according to their place/function in the
action, according to the degree of individuality, in relation to the way they unfold during
the action, to their psychological density (Forster ) or to the referent’s nat ure ( Philippe
Hamon).
The second chapter, ’’Modern Techniques of Teaching Literary Character’’,
comprises six subchapters, namely:
a) Using Fairy Tales to Teach Virtues (most appealing to younger learners, but not
only, we may use modern fantasy and fairy tales to remind moral truths);
b) Discovering Literary Characters through Their Journals (writing journal pages
from the point of view of the characters to explore their p erspectives and
motivations);
c) Literary Characters on Trial (combining persuasion and literary analysis in order
to investigate the paramount issues of race, gender and sexuality);
d) Adapting Socio -grams to Teach Literary Characters (using both graphic organi zers
that represent the relationships among characters in a literary text and economic,
social and cultural shades in portraying characters);

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e) Deciphering Teenage Skaz to Understand Literary Characters (derived from a
Russian word, skaz defines a rather spo ken than written word, used mostly by
young people);
f) Teaching Literary Characters through Elements of Psychoanalysis (getting
accustomed to common terms of psychoanalysis used in understanding deeper
insights of the characters).
The third cha pter, ’’The Challenge of Teaching Literary Character’’ (A
Methodological Approach ) offers a survey of the main reasons for the teaching of
literature, distinguishing teacher -centred, product -centred pedagogies from student –
centred, language -based and proce ss-oriented pedagogies. This chapter aims to offer an
analysis of the above mentioned issues, and a presentation of several teaching models or
tendencies – language, cultural, personal growth approach and the literary approach.
The concluding part compris es the summary of the goals I set, the analysis of the
most important information provided during the entire work, interpretations and
conclusions.

4
CHAPTER 1
The Literary Character
Throughout the History of English L iterature
-A Possible Taxonomy –

’Memorable characters come alive for us while we read. They live on the page and in our
hearts and minds. We cannot forget them. Yet, they are fictional; they don't really exist. We
should be alert to characters in the same way we are when we meet someone.’1
Literature is a symbolic realm that humans create and inhabit. But it cannot be
created without taking into account its purpose and effect, essence and raison d’être. When
reflecting upon literature, we normally ask ourselves what literature really is. The term
“literature” should be understood as the symbolic human domain, mode lled after
humankind’s perspective on the world, and thus populated by beings that closely resemble
us. In the same way that human consciousne ss is perceived as a succession of events, so
does literature tend to exhibit a sequential arrangement, to become narrative.
Fictional narratives and life narratives co -exist in the human sphere in the same
way as the real and the imaginary c onstitute the components of our cognitive development.
Literature is not simply a medium for entertainment and cultural refinement, but it also
functions as a practical tool, designed to provide us with an enriched learning environment,
a rehearsal stage, or a chess board, where we study moves and consequences.
The literary character is an operational concept that defines a literary hero. The
characters of an epic or dramatic literary work are artistically changed elements (either
human or non -human), involved in the story. The character acts as a significant image
caused by aesthetic and ideological perspectives. A literary character and its surrounding
fictional world are real while we project ourselves into their virtual context. We create
characters in circumstances which allow us to visit their habitat temporary and bring them
to life.
The literary experience is possible thanks to our success erasing the hierarchy of
reality that exists between characters and human beings. Acco rding to the theory of minds

1 www.forsuchatimeasthis.com

5
2 we recognize characters as living entities and we attribute them mental states. Then, we
attempt to interpret those states, to read their minds, in order to determine their intentions.
Our social position and access to goods such as food, mating, power, o r the literary canon
may be determined by this ability to read and act in light of the intentions of others.
Although the symbolic realm of literature poses no direct risk for us the same mechanisms
that operate in life are automatically activated when we humanize literary characters,
therefore we attempt to read their minds and predict their behaviour in just the same way
that we do when we interact with real beings. Such ability to project ourselves as readers
into the fictional universe of characters, t o enter their minds and “be them,” might indeed
be what enables us to experience narrative worlds. It is important to note that this empathy
is universal, cross -cultural, and belongs to the broad skills repertoire of the human species.
Literary empathy wil l take place regardless of the format in which narratives come to us,
whether it is by direct audiovisual observation as in theatre or film, or mediated by the
arbitrary signs of a book.
In literature, the connection between emotion and learni ng was early established
by the Greeks. Catharsis functioned in the classical world as a means for cleansing: the
soul was purified through emotions of terror and pity. In his Poetics, Aristotle evidences
how these two emotions are in fact inseparable and intrinsically connected to empathy.
There seems to be in fact a directly proportional relation between closeness and empathy:
the more we are able to identify with literary characters, the more we “feel” for them. In
real life, we conduct ourselves similar ly. It is easier for us to empathize with the small
everyday difficulties of our friends and colleagues, than to be moved by the death of
innocent people in Iraq. The biggest tragedy of the human species might be the lack of
feeling for what happens far aw ay from us.
By watching literary characters act, empathically feeling for them, and pondering
on the result of their actions, we are being prepared to face analogous situations that we
might encounter in real life. In this sense, fictional n arratives constitute folk -psychology
treatises, behavioural catalogues which have a pragmatic value. They are, by nature,
didactic symbolic instruments of our species’ socio -cognitive development. The building,

2 The relation between literature, empathy, and mirror neurons has been established, among other scholars,
by Norman Holland, Patrick Colm Hogan, and Lisa Zunshine.
Hogan, Patrick Colm , Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists.
Zunshine, Lisa , Why we Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel.
Holland, Norman , The Willing Suspension of Disbelief .

6
maintenance, and use of a shared source of so cial “knowledge" to complement direct life
experiences are key functions of symbolic representations such as literature.
It is finally important to remember that fiction and life interact both synchronically
and diachronically at the individual and collect ive levels.

The following classification is a diagnosis of both the development of literary
forms and of the evolution of mentalities.
Literary character’s typology:
1. Given the "degree" and "means" of the reality’s transposition (objective – subjecti ve)
characters may be:
-purely fictitious characters;
-characters rooted in a certificated human history;
-character -writer himself;
-character involving some data on the writer’s life.
● Other perspectives:
– character – personification of animal s or of elements from the kingdom of plants and
minerals;
– parody character;
– allegory character;
– symbol (parody/allegory) character;
– fabulous character;
– puppet character;
– supra -character (not an individual but a place or an event become metaphors).
2. Given the "degree" and "way" in which the author designs himself in his fictional
character, characters may be:
– projection – the way in which the author expresses his ideas and tastes;
– dual personality – the character embodies two di fferent hypostases living within the same
author, at the same time;
– reduction – different characters presenting different possible aspects of the author;
– sublimation – fictional projection of a human compensatory role for the author;
– antithes is – the human typology which the author condemns;
– puppet – which provides a demonstration;
– one’s own individuality – that speaks and acts in accordance with the personality the
author attributed to it and which the author disappears behind.

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3. Given the place throughout the narration, characters may be:
– main;
– secondary;
– episodic.

4. Given the construction scale, characters may be:
– complex (round);
– unilateral (flat).

5. Given the ethic significance, characters may be:
– positive;
– negative.

6. Given the way they come to life and evolve, characters may be:
– individual (features of an only person);
– collective – choir – group – masses.

7. Combining the social criteria with those human -like characteristics, there may be
distinguished the following categories and subcategories of characters:
 general human types (designed as exponents of certain human or social categories
with their collective characteristics):
– characters representing nations type (French, English, Turkish, etc.);
– characters representing professions, occupations, situations;
– characters representing social and moral positions ( the gentleman, the spinster,
etc.);
– characters represent ing types with infirmities or vices ( the blind, the gambler, the
hunchback etc.).
 legendary, supernatural types :
– imaginary, from old stories ( the Wizard, monster, vampire, harlequin etc.);
– legendary , from the Bible (Cain, Judas, Esther); Gree k (Ulysses, Prometheus);
historical (Cleopatra, the Cyd).
8. Given the functional criteria, there may be distinguished the following types of "roles"
(characters):
 PATIENT – beneficiary/ victim;

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 AGENT – voluntary/involuntary;
 INFLUENCER – informer/hider/seducer/intimidator/binder/forbidder/adviser;
 DEGRADER ;
 IMPROVER;
 RETRIBUTOR.

9. Given the aesthetics perspective the character is built upon, there may be distinguished:
 CLASSICAL – ARISTOTELIAN literary character achieved by complying with
certain requirements such as:
– being static, and schematically outlined in terms of two precepts: Divine
proportion and Vocation exploit; the man for whom Reason is the supreme
virtue, and the adjacent va lues are The Good, The Beauty and The Truth;
-character’s deed or word mirror an attitude.
 CLASSICAL literary character (the classic of the 17th century):
– inspired from the Greek -Latin Antiquity, legends and the Middle Ages;
– dominated by intellec t, sense of honour and duty;
– character’s consistency , throughout its evolution, with nature, geographical
and historical era, age;
– displays a single moral feature.( The Middle Ages propose characters lacking
individuality, allegorical representat ions of values created in time. Religious
literature sees man as damned. Heroic literature exploits the Knight’s figure.
The Renaissance assumes the pattern of the classical Antiquity. It proposes an
ideal of manhood that is accomplished as spirit and as flesh. As a spirit, it is a
depth of science and art lover (Homo Universalis). As a body, nothing that's
human, it is not unknown. It is a hyperbolic, outsized figure, an expression of
strength. The Classicism proposes characters seen as expressions of the
measure. Classical, rational man shall retain the status of human being and
therefore he believes in the middle way, in a normal, legislated, balanced life.
Man is seen even, consistent, unchanging, reduced to a dominant character that
represents a class of individuals. The Enlightenment proposes a lucid man who
believes in the light of reason, light originating from humans, supernatural light
of the divine essence. The Pre -romanticism proposes the 18th century sensitive

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human image, the man who is a ble to predict the dominant romantic pattern. He
is a dreamer, a man of projects as well as of failures).

 ROMANTIC character:
– risen in all social environments;
– he is torn by internal antagonistic states, built antithetically;
– exceptional character in exceptional circumstances;
– complex: changing, suffering spectacular mutations;
– physical appearance often contrasts with moral essence. (Determinations are
multiple, even contradictory: subjectivism looked deeper into, fe eling,
enthusiasm and imagination, social maladjustment, revolt, being titanic and
involved in action).
Types:
* Active inadaptable (uprising):
– Titanic: superior man, thirsty for knowledge, power of sacrifice, moral
perfection;
– Demon : rebellious;
– Genius: exceptional personality, imagination and extraordinary power of
penetration.
* Passive inadaptable
* Other types: Dreamer
Messiah -like
Benefactor
Innocent child
Sadistic
Disillusioned

 REALIST character:
– risen in all social environments and all ages;
– typical characters in typical circumstances;
– continuous transformation in relation to socio -political environment;
– generally, his psychology detaches from his portrai t, behaviour, clothing,
speech and living environment. (The Realism opposes to the idealized vision of
the human, a more scientifically objective vision. Thus, the man appears

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common, ordinary, real, some historical being placed in a complex universe.
The man is shown in his process of training, he is not just simpl y described, he
is explained.)
Types: Parvenu
Grudger
Dandy
Snob
Human failure
Worker

 NATURALISTIC character :
– risen in various social settings;
– his behaviour and actions are determined by hereditary causes, instincts,
obsessions.
 character in MODERN vision:
– during the Symbolism, the character does not have an accurate biography;
– a character essentially knowable, it is an expression of sensitivity;
– behavioural prose emphasis on the character and ignores the feelings inside;
– psychoanalytic prose looks into the intimate life, the character of the abyss,
throug h analysis, self -analysis, recording the flow of memory; his features are
not directly taken off of the action, but from the intersection of several
projections; in some cases, it atomizes becoming a mobile silhouette; in other
cases, it is felt the lac k of character and the pending. The twentieth century
provides a different picture of characters, to which we cannot find a common
denominator.
There can be recognized two opposing trends:
– man as flow of conscience (Proust -like type of novel);
-man as simple human behaviour, viewed from outside, imposed by the American
prose (Hemingway, Steinbeck, etc.). There are anonymous figures – the antihero,
the average individual, feature -less human, a number in the records book. The
character can be generic – an initial, a pronoun (he, she, we, you), a contradictory,
diffused, wasted figure in the text.3

3 Dramatica: A New Theory of Story .

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A literary character can have roots in a particular archetype, which is a common
character logical pattern Jungian archetypes are modelled after mythology , legend , and
folk tales . Such examples of the Jungian trickster archetype literary characters are Puck
from the William Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night's Dream and Bugs Bunny because
they defy established standards of behaviour. When defined by literary criticism ,
archetypes fulfil a particular role in a story. Blending Jungian archetypes or re cognizing
sub-archetypes within Carl Jung's structure, Chris Huntley defines eight different
archetypes defined by their "Action" and "De cision" characteristics:
 Driver Characters :
o Protagonist : "… the driver of the story: the one who forces the action."
Defined by "Pursue" and "Consideration" characteristics.
 Jungian equivalent: Hero
o Antagonist : "… the character directly opposed to the Protagonist." "Prevent"
& "Re -consideration".
 Jungian equivalent: Shadow
o Guardian: "… a teacher or helper who aids the Protagonist…" "Help" &
"Conscience"
 Jungian equivalent: Wise Old Man or Wise Old Woman, also
sometimes referred to collectively as The Mentor
o Cont -agonist: "… hinders and deludes the Protagonist…" "Hinder" &
"Temptation"
 Passenger Characters
o Reason: "… makes its decisions and takes action on t he basis of logic…"
"Control" & "Logic"
o Emotion: "… responds with its feelings without thinking…" "Uncontrolled"
& "Feeling"
o Sidekick : "… unfailing in its loyalty and support." "Suppo rt" & "Faith".
o Sceptic : "… doubts everything…" "Oppose" & "Disbelief"
A single character may fulfil more than one archetypal role. A single character may
also have many traits and feelings. A complex character may blend characteristics from
different archetypes, just as real people embody aspects of each archetype. Though in
stories the archetypes are fragmented into individual characters, in real life each of us

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carries qualities of each ar chetype. If we didn't, we wouldn't be able to relate to characters
that represent the archetypes we were missing.4
Authors think that t he names they chose for their fictional characters are quite
important. Over the time, they way in which they name them, has changed. F or example, in
comedies, characters are given emblematic names which resemble real life names: "Sir
Fidget", "Mr. Pinchwife" and "Mrs. Squeamish" are just a few typical examples (all from
The Country Wife by William Wycherley ). During the 18th and 19th century , a convention
was used for proper nouns in literature; the authors used a single letter and a long dash.
The effect of this was to suggest that the writer had inspired from reality but omitted the
full name for propriety's sake. Another thing that authors do, is to echo an adjective or idea
to suggest qualities of a character; for example, Mr. Murdstone of David Copperfield
suggests "murder" and unpleasantness. A character's name will sometimes make
connection with the real-world, literary, or mythological precursor. This can be as simple
as calling a character in love Romeo , or naming a character that seemingly comes back
from the dead Phoenix .
These are the ways in which readers make a classification of characters. Round
characters are the ones whic h have been fully developed by the author, physically,
mentally and emotionally, and are detailed enough to seem real. A round character is
usually a main character, and is developed over the course of the story. A flat character, is
its opposite, having hardly any development whatsoever. Protagonists are normally round
characters, though notable exceptions exist. Antagonists are often rounding as well, though
comedic villains may be almost farcically flat. Examples of round characters from various
genres include Humbert Humbert of Nabokov 's Lolita , Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler of
Mitchell 's Gone with the Wind , Frodo Baggins of J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Lord of the Rings ,
Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs , Buffy Summers of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer , and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 's Sherlock Holmes .
A flat character is distinguished by its lack of detail. Though the description of a
flat character may be detailed, the character itself barely has detail and usually j ust follows
one characteristic. A number of stereotypical , or "stock" characters , have developed
throughout the history of drama . Some of these characters include the country bumpkin ,
the con artist , and the city slicker . These characters are often the basis of flat characters,
though elements of stock characters can be found in round characters as w ell. Supporting

4 Kaufman. C , Archetype Writing: The Fiction Writers' Guide to Psychology .

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characters are generally flat, as most minor roles do not require a great deal of complexity.
In addition, experimental literature and post-modern fiction often intentionally make use of
flat characters, even as protagonists. In addition to people, characters may be aliens ,
animals5 gods , an artificial intelligence or, occasionally, in animate objects. A dynamic
character is the one who changes significantly during the course of the story. Changes
considered to qualify a character as dynamic include changes in insight or understanding ,
changes in commitment , and changes in values . Changes in circumstance, even physical
circumstance, do not apply unless they result in some change within the character's self 6 .
By definition, the protagonist is nearly always a dynamic character. In coming -of-age
stories in particular, the protagonist often underg oes dramatic change, transforming from
innocence to experience . Examples of dynamic characters are Jay Gatsby of Fitzgerald 's
The Great Gatsby , Elizabeth Bennet of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice , Harry, Ron and
Hermione in the Harry Potter series .
In contrast, a static character does not undergo significan t change. Whether round
or flat, their personalities remain essentially stable throughout the course of the story. This
is commonly done with secondary characters in order to let them serve as thematic or plot
elements. Supporting characters and major characters other than the protagonist are
generally static, though exceptions do occur. A non-fictional character is a character that
actually exists or existed in history, though their exploits in the story may differ from their
historical activities. So me works of fiction have attempted to portray a story without the
use of characters ( James Joyce 's Finnegan’s Wa ke is one of the most famous examples). In
animations and puppetry , different aspects of a given character are rendered separate ly
using different modalities. In animation, for example, mannerisms and behaviour are
rendered by animators , while voices are rendered by voice actors .
Readers vary greatly in how they understand fictional characters. The most
extreme ways of reading fictional characters would be to think of them exactly as real
people or to think of them as purely artistic creat ions that have everything to do with craft
and nothing to do with real life. Most styles of reading fall somewhere in between. In some
readings, certain characters are understood to represent a given quality or abstraction.
Rather than simply being people, these characters stand for something larger. Many

5 The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.
6 Card , C, The Emergence of Archetypes in Present -Day Science and Its Significance for a Contemporary
Philosophy of Nature.

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characters in Western literature have been read as Christ symbo ls, for example. Other
characters have been read as symbolizing capitalist greed (as in F. Scott Fitzgerald 's The
Great Gatsby ), the futility of fulfilling the American Dream. Three of the principal
characters in Lord of the Flies can be said to symbolize elements of civilization: Ralph
represents the civilizing instinct; Jack represents the savage instinct; Piggy represents the
rational side of human nature; while Simon represents Jesus7.
Another way of reading charac ters symbolically is to understand each character as
a representative of a certain group of people. Many practitioners of cultural criticism and
feminist criticism focus the ir analysis of characters on cultural stereotypes .
Sometimes characters obviously represent important historical figures. Nicole, a
destructive, mentally ill woman in Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald , is often seen
as a fictionalized version of Fitzgerald's wife , Zelda . Perhaps because so many people
enjoy imagining characters as real people, many critics devote their time to seeking out
real people on whom literary figures were likely based. Frequently authors base stories on
themselves or their loved ones8.
Sometimes writers create composite characters based on two or more individuals.
Some language – or text -oriented critics emphasize that characters are nothing more than
certain conventional uses of words on a page: names or even just pronouns repeated
throughout a text. They refer to characters as fun ctions of the text. Some critics go so far as
to suggest that even authors do not exist outside the texts that construct them.
Psychoanalytic criticism usually treats characters as real people possessing
complex psyches. Psychoanalytic critics approach literary characters as an analyst would
treat a patient, searching their dreams, past, and behaviour for explanations of their
fictional situatio ns. Alternatively, some psychoanalytic critics read characters as mirrors
for the audience's psychological fears and desires. Rather than representing realistic
psyches then, fictional characters offer readers a way to act out psychological dramas of
their own in symbolic and often hyperbolic form. The classic example of this would be
Freud 's reading of Oedipus (and Hamlet , for that matter) as emblematic of the Oedipus
complex (a child's fantasy of killing his father to possess his mother)9.

7 http://ultimatepopculture.wikia.com/wiki/Fictional_character
8 Idem
9 Idem

15
CHAPTER 2
Modern Techniques of Teaching Literary Characters

2.1. Using Fairy Tales to Teach Virtues

’Fairy tale and modern fantasy stories project fantastic other worlds; but they also pay
close attention to real moral "laws" of character and virtue. By portraying wonderful and
frightening worlds in which ugly beasts are transformed into princes and evil persons are
turned to stones and good persons back to flesh, fairy tales remind us of moral truths
whose ultimate claims to be normal and permanence we would not think of questioning. ’
Vigen Guroian

A fairy tale is defined as "a story featuring folkloric characters such as fairies,
goblins, elves, trolls, giants, and others"10. In many folk cultures, Romanian being
included, sometimes demons and witches are seen as real entities, and that is the
explanation for which fairy tales may merge into legendary narratives. The context is
perceived as having historical actuality, including myths and legends, too. They are a part
of our life, as imagery’s archetypes – those events and experiences our ancestors might
have taken part in, once.
The Greek term for character actually means an impression . This means that moral
character is an impression stamped upon the self. The literary character can be defined by
its orientation, consistenc y and constancy. Nowadays people often consider freedom to be
equivalent to morality and goodness but this is naive because freedom is transcendent and
the precondition of choice itself. Depending upon his character, an individual will be
drawn toward eith er goodness or wickedness. Moral and immoral behaviour is freedom
enacted either for good or for ill.11
Character and virtue are depicted attractively through great fairytales and children’s
fantasy stories in which the virtues flicker as if they are perce ived in a magical mirror and
deception and evilness are exposed of their pretension to goodness and truth. These stories

10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_tale
11 Guroian, V ., Rallying the Really Human Things: The Moral Imagination in Politics,Literature, and
Everyday Life , p. 26

16
make us face the frank truth about our own selves while riveting us to take into
consideration what kind of people we want to be.
A dissimilarity is clearly specified (by Mircea Eliade and other famous names in
the field of magic and religious thought and experience): unlike legends and epics the fairy
tales usually do not contain more than superficial references to religion and actual places,
persons and events although these allusions are often critical in understanding the origins
of these fanciful stories. The case of different fables, talking animals and the presence of
magic seem to be more common to the fairy tale than fairies themselves.12
Another characteristic of the fairy tale is that it is a part of the oral tradition; folk
tales were narrated orally (sometimes written like the case of Brothers Grimm or made
up/re -invented novelty case Hans Christian An dersen's tales and other famous names in the
world), generally passed from one generation to another.
The fairy tale has ancient roots, ones having common patterns with ancient myths
or magical tales or religious miracles. Some authors find a way to recrea te a sense of the
fantastic in a contemporary discourse or retell them from a multitude of other points of
view. Different means, methods and techniques of storytelling cover special effects or new
keys of reading and interpretation (e.g. such key can be u sed too in classifying literature as
Doric, Ionic and Corinth with some general features in the opinion of N. Manolescu).
Specialists, but not only these ones, could look for patterns and features in modern
literature (beginning or assuming a certain myth or traces from an older story or legend). It
appears that the fairy tale, which was born as a fall from its ritual sacred world in the
ordinary world as well as some objects were ritual and cultural once, have become toys in
the children’s world.
The concept that fairy tales and fantasy stories arouse interest and educate the
moral imagination of the young is not new. The Victorians certainly supported this notion
when they introduced the fairy tale into the nurseries and primary schoo ls. Nowadays, we
have seen an increase of interest in this. The renowned psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim gave
this an important impetus twenty years ago with his publication of The Uses of
Enchantment. The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1975). "It h ardly requires
emphasis at this moment in our history" Bettelheim wrote that children need "a moral
education… (that teaches) not through abstract ethical concepts but through that which

12 Carter, A., Introduction to the Virago Book of Fairy Tales, p. 83

17
seems tangibly right and therefore meaningful…. The child finds t his kind of meaning
through fairy tales."13
Even if psychologists and educators have conducted a lot of studies and research on
fairy tales and modern children’s literature, they have not yet gathered an ample or
impressive corpus of information and interpretation and for this reason tea chers give
special concerns of these in their disciplines. Not even the ethicists or the religious and
philosophical ethicists have contemplated a great deal on children as moral readers or have
written much on children’s literature. Maybe this is because they have the false impression
that kids are at a pre -moral stage in which socialization is more important than moral
education. As parents and teachers we are aware of that fact that this is not that simple.
The great fairy tales and fantasy stories port ray the definition of morality through
unshakeable depictions of struggles between good and evil, heroes and villains, right and
wrong, all found in these imaginary worlds.
It is through hearing or reading stories about morally wrong stepmoth ers, lost
children, good but naive kings, brothers who fight for inheritance – that children learn or
not what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into
which they have been born and the way our world works. Deprive children of stories and
you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words.14
Moral living means being responsible and responsive towards mankind through
virtues . They are traits of character , availing people to use their free dom morally and
responsibly . But even if people do this, their actions do not turn them into virtuous human
beings.
***
Beauty and the Beast is one of the most known of all the fairy tales just because it
makes a difference between goodness wi th badness in a way that is attractive to the
imagination. It also has the special force to illustrate the mystery of virtue itself. Virtue is
the "magic" of the moral life because it is often encountered in the most unexpected
persons and places and with surprising results. The story begins with the fact that a very
rich merchant had three "daughters [all of whom] were extremely handsome, especially the
youngest; [so she was] called `The little Beauty' ". Nothing more is said about her physical
characteris tics because the story is based on her virtuous character. There is a contrast
between Beauty's "inner beauty" and her sisters' pride, vanity, and selfishness — their

13 Bettelheim, B. , The Uses of Enchantment , p.5
14 MacIntyre, A ., After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd Edition p.216.

18
"inner ugliness." Although Beauty's sisters were physically attractive they "had a great deal
of pride, because they were rich … [they] put on ridiculous airs … and laughed at their
sister [Beauty], because she spent … her time in reading good books." By contrast, Beauty
was "charming, sweet tempered …. spoke …kindly to poor people," and truly loved her
father.15
Because she possesses this moral goodness, Beauty can recognize the virtues in
Beast that lie hidden beneath his monstrous appearance. The blunt difference between
Beauty's goodness and her sisters' badness, which is masked b y their physical
attractiveness, accompanies the sarcasm that the Beast who parallels the irony and is
repulsive physically, but pleasant and possesses moral qualities. "Beauty and the Beast"
teaches the simple, but important lesson, that appearances can b e mendacious.
This fairy tale also make us wonder what the outcome might have been if Beauty’s
sisters had been in her shoes. No doubt they would not have been able to recognize and
appreciate the goodness and the courage that the Beast have. The story reveals the
paradoxical truth that unless virtue lies within one self she will be incapable of finding out
and appreciate or assent virtue in another.
"Beauty and the Beast" offers one last major moral truth: a person's decisions in life
will define what k ind of person she becomes. Taking this into consideration that our
destinies are not fated, we can decide upon our own destinies. When the story ends, the
"beautiful lady" who has visited Beauty in her dreams appears at Beast's castle and makes
Beauty's en tire family gather again. Like all the great fairy tales, "Beauty and the Beast"
makes us connect its imaginary world with the world we live in. It gives information to our
imagination that the self also uses to differentiate between what is true from what is not.
But how is the imagination itself awakened, and how is it made moral? These questions are
important for the moral educator and they cannot be easily answered. What passes for
moral education fails to nurture the moral imagination. Yet, only a peda gogy that brings to
senses and redeems the moral imagination will convince the child or the pupil that courage
is the ultimate test of good character, that honesty is essential for trust and harmony among
persons, and that humility and a magnanimous spirit are goods greater than the prizes won
by selfishness, pride or the unscrupulous exercise of position and power.

***

15 Opie, I and P ., The Classic Fairy Tales , p. 182 -83

19
Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings [The fellowship of the Ring (1954), The
Two Towers (1954), The Return of the Ring (1955)] tells o n epic scale how some
engagingly ordinary creatures from Middle Earth prevent the malignant realm of Mordor
from exploiting the destructive power of a mysterious ring. Though the trilogy is full of the
sense of an enormous conflict between good and evil, l ight and dark, Tolkien has denied
that it has any allegorical significance. Its uncomplicated quality is one of the reasons for
its universality of appeal. Tolkien’s narrative has many of the strengths often associated
with children’s fiction – simplicity; magic; straight -forward morality; a fantastic landscape
populated by threatening or wonderful creatures; exciting adventures on a dangerous and
eventful journey, ending in a triumph against monstrous odds. Helped by a paperback
edition in 1968, The Lord o f the Rings grew to be immensely successful in the late sixties
and seventies.16
Heroes come to us in our greatest myths and legends. They are persons of
extraordinary strength and courage, often sacrificing their lives and freedom to save the
land and people. Anne Petty explores the history of heroism in Tolkien's Middle -earth with
her new book, "Tolkien in the Land of Heroes."
Drawing from a background in comparative literature and mythology, Petty studies
Tolkien's major works: "The Hobbit ," "The Lord of the Rings" and " The Silmarillion ",
along with short stories, academic essays and letters to put his legendarium into
perspective. Along the way, she offers insights into the major themes of Tolkien's literature
writing in a style that is both readable and memorable. She also delivers recommendations
for further reading in Tolkien. As we start our search for meaning in the Tolkien's land of
heroes, we are transported to an imaginary world, created by Tolkien as "an epic
mythology for England" to replace the myths lost by Norman invasion. Out of our darkest
nightmares, they come: mon sters both terrible and evil. Tolkien's world includes the most
horrid and deadly of beasts with dragons like Smaug, orcs, specters, the dwimmerlasik and
spiders like Ungoliant. Drawing from Tolkien's essay on "Beowulf," Petty explains that
monsters are "t he means by which the poem… achieves greatness of tone and spirit." The
hero must be tried and tested through the darkest of horrors, so that we can gain a true
understanding of the character's courage and strength.17
With his mindset tinged with shadows from war -time experiences, Tolkien fills his
stories with examples of monsters who push the characters to what they think is their

16 Stevenson , R., The British Novel since the Thirties , p. 130 -131
17 Petty, A ., Tolkien in the Land of Heroes , p. 68

20
breaking points, and then each one of them finds some way to persevere against all odds.
All of these examples s how how monsters "push the story beyond mere sword and sorcery
adventures and into the realm of myth." "One of the chief weapons of evil is despair," as
Petty explains, so it's easy to see why Tolkien drives his characters to despair, with hope "a
tenuous commodity."
Petty calls this book "an essay on the resilience of the human spirit." We have an
amazing ability to carry on, despite seemingly overwhelming obstacles in what Galadrial
called "the long defeat." Even when evil threatens to overwh elm the heroes with monsters,
terror and ultimate defeat, the heroes fight on, "hoping only to meet death with honour." In
the end, hope offers them much more than an honourable defeat. While some die, and
some are left in terrible agony, our surviving her oes are left with the realization that they
have fought a good fight and they leave the reader with something more important than
that.18
As Petty says, "The quality of hope is affirmative. It contributes to an
understanding of life because i n order to hope, you must decide what makes life
meaningful in the first place." As Petty explains, "Lurking behind tragedy is a
reaffirmation that order can be re -established and a hope that tomorrow the world will be
better."19 Beyond a readable, insightf ul addition to Tolkien scholarship, Petty's book offers
reasons why Tolkien's works have remained so popular after all of these years. His heroes
find hope, even as the world is falling apart around them.
Of the vanished past, Petty says, "We want to experience in our own lives the
Undying Lands or the remnant of them that can still be accessed through fantasy."20

***

The moral imagination must not be regarded as a useless thing, as a process by
which mind creates metaphors out of what someone sees or experiences. The moral
imagination is active even if we sleep or not, we feel good or ill and its fruitfulness
depends upon our knowledge and awareness. It needs nurture and exercise otherwise it will
become atrophied like an unused muscle. Disappointingl y, nowadays society is failing to
offer its youngsters the kinds of experience that indulge and build the moral imagination.

18 Petty, A ., Tolkien in the Land of Heroes , p. 110
19 Idem, p. 115
20 Ibidem

21
We can measure the impoverishment of it in the rising generation by their incapacity to
recognize, make and use metaphors.
Fantasy stories and fairy tales take the reader into other worlds that are full of
wonders, surprises and dangerous situations. They challenge the reader to feel those other
worlds , to step into adventure and to become the heroes and heroines who populate those
worlds. The safety and assurance of these imaginative adventures is that risks can be taken
without having to endure all of the consequences of failure; the joy is in discove ring how
these risky adventures might eventuate in satisfactory and happy outcomes. Yet the
concept of self is also transformed. The images and metaphors in these stories stay with the
reader even after he has returned to the "real" world. 21
After children have read Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen or C. S.
Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe , their moral imagination is bound to have
been stimulated and sharpened. These stories offer powerful images of good and evil and
show them how to lo ve through the examples of the characters they have come to love and
admire. This will spur their imagination to translate these experiences and images into the
constitutive elements of self identity and into metaphors they will use to interpret her own
world. They grow increasingly capable of moving about in that world with moral intent. C.
S. Lewis explained that he found it convenient to set his novel on other planets because it
freed his imagination and removed the requirement of plausible action. In pa rticular, it left
Lewis, a lifelong popularist of the Christian faith, freer to develop his fiction as allegory, a
mode which had earlier interested him as a critic of the poetry of Edmund Spenser.

***

The virtues come to life when the moral imagination is wakeful, becoming full of
personal and existential, as well as social, significance. These virtues don’t have be the dry
and lif eless data they can become impo rtant for a life that attracts and awakens the desire
to own them for oneself. Forms of moral pedagogy must be adopted and these are faithful
to the ancient and true vocation of the teacher — to transform children into mature, able to
stand face to face with the truth about themselves and others, and desiring to correct their
faults and to imperson ate goodness and truth wherever they are found. We need to take
greater advantage of the power in stories to humanize the young.

21 www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/awakening -the-moral -imagination -teaching -virtues -through –
fairy -tales.html

22
Value is the awakening concept of the contemporary educational scene. The term
carries with it the full burden of o ur worries over the decline of morality. Teaching value,
whether family values, democratic or religious, is considered as the treatment for our moral
confusion. Modern educators have not been well disposed toward traditional fairy tales and
their like. The y write them off as too violent or not contemporary enough and so forth and
so on. They use "practical" and "realistic" stories about the lives children live today that
provide useful themes, principles and values. Some educators even create what they do n ot
find. Teaching reasoning skills, not the virtues, is considered important in possessing a
moral education; values -clarification, not character, is regarded as the goal. These teachers
consider that moral education is like teaching children arithmetic or writing. That is not
entirely true, because in the case of moral education children must be helped to discover
and make clear for themselves their own values and personal moral stances.
Fairy tales might not be seen as scientific hypotheses o r theories, but they do
reverberate with the inner qualities of humankind, freedom and moral imagination. They
fight against the materialism and psychological determinism that lurk behind much of the
modern talk of human liberation, and they discredit the hubris of reason and rationality that
displaces faith and confidence in truth. Again, they present to us a way of imagining the
world. These stories make clear the difference between what is logically possible and what
is morally felicitous, between what i s rationally do -able and what is morally permissible.
In their plots, the character of real law belongs to neither natural necessity nor rational
determinism because they are a comprehensible sign of a primal and unfathomable
freedom and of a numinous real ity and will. This law can be obeyed or broken, and in
either case for the very same reason — because the creature is both subject of and
participant in this primal freedom. Fairy tale heroes are responsible, thus virtuous and
respectful of the moral law.
Modern fairy stories present other fantastic worlds; but they are also very attentive
to real moral "laws" of character and virtue. These laws cannot be imposed because they
are norms of behaviour that are taken out in patterns of relation between agent, act, other,
and world. Rational comprehension has the ability of grasping these rules which become
habits, however, only when they are experienced, or, as in the case of fairy tales, lived
vicariously and imaginatively through the artful delineation of cha racter and plot in story.
Thus, even if fairy tales are not a substitute for life experience, they have the great capacity
to shape our moral constitution without the shortcomings of either rigidly dogmatic
schooling or values -clarification education. By d rawing exciting and scary worlds in which

23
beasts are transformed into beautiful princes and evil people are turned to stones and good
persons back to flesh, fairy tales remind us of moral truths whose ultimate claims to be
normal and permanence we would no t think of questioning.

There are many ways in which we can use fairy tales and fantastic stories in EFL
classes. Students like them because they remind them of their childhood and they know
them very well. Fairy tales meet requirements for the development of not only students´
language knowledge but also their whole personalities and therefore, the usage of them in
the language classrooms might be the first step towards the students´ life -long interest in
English and moreover, in literature and culture of the target language. Whe n we use a
certain fairy tale it is important to take into consideration their intellectual maturity, life
experiences, emotions and interests.
Some of the most useful activities of teaching character through fairy tales are:
1. Divide the class into groups of 5 or 6. Prepare enough slips of paper for one per
group writing the name of one of the following fairy tales on each one:
Cinderella/ Snow White/ Sleeping Bea uty/ Rapunzel/ Hansel and Gretel
Ask each group to choose one of the slips of paper. Tell them they are going to be
exploring that story over the next two sessions. (If they are not familiar with the story they
could find a version of the story in the library or on the internet). Ask them to recap the
story as a gro up. Ask each group to divide a sheet of paper into three columns and write
the following title at the top of each column:
Column 1: People | Column 2: Places | Column 3: Magical objects
Ask each group to make 3 lists noting the People, Places and Objects that appear in their
story.
Ask them to think about what happens in the story:
Does someone get into trouble or difficulty?
Does someone need help?
Who needs help and where does the h elp come from?
How are the male and female characters represented?
Are there any magical properties about the places and objects described in the
story?

24
2. As a whole group, note what characters were shown in the different images – do
they fit into the following stereotypes often found in Fairytales?
The Feeble Father : He is dominated by his wife, often his second wife, the stepmother to
his children (see below – the evil stepmother) and as a result does not stand up for or
protect his children.
The E vil Stepmother : She attacks her stepchildren out of jealousy or natural wickedness.
She is often punished in horrific ways.
The Damsel in Distress : She is beautiful, innocent, and passive. Usually someone or
something attacks her and her response is to wa it until she is rescued. She is usually
rewarded for her good behaviour through marriage to a Prince.
The Handsome Prince : He is usually the hero who stumbles upon the Damsel in Distress
and saves her. If he is not a Prince he is often a hunter and skilled with a sword.
The Witch : An old and ugly woman who punishes the innocent and is seen to be cruel and
wicked.
Tell the c lass they are going to find out more about some of the characters from the
stories. Ask for 5 volunteers to be hot seated as one of the characters they played in the
scene. Choose characters which fit into the above stereotypes – here are some examples:
the Damsel from Sleeping Beauty
the Prince from Cinderella
the Feeble Father – the father from Hansel and Gretel
the Evil Stepmother from Snow White
the Witch or Enchantress from Rapunzel
Ask the 5 volunteers to sit in front of the class and answer que stions in role as the character
they are playing. Ask the rest of the class to ask the volunteers (one at a time or one after
each other) questions to find out as much as they can about the characters. Ask the
volunteers to be true to how the characters we re represented in the story. Importantly, the
rest of the class who are asking the questions are out of role e.g. they are not playing a
character in the story, they are playing themselves.
They might ask questions such as:
What did you do in the story?
How do you feel about what happened in the story?
What do you think about the other characters in the story?
What do you think they think about your character?

25
3. Fairytale characters tend to be archetypal characters i.e. they are repetitive and fit
into specific patterns and stereotypes. One of the first stereotypes they may notice is that
the main female characters is usually passive and often in some difficulty, yet they do not
take an active role in saving themselves or in solving the problem but instead have to wait
until someone else – usually th e Prince – saves them. They do no t do anything productive
and rarely get to use their brains to work out a way to save themselves.
Ask the class to think about the way the Princesses or the Damsels are r epresented
in these Fairytales and how passive the young females in those stories are depicted as
being. Ask questions to promote critical thinking as this may encourage the children to be
more open -minded and start to question these stereotypes: Is this t rue for girls in real life?
Do girls just sit around waiting to be saved ? (Hopefully they will say that i s not true).
A character’s appearance is an important indicator in fairytales. The Princess or
Damsel is also described as being pretty and beautiful. This is seen as being a very
important part of who they are. Often they are so beautiful that the Prince falls in love at
first sight and it is their beauty alone that will attract and keep the Prince.
Beauty is linked to being good. Sometimes you may mee t a good character who is
not beautiful but they are usually under a spell and will eventually be turned back to their
young, beautiful selves. The reverse then is also true: wicked and evil characters are
described as being ugly, such as the Witches and U gly Sisters.
What does the class think about this idea of linking goodness to appearance?
Is there a problem with this idea in real life?
The stereot ype for the Prince is that he i s always clever, brave and heroic as he appears and
saves the Damsel. Thi s stereotype can also be limiting and damaging to boys as through
this they are told not to cry or be afraid; they are only ever shown as being brave and in
control – never shy, nervous or worried.
What do es the class think about this portrayal – Is it fa ir that the Prince is never
allowed to be nervous or afraid or can never be seen to cry?
Is it fair for boys to be presented in this way?
When the Prince and Princess meet they immediately fall in love and get married.
Is that how things really work? How might this idea be damaging to people’s
expectations?
Afterwards all we hear is that they live happily ever after. What do es the class think
about this idea – Is this a fair expectation? Do people really fall in love as soon as
they meet and then live happily ever after?

26
Another stereotype is the Evil Stepmother who is cruel and nasty to her step –
children and the Feeble Father who mistreats his children under the influence of the Evil
Stepmother.
Is this a fair represe ntation of step -families?
In general the stereotype is that older women cannot be trusted which is true of the
Evil Stepmother and the of last stereotype we encountered in the first session, the Witch,
the old hag who casts spells and wants to capture and harm children or the innocent
Damsel – this is another perception we can look at and challenge.
4. Cross the room if you….
This is a game to show that we are all different and that we do not fall into these neat
stereotypes.
Divide the class in 2 groups – standing on either side of the room facing each other. When
you call out a statement ask the pupils to cross the room if it is true for them – and to stay
where they are if it is not true for them.
Statements: Cross the room if you …
Are an active perso n / have always liked climbing – trees, walls etc / like moving and
dancing / like animals / like doing sports /are good at solving problems / like to cook / like
drawing, making things, doing art / like doing drama / like science and doing experiments /
are a good listener / have lots of friends / have a g ood memory / find it hard to sit still / like
doing things on your own / like doing things in a group / like reading books / like to write
stories or poetry / can add numbers in your head / like doing maths / like singing and
listening to music / play a mu sical instrument / are good at remembering a tune if you hear
it once / like building 3 -D constructions – Lego , bricks, mine craft / like doing jigsaws / are
interested in how things work / like playing games on a console or computer / are good at
giving d irections, reading maps.
You can change and amend the statements to suit your class. The idea behind the
statements is to go beneath the surface of assumptions that might re -enforce gender
stereotypes by creating an environment where individual responses give a truer picture and
hopefully your class will demonstrate how these simplistic stereotypes are no longer true
for girls and boys today.
5. Tell the class they are going to have the chance to make up their own fairy tale
but with a modern twist. Ask th e class to work in groups. This time they are going to make
up their own fairy tale – but with a few changes.
Ask them to include 2 or 3 of the ideas below in their story :

27
• The Prince is shy and nervous and is scared of something (e.g. – the dark, height s,
spiders, etc – they can choose what)
• The Princess or Damsel is active, strong and brave
• The Prince gets into difficulty and needs help
• The Princess uses her brains and thinking powers to solve problems
• The so -called Ugly people are good, loy al and brave. The so -called Beautiful people are
wicked and selfish.
• The older women are respected and trusted.
• The Stepmother is part of the solution in the story and helps the children.
• The Witch is an older woman; she has long hair and a big nose, she does have magical
powers but she is not cruel or evil and does not want to eat children. She uses her powers
to do well.
• The Prince is selfish and lazy and doesn’t do anything to help anyone else.
• The Princess is beautiful but evil and is hatching a wicked plan to get her own way.
• The Princess decides to go to University rather than get married.
• The Prince decides he does no t want to live in a Palace and have everything done for him.
He decides to do something completely different – like explore the North Pole or teach in a
school in the middle of the rainforest.

28
2. 2 Discovering Literary Characters through Their Journals

A diary is a journal in which one keeps a daily record of events and experiences .
It is useful if you want to record in advance appointments and other planned activities,
and/or if you want to report what has happened.
The word diary has its root in the Latin word diarium ("daily allowance", from
dies, "day" – more often in the plural form diaria ). The word "journal" comes from the
same root ( diurnus = of the day) through "journey".
Hundred years ago most of these books were used as ledgers or business books.
One of the earliest diarists well known today is Samuel Pepys . He had marked a turning
point in diary history because he took it beyond mere business transaction notation, into
the realm of the personal. The earliest diaries we have originate the Oriental cultures.
Pillow books of Japanese Court Ladies and Asian travel journals are one of the oldest
surviving specimens of this genre of writing. It is possib le that the diary writing was a
characteristic of the noblemen.
The New Diary is a book written by Tristine Rainer in the 1960s and it was
remarkable for the way in which it arouses our awareness of diary keeping as a literary
genre. She identified techniques that people either use spontaneously or have employed in
their daily writing to explore themselves and their experience of the world in which they
live22. Her main idea, as expres sed with the title, is that a diary does not have to be a dry
recording of weather or daily events.
Due to the easy access to internet many online diary communities have appeared,
some being personal web logs , also known as blogs. Some people who write these blogs
have transformed this into true communities offering opportunity for feedback and
communication with their fellow diarists. According to the studies conducted, many of the
people using these online communities are teenage girls and young people, maybe because
this is seen as a way of keeping their inner thoughts secret from their families, while
expressing and exploring their feelings and the experience of growing up.
Diaries are endlessly fascinating for the glimpses they give of the writer’s intimate
character. The reader is swept into the revealing of their innermost thoughts and feelings in
such a way that, sometimes, we can actually feel happiness and sorrow, phys ical pain or

22 Rainer, T ., The New Diary , p.25

29
relief, laughing and crying, agreement or disagreement, being involved in the development
of the plot. 23
***

Perhaps the most famous personal account of a terrible historical context, the
Holocaust, The Diary of Anne Frank begins on Anne’s thirteenth birthday, June 12, 1942 ,
and ends shortly after her fifteenth. In the beginning, Anne describes her normal
experiences, writing about her friendships with other girls and boys, her academic
performance at school, her daily routines et c. Anne becomes more mature throughout the
course of her diary entries, passing from detailed accounts of basic activities to deeper
thoughts about her own personal nat ure and humanity. She does not understand why the
Jews are being singled out and persecu ted. In her diary, Anne also faces her own identity.
Though she thinks herself to be German, her German citizenship has been cancelled, and
even if she calls The Netherlands her home, this country has turned against the Jews. In the
first part of the diary , Anne struggles with the adults, who constantly criticize her
behaviour and consider her “exasperating.” Anne feels extremely lonely and in need of
kindness and affection, which she feels her mother is incapable of providing. Like every
girl, an inner fig ht takes place in her heart and she tries to understand what kind of woman
she wants to be. As she grows up, she loo ks for the company of men and she falls in love
with Peter, the van Daan’s teenage son, and comes to consider him a close friend,
confidant, and eventually an object of romantic desire.
At the end of her diary, Anne is aware of the changes she has undergone, her
ambitions, and how her experience has changed her. She knows very well that she has
matured from an i mpertinent and obstinate girl to a more emotionally independent young
woman. Anne begins to think about her place in society as a woman, and her plans for
overcoming the obstacles that have defeated the ambitions of women from previous
generations, such as her mothe r. Thinking philosophically about the nature of war and
humanity and about her role as a young Jewish girl in a challenging world, it is clear that
she had the potential to become an engaging, challenging, and sophisticated writer.
The multitu de of the experience she recounts and her perpetual feeling of loneliness
colour her diary writing. Even from the beginning Anne expresses gratitude that the diary
can act as a confidant with whom she can share her innermost thoughts even if she has an

23 Adapted from the [Wikipedia] article, ‘Diary’ http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary January 3, 2004

30
active social life and many friends, the main reason being the fact that she is never
comfortable discussing her inner emotions, even around close ones. Although she becomes
a true woman, and despite the spectre of war surrounding her, Anne nonetheless finds that
she and her friends talk only about trivial topics.
Feelings of loneliness and isolation also play out in the larger scheme of the annex.
All the inhabitants feel anxious, fearful and stressed because of their circumstances, yet no
one wants to burden the others with such depressing feelings. As a result, the residents
become impatient with one another over trivial matters and never address their deeper fears
or worries. This constant masking and repression of serious emotions creat es isolation and
misunderstanding between all the residents of the annex. Anne frequently expresses her
conviction that there are “two Annes”: the lively, jovial, public Anne whom people find
amusing or exasperating; and the sentimental, private Anne whom only she truly knows.
As she comes to understand her actions and motivations better over the course of her
writing, Anne continually refers to this aggravating split between her inward and outward
character.24
Throughout the diary, Anne struggl es with her two selves, trying to be honest and
genuine, while at the same time striving to fit in with the rest of the group and not create
too much friction. On January 22, 1944, Anne asks a question —“Can you tell me why
people go to such lengths to hide their real selves?”25 that suggests she realizes she is not
alone in hiding her true feelings and fears. Realising this, Anne is able to read other
people’s true but hidden motivations.
When Anne starts putting down her inner thoughts, she has the feeling that her
friends and family misunderstand her. In the beginning, she turns to the diary as to a new
boon companion, counting on it to be the sympathetic, non -judgemental, things she has not
been capable of finding elsewhere. As she tri es to hide it, Anne realizes she is more
misunderstood. She does not have a close relationship with her mother and this is why her
diary becomes her best friend, naming it Kitty, as if it were a person. After two years,
when she reads her previous invaluab le records, she analyzes herself and understands how
she has grown and changed. Through this, we can understand that a diary is a significant
tool for understanding a character better.

***

24 Frank, A ., The Diary of a Young Girl, p.150
25 Idem, p.168

31
Switching from the tragic register encoun tered above, we shall approach other
novels written in diary frame, which may be considered less powerful, in which concerns
the message, but certainly more appealing to the reader, especially young ones.
Bridget Jones's Diary is a novel by Helen Fielding written in the form of a diary .
It presents the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty something single woman who lives in England,
London, surrounded by a 'surrogate family' of friends as she tries to make sense of life and
love in the 90s. The diary evolved from newspaper columns in The Independent and later
The Daily Telegraph . Of ten hysterically funny, the column accurately lampooned the
obsessions of women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan and wider societal trends in
Britain at the time. The columns were fixed up into a novel in 1996. A sequel, The Edge of
Reason , followed in 1999.
Sunday 1 January
129 lbs. (but post -Christmas), alcohol units 14 (but effectively covers 2 days as 4 hours of
party was on New Year's Day), cigarettes 22, calories 5424.
Food consumed today:
2 pkts Emmenthal cheese slices
14 cold new potatoes
2 Bloody Marys (count as food as contain Worcester sauce and tomatoes)
1/3 Ciabatta loaf with Brie
coriander leaves –1/2 packet
12 Milk Tray (best to get rid of all Christmas confectionery in one go and make fresh start
tomorrow)
13 cocktail sticks securing cheese and pineapple
Porti on Una Alconbury's turkey curry, peas and bananas
Portion Una Alconbury's Raspberry Surprise made with Bourbon biscuits, tinned
raspberries, eight gallons of whipped cream, decorated with glacé cherries and angelica.
Noon. London: my flat. Ugh. The last t hing on earth I feel physically, emotionally or
mentally equipped to do is drive to Una and Geoffrey Alconbury's New Year's Day Turkey
Curry Buffet in Grafton Underwood. Geoffrey and Una Alconbury are my parents' best
friends and, as Uncle Geoffrey never t ires of reminding me, have known me since I was
running round the lawn with no clothes on. My mother rang up at 8:30 in the morning last

32
August Bank Holiday and forced me to promise to go. She approached it via a cunningly
circuitous route.26
Bridget Jones' diary is the story of the eponymous Bridget as she searches for love,
career satisfaction and Inner Poise in the wilds of London. The plot, which is a riff on
Pride and Prejudice , is totally unimportant – what is important is the humour, whi ch is of
the laugh -out-loud, gut -splitting kind. You do not have to be a Bridget, know a Bridget, or
even like Bridget to love this novel – you just have to have a pulse and a sense of humour.
Life is not what Bridget Jones thinks it should be. Her love li fe is disastrous, her mother's
annoying, and the affair she was having with her boss has ended a bit dramatically, making
her extremely uncomfortable with her job. Bridget hilariously regales the reader with tales
of her everyday woes, her struggle to lose a few pounds and smoke a lot less, to find a
boyfriend and her quirky family and friends.
The heroine manages to move from one disaster to another with cheerful angst,
never completely losing control of her life. She has a good group of friends and she earns
enough money to live quite well, even though she does not seem to work very hard. She
goes to parties, eats out, and can afford to drink and smoke, both of which are expensive
habits in Britain. She worries constantly, but she also ma nages to help her friends and
parents when they have their own troubles. Bridget might not be content with her life, but
she has plenty to be happy about.27
While Bridget’s family are important to her; her friends are her surrogate family in
London. ‘Shazzer’ is a strident feminist with extensive knowledge of Susan Faludi’s
feminist treatise Backlash. Jude is a successful businesswoman who is having an on -off
relationship with a man nicknamed ‘Vile Richard’. Finally, there is Tom, the overly
cynical gay man. Bridget, Shazzer, Jude and Tom act as a support network for each other:
offering advice on relationships, work and family, as well as offering unconditional
support. During the course of the year, Bridget has two relationships. The first is w ith the
unsuitable Daniel Cleaver, Bridget’s boss. Bridget falls in love with Daniel, but these
feelings are not reciprocated. Bridget later discovers that Daniel is cheating on her and she
refuses to see him, though she struggles emotionally. In December Bridget begins a
relationship with Mark Darcy after a rocky start: he helps Bridget after an incident in the
family involving Bridget’s mother, a date that never was and a confrontation at Christmas.

26 Fielding, H ., Bridget Jones’s Diary , p.1
27 Idem, p. 25

33
The book ends with a list totalling weight gained, weigh t loss, alcohol units consumed and
New Year’s resolutions kept: One, with the words ‘An excellent year’s progress.’ 28

***

A similar pattern is to be found in Sue Townsend’s diaries whose main character,
Adrian, we see growing up and developing.
Wednesday June 10th
Pandora and I are in love! It is official! She told Claire Nelson, who told Nigel, who told
me. I told Nigel to tell Claire to tell Pandora that I return her love. I am over the moon
with joy. I can overlook the fact that Pandora smokes five Benson and Hedges a day and
has her own lighter. When you are in love such things cease to matter.29
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ (1982) chronicles the troubled life of
an adolescent who writes about his parents’ marital troubles, his adventures with the dog,
his life as if he were a tortured poet and ‘misunderstood intellectual’.
At the beginning of the series, Adrian Mole is at a crossroads in his life. At the age
of 13 ¾, his teachers have yet noticed that he’s an intellectual; he is bullied by a colleague
unless he is paid off with allowance money, his dog needs frequent vet v isits and, the most
important fact, Adrian does not understand his parents.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 is an earnest, comical “account”
of a British lad’s early teenage years. Adrian is an endearing character —his New Year ’s
Resolutions include “helping the blind to cross the road”. He joins the Good Samaritan
club and basically adopts Bert Baxter, a feisty old -age pensioner. Adrian and his girlfriend
Pandora welcome a Hindi family to the neighbourhood when their adult co unterparts aren’t
necessarily so -inclined. And let’s not forget that this is the “diary” of a teenage boy —as
such, it is filled with the pining of first love, obsession with his complexion and certain
measurements, various career aspirations, and candid ( if naive) observations about the
people/events around him.30

28 Fielding, H., Bridget Jones’s Diary , p.310
29 Townsend, S ., The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, p.37
30 Idem, p. 87

34

Teaching character through diaries can be very challenging for the teachers and
students. The best way to approach this is by giving an example in which even the teacher
keeps a diary and reco rds what goes on in their classes and their thoughts and feelings
about it. These teacher diaries can be used as development tools and can be read by other
teachers or even students. For example, after a class in which things did not go as planned,
the tea cher makes notes in his/her diary about what happened, causes, ideas, ways of
improvement etc.
Another way of using diaries in the class is by asking students to keep diaries. This
activity can be used in two ways. You can ask students to make notes of what happens with
them during their English classes, recording the activities they liked most, how they did
during them, how they felt or to keep diaries of their favourite characters, even if they
come from books that are not journals. In them, they have to write about the character’s
inner thoughts and feelings taking into consideration the way they act and behave in certain
situations. This method can be quite hard but it can be done with the more advanced
students.
Diaries can be used not only in writi ng activities. They can also be used in
improving listening and speaking skills. For example, you can use one or many excerpts
downloaded from the internet of famous diaries like Anne Frank's diary (a German -Jewish
teenager's experiences in the Netherlands from 1942 to 1944 during World War II) or Zlata
Filipovic 's diary (11 -year-old's record of her changing life in her native country of Sarajevo
during a much later war and while they listen they have to put down the personal details
that the writer uses in the diary).
For example, Zlata's first six entries make us think she is a normal girl in the 5th
grade whose writings cannot be seen as too different from our students' own lives. Details
for students to note should contain:
• Zlata's nervousness to meet her schoolmates after vacations
• The way in which children spend their summer vacation in Sarajevo
• The typical everyday life in Zlata’s school (compared to their own classes)
• Zlata's likes and dislikes (compared to theirs)
After liste ning and making notes, students should compare them and discuss some
questions related to the author and her work:

35
• Are the writer details important? Why? In what way?
• Do they help the reader to know the character better? How?
• What information about the character do they offer?
• Do you have something in common with the character?
Other activities in which you use journals as means of knowing characters is by
assigning students to find out as many different kinds of autobiographical writing as they
can and share them with their peers. The students have to work in pairs or small groups to
write dialogue journals in which they carry on written conversations about a character, the
way he/she behaves, his/her feelings and inner thoughts.
Another way of us ing diaries is by asking students to write different types of
journals. One of them is the reflective journal, which is written on notebooks or pieces of
paper and in which students write about their inner thoughts, ideas and feelings. In this
way they can evaluate themselves and understand themselves better. Another type is a
double -entry journal which is a graphic organizer, meant to encourage students to organize
their thoughts on a specific subject in a new way, written in two columns. In the left
colum n, students write a piece of information from the text, such as a quotation or a
concept, which students want to expand upon, understand better, or question. In the right
column, students relate to or analyze the information that is written in the left col umn. For
example, the student could title the left column "Quotes" and the right column
"Reflections." In this instance, the student would copy quotes from the text in the left
column and reflect upon what they mean in the right column.
These are valuable ways of using diaries in classes.

36
2.3. Literary Characters on Trial

To help students with their reflection on experience and meaning, we, the teachers,
can involve them in dramatic activities, such as imagining a trial for certain characters.
They work together to create their own meanings which are an essenti al characteristic of
constructivism. Using drama, students build a new world in which students’ understanding
of the environment in which they live , affect s the characters of the novel. And the most
important thing in using trials is the fact that pupils a re given the power to see how the
themes of literature relate to their own lives.
A good example not only within the context of the 17th century but for all eras and
worlds is the greatest playwright of all t ime, William Shakespeare. He played a very
influential role on worldwide playwrights. What is produced today, from television to
theatre is influenced by his themes, techniques, characters, and plots. Shakespeare's ageless
themes – race, religion, gender, family, marriage, love, and betraya l – make these plays full
of meaning today as in the period in which they were written and besides studying the
plays th emselves, students are able to learn to think and talk about the profound issues
raised by Shakespeare.
If we were to think by all logic of play construction, Julius Caesar should be
considered a total failure because the role of the main character ends in the second act and
Brutus, the so called real hero, does not clearly states himself as the dominant character
until the pl ay is more than half over. But without doubt, the play is correctly entitled Julius
Caesar, named for the pillar of order. Brutus was totally against order because he fights
constituted authority, he brings chaos and sedition onto the social and politic so ciety.
Although he intends to do his best, the outcome is a catastrophe. There is a big difference
between Brutus and Caesar, the first being portrayed as the most dangerous of subversives
– the misguided intellectual and idealist, while the second, as he briefly appears, is blinded
by his own divinity, owing a majestic figure and remaining during the entire play, and even
after his assassination, the martyred symbol of order.
When analysing Anthony’s funeral oration, literary critics consider it as the pe rfect
model of speech. None of these two, Anthony or young Octavius, gain stature as the
avenger from a revenge tragedy, even if Shakespeare presents the Senecan learning, mostly
when Caesar’s ghost appears before Philippi.

37
In his play, Shake speare presents the liberal idealist causing the very opposite
result to that which he wanted. Brutus, who resembles Hamlet and to a certain extent,
Othello, is mainly put down by his own virtues. In Brutus, nobility of character implies
political innocen ce; in Hamlet, intelligence and sensitivity produce inability to face the
world as it is; in Othello integrity and forthrightness produce credulity and, through
credulity, tragic mistrust of the one person whom above all he should have trusted. Each of
these characters should have acted better if they have been less good men. If Brutus had
been worldly -wiser, Hamlet a more moral and sensitive character, Othello more cunning
and stronger, maybe these plays would have had different conflicts and endings. In t hese
cases, there would have been a problem between innocence and virtue or between
character’s innocence and morality.31
Anthony from Julius Caesar symbolises action, excellent military skills, loyalty
and wisdom. Nowadays these qualities might seem rather boring, yet admirable. Anthony’s
fondness to action is like seeing Brutus’ love of thought in mirror, but in comparison to
Cassius’ pliability.
For the Renaissance people, human nature did not evolve, human motives
remained t he same and events were rather similar and repetitive: battles, plots, murders, the
death of one king or another and this idea led to a rather static view of history, as a great
mechanism which brought people to fame and pushed them to shameful death.
Shak espeare’s historical plays or chronicles present the main theme: the determining force
of thirst for power and everything on the historical scene is subordinated to the idea of
power.
In Julius Caesar power is displayed in different ways: Caesar himself, e ven if he is
not an interesting man, is the image of power, the representation which men have of it.
Brutus represents power in an abstract sense . He did not possess any personal ambition
because he wanted power so that he could use it for the public benef it. His friend Cassius
and the rest are interested in the power in its basest sense . They want it for their own
personal benefit. Mark Anthony has the most complex relationship with power: he wants it
for himself but equally for others . He represents Shake speare’s idea of a very strong man,
of a political leader able of having noble ideas but who also has a very practical purpose.
Shakespeare’s characters are closely linked to their prevalent features. Even if they
belong to ancient Rome, this is pure coincidence. Historical circumstance is bare plea. The

31 Sanders, A , The Short Oxford History of English Literature , p. 155

38
author does not pay too much attention to the rebuilding of the past, because his
perspectives on history were more based on artistic and philosophical aspects then on the
behaviour of the literary characters.
In literature, a tragic hero is a character that evolves at a certain time and then has a
fall. But with Brutus, Shakespea re breaks the pattern because as a character he illustrates
the Aristotelian concept of a remarkable character whose decline is determined by his own
flaw. Brutus possesses the qualities of a great man, but he is an idealist, a person whose
pride does not allow him to see the others as they truly are and this pride makes him blind.
His main weakness is the fact that he lives in his own imaginary world ignoring the others
and their motivations.
Because he adopted a wrong position Brutus must be defeated and even
Shakespeare, who was in favour of law and order, could not approve of murder as a
justifiable means, no matter how correct its reasons might have been. Therefore, Brutus is
a hero because he chooses to die when he realizes the mistake he did, rather than give up
on his ideals. He cannot be considered a victim because he is very aware of what he wants
to do and of his achievements as a character. He can be severe, blunt, soldierly to the
others, but also tender, loving and gentle to his wi fe. He loved his wife so much that when
the latter killed herself because she was no longer able to bear the shame of seeing her
husband regarded as a traitor, that he decided to kill himself too. In Brutus, Shakespeare
created one of his first figures of noble heroes who are destroyed precisely by greatness.
The main feature of a tragedy is the comparison of the main character with another
one, in Julius Caesar; this role is given to Mark Anthony. He is a true antihero, who has
several outstanding charact eristics, which transform him in an unusual man. Anthony’s
role in the play is that of a realist, who confronts the idealistic Brutus, knowing very well
what his interests are and he follows them with high precision. Literary critics see him as
the illustr ation of Machiavelli’s Prince being the ideal politician of his era.
Anthony is aware of his end and he is not hesitant to appear humble and scared in
front of Rome’s citizens. His intention is to make them aware of the fact that every strategy
he used, bribery, false praise, allusion, emotional blackmail, were the right thing to do in
that particular situation. This demonstrates his qualities as an intelligent politician. He
gives speeches in front of people whenever he gets the chance, he praises them a nd makes
use of their emotions and feelings. He has the intellectual capacity to realise that if he
wants to be the ruler of men, he should first domesticate them as a domesticator does with

39
wild animals. His speech demonstrates these characteristics in a very concise and clear
manner.32
The citizens of Rome play an important role in Shakespeare’s plays. They are not
only mute witnesses; they represent a chorus that expresses their opinions and feelings
through their voices. They realize that the truth is al ways altered in politics and they punish
this alteration in a very severe manner. They do not show mercy and sympathy when the
author punishes the ones that deserve it.
By these two different approaches to the same subject, by using different styles
(prose for Brutus, verse for Anthony, concision for Brutus, digression for Anthony,
bluntness for Brutus, flattery for Anthony) Shakespeare intended to show that truth could
be made to appear different, depending on the speaker’s point of view. The moments of
Brutus’s and Anthony’s speeches are not only passages of insight, but also moments of
tragic irony when truth is bent to political necessity and Caesar’s image is made to appear
now white, now black, depending on the speakers` interests and needs.33
No matte r which character you choose to trial, Shakespearian characters are very
bidding and students can build strong cases on them.

***

Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) is perceived as Hardy’s tragic masterpiece, and
for sure it is his most ambit ious tragic novel. It is a story of innocence and sophistication,
of man and nature, of history and its relation to the present, concentrated on the fate of a
simple country girl whose parents’ chance discovery of their descent from once a noble
line sends her to seek the assistance of a degenerate supposed relative to whom she
surrenders before parting from him in disgust. The further development of the story –
Angel’s horror at learning the truth alt last, his symbolic sleepwalking with his terrified
bride, his desertion of Tess who is forced back at last to live with the man who first
"undid" her, her eventual discovery that this man deceived her in assuring her that Angel
would never take her back and her murder of him in desperate hate and regret at wha t he
has caused her to lose – all this is forced along with a certain grim relish. In spite of
brilliantly perceive moments, glimpses of character and bits of dialogue which are
immediately illuminating, neither the motivation nor the actual course of the action are

32 Sanders, A , The Short Oxford History of English Literature , p. 268
33 Ibidem

40
made really convincing. Angel Clare is much worse character than Hardy seems to
recognize, while the chain of circumstances that produce the murder with the inevitable
hanging of Tess at the end of the novel seems altogether too contrived. The i ndomitable
Angel Clare is left at the end with Tess’s younger sister, "a spiritualized image of Tess"
and they move on hand in hand: Angel is evidently determined not to be defeated by fate.
But Tess is hanged; the clack flag is raised, and Hardy comments, in the well -known
sentence: "Justice was done, and the President of Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had
ended his sport with Tess." This suggestion that Tess was the deliberate victim of divine
sadism is not really Hardy’s view of how the world is govern ed, nor is the view of life
implicit in the novel. It is a piece of gratuitous savagery, and contributes to produce in the
reader the feeling which Tess certainly does produce but which a true tragedy does not – a
feeling of plain anger, of frustration and resentment. Tess is a remarkable novel containing
some first -rate Hardy; but it is not, taken as a whole, a great tragedy.
(1) Tess of the D’Urbervilles descent utilizes the oldest surviving tradition in England
of glory and pride. Tess refuses to cajole her seducer (whom she detests) into marriage
purely for social appearances, and her courage throughout and her noble resignation at the
end elevate her to tragic heights.
(2) Socially to the peasantry and those long upon the land. Alec seems certainly to
symbolize the new bourgeois intrusion into the English countryside, usurping the name and
power of the old landed gentry and unscrupulously exploiting the people.
(3) Ultimately to life itself. The gods are cruel ironists. Tess is really for love but meets
Alec. Clare eventually wakes up, but too late. Circumstances and chance or fatality are
elevated to cosmic indifference in such episodes as Tess’s letter of confession that
accidentally slips under the carpet.
Such emphasis upon universal destiny cannot be handled by humdrum realism.
Hardy moves to a higher key by poetizing Nature in the idyllic loveliness of Talbothays
dairy farm and the sombre bareness of Flincomb -Ash farm. Symbolism occurs fr equently,
from the minor touch o f blood -stained butcher’s paper flapping in the wind to the
superlative penultimate chapter where the searchers find Tess upon the sacrificial altar of
Stonehenge. The entire work reveals an aching poetic sensitivity to beau ty and suffering.

41
Using trials in EFL classes can be as well as challenging as extraordinary. They can
be challenging because they are authentic projects in which our students can create
something from the start an then transform them into reality. Thes e projects are used both
for assessing the students but also as a tool for learning. Mock trials are very engaging
mainly because the role -playing gets them out of their shell, they have to communicate and
collaborate with their peers and, the most importa nt aspect, and they have to enter into the
mindsets and perspective of the characters they wish to characterize through trials .
Playing a role in a trial is not that easy for students. First of all these lessons cannot
be done without any preparation, in a spur of a moment. The students’ level of English has
to be up, they have to speak clearly, logically and with conviction. They need to have
confidence in their speaking abilities as they play formal roles in a mock courting setting.
More than all these listed above, the students need preparation and access to
information. As a teacher, you have to choose a character they know very well. After that,
you have to state the topic of the trial and assign your students the role they will have to
play. Maybe th ey might not know the terminology for each position, so you have to
explain it to them. We have to give them the accurate vocabulary (prosecutor, defendant,
attorney, witness, judge) and explain what each person does during the trial. By giving
them time t o prepare, the actual trial has better chances of being a success.
The topic of the trial can be very light-hearted in the beginning like judging the Bad
Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs and then, when they get more
experience , you can choose more controversial and difficult topics like Tess’ or Brutus’
trials.
To reach a verdict you can either use students to play as jury or you can invite a law
teacher or other teachers of English. If you decide to give your ESL students the
opportunity to participate in a mock trial, you will see the confidence that develops from
public speaking and logical argument.
They will have experience in presenting as well as interviewing and deliberating,
all valuable language skills. A mock trial may not be the best fit for every ESL class, but
those that take the chance will find that it was a meaningful and memorable experience for
our students.

42
2.4 Adapting Sociograms to Teach Literary Characters

A sociogram is a graphic representation of social links that a person has. It is a
sociometric chart that plots the structure of interpersonal relations in a group situation.34
Sociograms were developed by Jacob L. Moreno to analyze choices or preferences within a
group. They can diagram the structure and patterns of group interactions. A sociogram can
be drawn on the basis of many different criteria: social relations, channels of influence, and
lines of communication.35
Literary sociograms can be used when teachers want to teach characters in an
unconventional manner. In this case, they can use graphic organizers which are a mirror of
the relationship between the characters in a literary text. To have a good outcome, the
teacher has to provide students with the main characteristics of a sociogram. The characters
cannot be displayed like in an exhibition; they have to be placed within a time and a
setting.

***

A literary sociogram is a visual representation of the relationships among
characters in a literary text. It helps students to think more deeply about the texts they read
or view. Johnson and Louis (1987) describe the construction of sociograms as the most
valuable literature teaching technique they had encountered.36
There are various types of sociograms, but in all the central character is placed at
the center of the page while the other ones are placed around him/her. The student has to
find a way of establishing the spatial relationship the main chara cter has with the others.
To show the “direction and nature” of the relationship lines or arrows are used. (e.g.
strength/weakness, friend/foe, dominance/submissiveness, etc.). There are some rules the
teacher should have in mind while his/ her students de velop a sociogram:
 The main character must be placed in the middle of the diagram
 The psychological distance between characters must be reflected by the physical
one

34 www.merriam -webmister.com
35 Brown, D. Harvey, D.. An Experiential Approach to Organization Development 7th ed, p.134
36 Johnson, T. and Daphne, L ., Literacy through Literature , p. 6

43
 The personality of a character must be represented metaphorically by its size/shape
 Arrows or lines must be used to show the direction of a relationship
 The nature of the relationship must be shown by a brief label
 Substantiated relations must be represented with a solid line, while the inferred
ones with a broken line
 The active characte rs must be circled with a solid one while the absent ones with a
broken line
 The characters that support the main character must be placed on one side of a
diving line while the antagonistic characters on the other side
 Visual symbols and colours must be u sed to illustrate the theme and the tone of a
piece
 A character’s motivation can be displayed in many creative ways. For instance, the
students can use one or more words that seem to capture the essence of that
character inside each “character’s circle"
Sociologists use sociograms mainly to survey the level of social adjustment of
various groups of people to various contexts. Literature teachers may take advantage of
this instrument and adapt it to measure the degree to which their students perceive the
depth of the books they read and of the characters they run into. 37
The literary works that I have chosen below show not only the intricate
relationships between the protagonist and the minor characters, but also the way in which
their develo pment is influenced by context and plot. A character’s feelings, emotions or
reactions can be drawn using a graph.
Much of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet involves the lovers’ struggles against
public and social institutions that either explicitly or implic itly oppose the existence of
their love. Such structures range from the concrete to the abstract: families and the
placement of familial power in the father; law and the desire for public order; religion; and
the social importance placed on masculine honou r. These institutions often come into
conflict with each other. The importance of honour, for example, time and again results in
brawls that disturb the public peace.38
Though they do not always work together, each of these societal institutions in
some way , present obstacles for Romeo and Juliet love story . The enmity between their
families, coupled with the emphasis placed on loyalty and honour to kin, combine to create

37 Johnson, T. and Daphne, L ., Literacy through Literature , p. 27
38 Idem, p. 82

44
a profound conflict for Romeo and Juliet, who must rebel against their heritages. Furth er,
the patriarchal power structure inherent in Renaissance families, wherein the father
controls the action of all other family members, particularly women, places Juliet in an
extremely vulnerable position. Her heart, in her family’s mind, is not hers to give. The law
and the emphasis on social civility demands terms of conduct with which the blind passion
of love cannot comply. Religion similarly demands priorities that Romeo and Juliet cannot
abide by because of the intensity of their love. Though in mo st situations the lovers uphold
the traditions of Christianity (they wait to marry before consummating their love), their
love is so powerful that they begin to think of each other in blasphemous terms. For
example, Juliet calls Romeo “the god of my idolat ry,” elevating Romeo to level of God.39
The couple’s final act of suicide is likewise un -Christian. The maintenance of masculine
honour forces Romeo to commit actions he would prefer to avoid. But the social emphasis
placed on masculine honour is so profound that Romeo cannot simply ignore them . It is
possible to see Romeo and Juliet as a battle between the responsibilities and actions
demanded by social institutions and those demanded by the private desires of the
individual. Romeo and Juliet’s appreciation of night, with its darkness and priva cy, and
their renunciation of their names, with its attendant loss of obligation, make sense in the
context of individuals who wish to escape the public world. But the lovers cannot stop the
night from becoming day. And Romeo cannot cease being a Montague simply because he
wants to; the rest of the world will not let him. The lovers’ suicides can be understood as
the ultimate night, the ultimate privacy.

***

Two hundred years later after the publishing of Romeo and Juliet , in a less
patriarchal but as puritan society, a young English woman has the courage to break some
of the prejudices related to love, relationships, women’s aspirations and intellectual
capacity, as well as the role they could hold in that society.
Jane Austen, generally considered as having accepted her world as it was, is
credited with having been a great painter of a limited world. In her quiet way, she took a

39 Shakespeare, W., Romeo and Juliet , The Ill ustrated Stratford Shakespeare , p. II.i. 156

45
new and considerable step: at one stroke, to a large extent, she did away with an artificial
tragic tone, with the expected mixture of guilt and pain, and introduced the modern young
lady who knows that she is undoubtedly entitled to decide for herself in the momentous
question of her selection of a partner for life. Jane Austen had decided to leave behind her
the world of Little Red Riding Hood , in which the wolves were represented by Lovelace
and where the victims must always be innocent little girls who had to pay a high price for
disobeying their mothers.
Jane Austen got rid of her predecessors’ extravagance in the social setting, in the
gothic background and also in her choice of characters, themes and plots. That she did so
consciously is proved by her satirical approach, linked with her desire to avoid a certain
form of fatality – the necessary adjunct of so many former works -, the fate of tragedy
somewhat ridiculously adapted to the sentimental genre. These two factors implied that her
characters had grown into free, human adults, whose behaviour could be accounted for in
psychological and social terms, and who were now able to react when confronted with the
realities of life. In particular, her heroines ceased to be the pure princesses of the moral
world, who had been introduced earlier in an attempt to break away from the tradition of
actual nobility in romance.
In Pride and Prejudice the interest lies essentially in the female characters. The
central problem is love, with the variety of forms it takes in a number of persons, and love
as a social and p sychological necessity, or, to be more precise, love and marriage in their
social and psychological context, since the biological side lies behind the scenes as to be
almost invisible. The title of the book is misleading; it only takes into account the ess ential
element of the plot which is the evolution of Darcy’s and Elisabeth’s feelings and of their
understanding of the world. But, in spite of this, and of the traditional separation of lovers
and of their being brought together again as in the case of Ja ne and Bingley, Pride and
Prejudice is not only a novel of intrigue. Charlotte and Lydia are, in a way, nearly as
important as Jane and Elisabeth, and equally important are the reactions of the surrounding
world to their fortunes and misfortunes. In this r espect, the book is not unlike an old
tapestry representing side by side various scenes of medieval life among the nobility and
among the ordinary people. But love, in so far as it necessarily leads to the contemplation
of marriage, is not only the problem of the young lady concerned but also that of the small
community to which she belongs. In the feminine tradition of the 18th century novel, Jane
Austen studies the problem of the freedom of choice and of the family’s right of
intervention in the selection of a future husband, but with greater variety and realism. In

46
addition, society is no longer caricatured as a guardian or a villain, which precluded any
thorough analysis. On the contrary, for Jane Austen, society becomes the same many –
headed body we are all confronted with and this enables the portrayal of the whole range of
faces which all play a different part in our lives, even though we cannot help feeling at
times that together they form a great whole which sets limits to our initiatives and, for
better or for worse, must influence the course of our destiny.
This effort to delineate individual characters is ev en more evident as far as women,
and especially young ladies, are concerned. For Jane Austen, the introduction of a greater
number of characters implies a greater awareness of the variety in human behaviour, which
compels her to draw her characters more re alistically than in the past, when the
extravagance of the plot compensated the strong resemblance of the characters. In those
days each personality was kept alive because of his inner qualities except when,
occasionally, grossly caricatured and secondary figures were introduced.
To discover Jane Austen’s own distinctive message, we must look to her heroines.
All of them do certainly hope that matrimony will come, hand in hand with love, and all
her readers – at least the younger ones – are expec ted to be just as puzzled as Elizabeth when
she hears of Charlotte Lucas having accepted Collins. Of course all these heroines achieve
a rich or socially satisfactory marriage; the sort of marriage which must be understood to
be part of the tradition and a s more and less symbolic of the joy of their hearts; but what
really matters is that they all marry for love and this love is nothing superficial .40

During literary classes the teacher can use diagrams in two ways. They may start by
using an empty d iagram or one that contains only concepts.
When they use the empty diagram they first have to ask students to read the book.
Then he/she will ask certain questions that can help the students develop the diagram. The
questions that the teacher can ask are either related to notions or to relationships.
Example of notion questions:
1. What characters appear in the book? Can you name their main features?
2. Which objects play an important role in the story? Describe these objects and what
they are used for.
3. Where does the action take place?

40 Séjourné, P., The Feminine Tradition in English Fiction , p. 92

47
Example of relationships questions are:
1. What is the relationship between characters?
2. Who does the first talking? Where?
3. Who is mentioned in which part of the story?
4. Which object is in which part of the story?
5. Which location is in which part of the story?
When the teacher starts from a diagram that contains only concepts, he /she can
develop relations with his class or can ask pupils to complete the links in a diagram
(individually or in groups of 2 -4 students).
Another way of using sociograms is by starting a complete diagram. In this case , he
/ she can ask students the following questions:
1. What is the relationship between the main characters?
2. What is the relationship between the main character and the antagonist ?
3. What is the relationship between the female character and the antagonist?

48
2.5 Deciphering Teenage Skaz to Understand Literary Characters

Skaz is a quite interesting Russian word indicating ‘jazz’ and ‘scat’ as in ‘scat –
singing’, used to nominate a sort of first person narration that has the features of the oral
rather than the word that is written. In this kind of writing, the author is usually the main
character who refers to himself as I, and talks to the reader as You. He or she uses
vocabulary and syntax characteristic of colloquial speech, and appears to be relating the
story spontaneously rather than delivering a carefully constructed and polished written
account .41 A skaz has to be listened more than read, as we listen to ordinary people we
meet by chance in a restaurant, pub or means of transport. It is useless to underline the fact
that all this is just an illusion because even if the au thor does a lot of effort the result is like
smoke, this illusion is able to generate such a powerful effect of authenticity and sincerity,
of truth -telling that the reader/listener is impressed.

***

For writers across the ocean skaz was a clear way to free themselves from the
literary traditions they inherited from British and European literature. The most important
impetus was offered by Mark Twain. ’’All modern American literature comes from one
book by Mark Twain called Huckleberr y Finn said Ernest Hemingway – an
overstatement, but an illuminating one’’42. Twain’s act of genius made a connection
between a colloquial style, unripe teller, an adolescent who is cleverer than he is aware of
whose perception of the grown up world has a c atastrophic freshness and moral
correctness. Huck possesses an ironical and self – effacing characteristic mode of speech.
Even if he can at times be proud of the success of his tall tales and masquerades, in the
things that matter he is given to understate ment. Of his return to ’sivilized’ life with the
Widow Douglas, he comments simply, ’’Well, then, the old thing commenced again’’ . Of
the senseless horror with which the Grangeford – Shepherdson feud ends, Huck says with
admirable restraint: ’’I ain’t a -going to tell all that happened -it would make me sick again
if I was to do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore that night to see such things. I ain’t

41 Lodge, D., The Art of Fiction, p. 94
42 Idem , p. 95

49
ever going to get shut of them – lots of times I dream of them.’’43 And in one of the most
artfully conceived, understated but eloquent, endings in all fiction, Huck bids his reader
and civilization good -bye simultaneously: ’’But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory
ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivil ize me, and I can’t
stand it. I been there before. ‘’44
***

J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield is a writer successor of Huck Finn: more
schooled and experienced, the son of wealthy New Yorkers, but like Huck he runaways
from a world of adult fa lse virtue, corruption and phoniness, one of his favourite words.
What mostly strikes Holden is the avidity of his peers to take up that corrupt grownup
conduct. During the story, Holden takes one of his girlfriends to a matinee of a Broadway
play starrin g a famous acting couple. Sally and the colleagues she encounters in the lobby
during the interval are chronicled as playing a wholly inauthentic type of adult social
comportment. Holden’ spontaneity and authenticity are a guarantee of his informal
discour se and it is thrown into relief by the well -formed but pretentious small talk of
George: “He said the play was no masterpiece, but that the Lunts, of course, were absolute
angels.”
This comment is further reduced in importance by being said as reported spe ech, in
contrast to Holden’s exasperated outburst to Sally, which is quoted directly : ”Why don’t
you go on over and give him a big soul kiss…”
Unfortunately, if Holden does not feel like growing old, he cannot grow “young”
again, just because of the very society he rejects. Thus he cannot call Jane’s mother up
because it is “pretty late” and social convention calls it rude or bad manners to call
somebody up later than nine o’clock at night, and he gives up the idea of contacting Sally
Hayes especially beca use her mother has called her him “wild” and said “ he had no
direction in life ”45. This reminds of Widow Douglas ’s futile attempts to “sivilize” and
tames wild Hu ck, and thus turns him into a “respectable” member of society. Like Huck,
Holden rejects the “s ivilizing” efforts of society; Mrs. Hayes included, and tries, quite
unsuccessfully, to stay away from it. Holden’s rejection of the adult world is symbolic of
the generation gap in post -war Amer ican society. Holden’s failure “to grow up” stands for

43 Twain, M., The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , p.100
44 Idem, p.105
45 Salinger, J.D., The Catcher in the Rye , p.132 -133

50
the fa ilure of a mostly mercantile society to satisfy man’s inborn need for love and
affection.
Salinger’s very personal style contributed largely to the success of his book. Its
language is real, colloquial, often slangy speech of an unpretentious American adolescent
of the fifties. One can notice quite a few colloquial words and phrases, suggesting actual
everyday speech: then I thought of, and all, this booth, this girl, crazy about, sort of, like I
was; then Americanisms such as booth, guy, Mac ; slang words: corny ; and the use of a
rare literary word, incognito , employed with comic effect. Very much as in any fiction, the
point of view, the position from which the story is told, is an important stylistic device
used by Salinger in order to give m ore authenticity to the story. He devised a relatively
sophisticated approach in this novel, allowing the ce ntral character to relate his
“adventures” in his own way and language. This approach allows the reader to view the
narrative through the eyes and m ind of one of characters. In The Catcher in the Rye we are
restricted to Holden’s attitude and thoughts towards other characters and the events in
which they are involved. He supp lies the angle from which the “phonies” of his world are
to be seen; that wor ld is to be understood in terms of his attitude toward it, the impact of
incidents and people on him, the kind of language with which he supports his narrative, his
age and consequent limitations. However, he is objective about the society he encounters
even when he has to go against its “right” moral norms. He calls himself “so damn absent –
minded” and he is open about expressing his likes and dislikes concerning people and
events.

***

Martin Amis’s Money is an example of the description of place that can
illustrate skaz. Martin Amis is a late exponent of the Dickensian tradition of urban Gothic.
His fascinated and appalled gaze at the post -industrial city mediates an apocalyptic vision
of culture and socie ty in a terminal state of decay.46 Like in Dickens’s work of art, his
settings appear to be more animated than his actual characters, as if their lives have been
taken out of them to emerge again in a diabolical, antagonist form in ordinary things like
roads, cars, gadgets. The narrator of the book, John Self (Amis took from Dickens the
tendency to play with names) is not really seen as a complex character. Actually he is just

46 Lodge, D., The Art of Fiction , p. 68

51
another morally contaminated yuppie, who likes fast food as well as fast cars, jun k food
and pornographic movies, he goes to America aiming to tie up a film deal that will make
him rich. London and New York are the main settings of the action, but his business
inevitably makes Self go to Los Angeles, the capital of the movie industry.
The challenge of the novel’s chosen form is to make the style both eloquently
descriptive of the urban wasteland and expressive of the narr ator’s snobbish, tunnel -vision ,
philistine character.47 Amis tries to hide his literary abilities be hind a huge amount of
streetwise slang, stupid jokes, profanity and obscenities.
The description of Los Angeles is a hyperbole or an overstatement. In that
respect, Amis’s book resembles another skaz narrative, The Catcher in the Rye . But the
first uses much comically exaggerated dissimilarity on the commonplace theme that L.A. is
just a city dedicated to an d dominated by the motor car and he makes the observations that
America favours highly specialized retail outlets, and that the recent immigrants can only
be taxi -drivers who do not know the way anywhere.

***

Emphasized by the brisk, repeated question, ‘What’s going to be then, eh?’ which
opens each of the novel’s three sections, this freedom of choice and its mo ral consequences
are the central interests of A Clockwork Orange . Burgess’s narrator Alex draws attention
to the fact that his delinquency is completely a problem of free choice of evil, of deliberate
self-assertion:
… badness is of the self, the one … Bu t the not -self cannot have the bad, meaning
they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they
cannot allow self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave . Selves
fighting these big machines? … w hat I do I do because I like to do .48
In order for the novelist to set up the terms of his ethical debate, the book is set in
the future. Burgess’s masterstroke was to combine this well -tried strategy with a highly
inventive version of ’’teenage skaz’’ . Teenagers and criminals alike use slang as a
shibboleth, to distinguish themselves from adult, respectable society. Burgess imagines
that in the England of the 1970s, youthful delinquents have adopted a style of speech
heavily influenced by Russian (a conceit that would not have seemed so outlandish in the

47 Lodge, David, The Art of Fiction, p. 56 -57
48 Idem, p. 58-59

52
days of the Sputnik as it does now). Alex tells his st ory to an implied audience of “droogs”
(“drugi” , Russian for friends), though he uses Standard English in dialogue with
officialdom. There is a bit of Cockney rhyming slang in the dialect (“Charlie” = Charlie
Chaplin=chaplain) but basically it i s derived from Russian. Burgess intended his readers
should gradually learn Russian as they went along, inferring the meaning of the loanwords
from the context and other clues. The reader thus undergoes a kind of Pavlovian
conditioning, though reinforced by reward (being able to follow the story) rather than the
punishment. A bonus is that the stylized language keeps the appalling acts that are
described in it at a certain aesthetic distance, and protects us from being too revolted by
them or too excited.49
A Clockwork Orange is set in a soulless, technological future Britain of advanced
urban decay unrestrained sale of drugs, ‘more sp ace-trips and bigger stereo TV screens
and offers of free packets of soap flakes’50. There is also, more sinisterly, an Orwellian
aspect of authoritarian social control. Part Two shows Alex being brainwashed by new
penal techniques, including sickening film s of Nazi violence, which leave him ‘committed
to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good’51 – a clockwork orange
as mechanical as the society which conditions him. Though he recovers in Part Three, his
ultimate fate is left unusuall y unresolved: later editions of A Clockwork Orange follows
Burgess’s deletion, for the film, of a final section showing Alex contemplating marriage
and a settled life, ending instead with a full and violent renewal of his joyful choice of evil.
The contra st, however, between his phase of automatic goodness and his earlier
nature, free and evil, establishes with more than sufficient clarity the novel’s central
questions (recalling some Milton’s interest in Paradise Lost ): ‘Does God want goodness or
the choi ce of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a
man who has the good imposed upon him?’52 To communicate such questions effectively,
the ‘man chooses the bad’ must be presented in a way which avoids simply repelling
readers’ sympathy. Disapproval of Alex and his ‘ultra -violence’ is partly checked by his
vitality, more admirable than his societ y’s inertia, and by his constant assertion of
complicity with his readers, addressed in his narrative form ‘my brothers’ or ‘my friends’.
He also benefits greatly from the novel’s most interesting feature, Burgess’s creation of a

49 Burgess, A., A Clockwork Orange , p. 34
50 Idem, p. 35
51 Idem, p. 122
52 Idem, p. 76

53
language which reflects bo th Alex’s violent energy and the stylishness which appears in
his fastidious love of elegance and preference for classical music.
Alex’s teenage language is also sufficiently peculiar to keep readers distanced from
the immediate impact of horrors which follow from his choice of ‘the bad’:
Pete and Georgie had good sharp nozhes, but I for my own part had a fine starry
horroshow cut -throat britva which, at that time, I could flash and shine artistic. So there
we were dratsing away in the dark, the old Lun a with men on it just coming up, the stars
stabbing away as it might be knives anxious to join in the dratsing … and, my brothers, it
was real satisfaction to me to waltz – left two three, right two three – and carve left cheeky
and right cheeky, so that l ike two curtains of blood seemed to pour out.53
Such language is at times almost too successful in formalizing or romanticizing
Alex’s violence, occasionally disrupting the sort of moral response it should help to direct
upon issues of freedom, evil, and choice. Nevertheless, its language makes A Clockwork
Orange one of the most impressive of Burgess’s prolific range of novels. Its verbal
inventiveness may be related to the multilingual facility its author developed as a teacher in
Malaya, and A lex’s fascination for reproducing patterns of sound perhaps reflects
Burgess’s lifelong interest in music and its composition.54

Skaz is quite difficult to use in class maybe because it is not easy to explain the
term to students. But once they understan d it, they will become fans of this literary device
because it is close to the way the new generation talks. To be able to use it, first you have
to introduce the first person narrative concept and then sarcasm. This can be done by using
the case method wh ich is based on finding out as much information as students can
through group analysis, brainstorming, innovation and creative ideas .
Another way is by going to the theatre and seeing plays of famous Russian writers
that used skaz in their plays ( Nikolay Leskov , Aleksey Remizov , Mikhail Zoshchenko ,
and Yevgeny Zamyatin ). During the play they have to identify skaz and then discuss this in
class.
After doing all these, students should be ask ed to write short narrations in which
they have to use skaz.

53Burgess, A., A Clockwork Orange , p. 16 -17
54 Stevenson, R., The Br itish Novel since the Thirties , p. 223-225

54
2.6 Teaching Literary Characters through Elements of Psychoanalysis

In developing analysis of the mind's operations, conscious or unconscious,
Freud's work, for example, might be seen as an influence upon novelists of the time. It can
at least be usefully compared to their increased concentration on the sub jective self, and on
the operation and perception of individual consciousness. Like Freud's, Einstein's theories
began to appear long before the war. As early as 1905, he radically questioned the
assumptions about the character and interrelation of space a nd time. His inference that all
values and measurements should be seen as dependent upon the point of view of the
observer may have encouraged reliance on an 'intervening first person singular', an 'intense
perceiver' as the subjective centre of the novel. Einstein's suggestion that time is not an
independent universal order, but depended for its measurement and understanding upon the
perspective of the individual.55
Marthe Robert’s Origins of the Novel (1972) is the first attempt to enter the
psychoanalytical Freudian area of novel criticism. Deali ng with the ideal -real dichoto my
lying at the heart of modern narratives Robert explains the novel narrative structure by
relaying on Freud’s essays “ Creative Writers and Daydreaming” and “Family Roma nces” .
This theoretician supports the idea that the fictional illusion can be a mock real or an
openly declared fantasy, but that any novel develops from fairy tale imagination. Thus the
development from fairy tales to novel structure is presented as a rep etition of the stages of
childhood development. The pre -Oedipal child forced to share love with brothers and
sisters and disappointed by parents who prove imperfect, imagines that he/she is a
foundling whose real parents are royalty.
The firs t stage, based on the pleasure principle, produces romance. The second
one, born out of the reality principle, l eads to novel writing. So the “rise in the world”
motive of the classical Bildungsroman can be of psychic (Oedipal) as well as economic
(middle class) origin. On the other hand, according to Robert, the fact that English and
American critics tend to see Robinson Crusoe as the first novel and continental critics give
Don Quixote this position fits perfectly the Freudian framework.

***

55 Stevenson, R., The British Novel since the Thirties , p. 225

55
While someone reads Great Expectations he/she feels stimulated because of
Dickens’s dramatic great ability in subjecting his readers to the temporarily disrupted
values, characteristics of the characters that are put to ´fight´ against each other or keep
distant in time, a -synchronous and inharmonious for the best part of the novel. An
interesting range of symbolic or semiotic powers characteristic for the experience of
reading a Dickens masterpiece emerge from this dramatic space it is opened by its
suspen sion of time and of positive, desirable -usually moral – values. While talkin g of
Great Expectations these social and psychological themes receive important subliminal
proportions. Dickens’s narrative acute pow er becomes obsessive because of the contact
with the subliminal content of the human mind that elevates his fiction over its other
obvious qualit ies. David Shaw explains that even before long -separated elements converge
in Chapter 39 (Magwitch’s return scene), we are made subliminally aware of them. To
illustrate his point, the author invokes a passage at the end of chapter 38 with ‘the great
iron ring to which the concealed end of the rope is attached in the fable of the sultan (as
being) clearly a metonymy for Magwitch , who has been associated from th e beginning with
the leg iron’.56 Pip and Magwitch are connected by a weird and social kinship which with
the passing of time gets the proportion of a fateful connection between normal human
beings. David Shaw’s analysis further follows some textual and Freudian subliminal
associations which cast the relationship and late encounter between Pip and Magwitch in
the frame of the unconscious mind’s dramatically repressed contents and their inevitable,
painfully surprising return to consciousness. When fully u nderstood, Pumblechook’s
unspoken prophecy about Pip’s murdering a near relation brings a shocking recognition of
Dicke ns’s Oedipal displacements. Pumblechook links Pip with Oedipus , the displacements
as the unwitting cause of an adopted father and a surro gate mother ’s death s, Miss
Havisham. In loving Estella, Pip is also counting incest with surrogate sister, since Estella
is the daughter of Pip’s second father. The whole novel seems to be generated out of an
unutterable seed phase, with a tang of Oedipal redundancy to it: ’I am brother and lover in
one, and near relations I have murdered include sisters and mothers as we ll as the father
who adopted me ’.57 It is no wonder Pip, in telling his story, feels using a kind of
generalized thesis, the rhetorical fig ure that separates terms that belong together. Only by
opening up a whole chain of intruded middle terms can Pip find space in which to build

56 Shaw, D., Victorians and Mystery , p. 122
57 Dickens, Ch., Great Expectations , p.34 -35

56
illusions, including the illusion that in a world where everything is fated he can act as a
free agent.
The application to the archetypal grid to the matter of one novel will anyway be
very rewarding in discovering b asis, universal meanings, “the concealed ori gins and ends
that matter most”58 as David Shaw put it, for individual scenes, characters or vari ous
clusters of relationships in the novels. But even the more obvious, conscious – social,
moral, psychological – meanings are wrought into the fabric of a late Dickens novel by
means of what has been termed above the symbolic and the dramatic transformati ons of
literary conventions.

***

D. H. Lawrence was chilled by the sterility of modern industrial civilization and its
threat to the freedom and spontaneity of the individual. Envisaging sex as an integral part
of personal relationships, Lawrence presented his characters’ sexuality with an explicitness
largely new to the novel; one which led him, like Joyce, into trouble with censorship. It has
perhaps also encouraged subsequent readers to see him as primarily concerned with the
expansion into new areas of the novel’s subject matter, rath er than with the sort of
innovation in fictional technique which distinguishes the work of the modernists.
The intensity of Lawrence’s interest in the psychology of the free human
individual, and in the effect upon his characters of the ebb and flow, wonder and
disillusion of powerful emotions released in their relationship, also led him to develop new
fictional styles for presenting subjectivity. This is partly a simple matter of the increased
extent to which Lawrence directs his readers’ attention upon individual consciousness.
Actual experiences in his novels – sometimes even single lines of conv ersation – are often
followed by several paragraphs or even pages devoted to minute examination of his
characters’ reflections and emotions. The intimacy with which Lawrence seeks to present
this inner experience often leads him to a distinctive intermingl ing of characters’ inner
voices with his own more objective authorial tone .
D.H. Lawrence combines social criticism, psychological realism, and elements of
dreaming and fantasy in The Rocking -Horse Winner. The big picture of The Rocking –
Horse Winner is that, from the standpoint of realism its events lack resemblance to the

58 Shaw, D., Victorians and Mystery , p. 128

57
possible world. That is, no one has ever sat on a rocking horse and caught brain fever that
predicted the results of horse races. Nor has the long arm of coincidence ever ca ught a
winning streak of the kind described in the book, even if the story's internal probabilities
come down to earth by way of Bassett's seasoned handicapping skills. On the other hand,
countless children have been so psychologically abused by self – or m oney -obsessed
parents that they have gone beyond the limits of fantasy in order to be loved.
In The Rocking -Horse Winner the element of fantasy operates in Paul's real life
more or less in the manner of dream logic and becomes the logica l foundation of the story.
For that reason the story as a whole is symbolic and logical only in its own terms.
However, it also touches on the world of ordinary logic and psychology. The dream world
becomes manifest as the family's experience, but even as the dream comes true; it operates
as an exaggerated illustration of profoundly flawed parental approach.
The Freudian view of personality and of social humankind has conflict as the basic
situation of personality, with love in opposition to ci vilization and women in opposition to
men in a dynamic way. The conflict might be solved (or almost solved) to the degr ee Eros
fosters sensual and/or “aim -inhibited” love, which involves the creation of families on one
hand and society on the other. Still, the conflict situation is foundational: in the course of
development the relation of l ove to civilization loses its ambiguity. On the one hand love
comes into opposition to the interests of civilization; on the other, civilization threatens
love with subs tantial restrictions. Women soon come into opposition to civilization and
display their retarding and restraining influence -those very women who, in the beginning,
laid the foundations of civilization by the claims of their love. Such a tension is at work in
this book though Lawrence works out the conflict differently than Freud's discussion
suggests.
In The Rocking -Horse Winner the interests of civilization are figured as vulgar
preoccupation with money that has threatened and restricted Eros. Further, far from
retarding Paul and his family have a decent lifestyle, but his mother and father are
inadequate at earning an income th at will keep both of them on the level of extravagance
they are used to. Paul’s mother feels unlucky and makes no bones about informing him of
this. She and her husband are unlucky. She because she married him, and he because he
never has any luck making m oney. However, despite the fact that the environment is so
anxiety -ridden over this constant desire for more money that the house speaks in a haunted
whisper “There must be more money! There must be more money !”, neither the mother nor
father are willing t o lower their standard of living or forget about superficial appearances.

58
The whispers for money are heard even the toy rocking horse. The relationship between
Paul and his mother is governed by money and tries to make him believe that a person is
lucky on ly if he/she has money. Paul has always believed he is a lucky boy and the action
he takes during the novel is what brings his death in the end.
The rocking horse is the medium Paul uses to get the winning horse and
subsequently win money in the horse races. Paul believes that his rocking horse would take
him to luck , "Now, take me to where there is luck! Now take me"59 he said. Paul always
chooses the horse he is sure it will not ever lose and this creates a divine association
between Paul and his Horse. As the derby approaches, Paul begins riding wildly and he
becomes ill. Not even his mother realizes what is wrong with him. The night before the
derby Paul rides his horse until he knows the winning horse "Then he fell with a crash to
the groun d". Becoming unconscious till the third day, Paul dies at night. It is very
obvious, the irony that rocking horse which brings him his "luck" is what brings him his
death.
……. Knowing Paul's age is important, inasmuch as it can suggest the state of hi s mind at
the end of the story. Shortly after the story begins, the narrator says Paul receives a rocking
horse for Christmas. Generally, such a gift is appropriate only for a child between ages
four and eight. Later, the narrator says Paul's mother enroll ed him in Eton, one of the most
prestigious public schools in England, for the autumn term (known as the Michaelmas
Half, which runs from September to the middle of December). Students who attend Eton
range in age from thirteen to eighteen. Paul died somet ime in June, about three months
before his scheduled entrance to Eton. The narrator indicates the month of Paul's death
when he reveals that the boy won the Epsom Derby, which always takes place on the first
Saturday in June. Thus, Paul is thirteen at the time of his death unless his birthday occurs
between the first Saturday in June and the September date of his scheduled Eton entry. If
he is thirteen —or about to turn thirteen —when he suffers a seizure and falls off his rocking
horse, one may speculate tha t he suffers from stunted maturity and perhaps a psychological
disorder that alters his perception of reality.

***
The technique of presenting a character’s thoughts or words partly mediated through
the voice of the author – usually called Free Ind irect Discourse – is a very common

59 Lawrence, D.H., The Rocking Horse Winner , p.34

59
fictional technique, certainly not one invented by Lawrence. But the frequency of
Lawrence’s use of it, often sustained for pages at a time, is a distinctive extension of the
novelist’s means of ‘looking within’ and exami ning the mind. Though Lawrence never
employs the more direct entry into the mental experience of his characters offered by
stream of consciousness, his sustained presentation of their thoughts and inner world
clearly associated him with ‘the modern … subje ctive novel’ as it was developed by other
modernist writers.
The greatest of these is James Joyce, who consummates in Ulysses all the trends of
earlier years to interpolate between reader and fictional world a ‘first person singular’,
whose subjective exp erience forms the substance of the novel. Much of the Dublin world
of Ulysses is seen only insofar as it is reflected in the mind of Leopold Bloom as he
wanders around the city. Joyce’s stream -of-consciousness technique presents the inner life
of Bloom – the myriad associations, reflections, and movements of his mind in response to
external stimuli – so successfully that he becomes more intimately and wholly available to
the reader than any character from earlier fiction. As one critic remarked, in Ulysses “Joyce
rewrote for the modern novel gen erally the definition of a man” .60
Joyce's stream of consciousness, however, is used most purely and uninterruptedly
not in presenting Bloom himself, but in following in the last section of the novel the
thoughts of his wife Molly as she lies in bed with him, her mind hovering on the verge of
sleep. Joyce does not follow Ford or Richardson in interpolating ellipses to mark
transitions from thought to thought. Instead, he omits punctuation entirely from the last 40
pages of his book , enhancing the sense of Molly's ideas, emotions and memories as a
mingling food, a seamless, stream -like continuity.
Such disdain for punctuation in Joyce's development of stream of consciousness is
only one of an array of innovative techniques and unconventional devices which made
Ulysses seem thorou ghly unfamiliar, even unintelligible, to early readers and reviewers.
Some were further deterred by the franc detail in which Joyce follows Molly's thoughts
about sex, or Bloom's visit to the toilet. Many early critics found Ulysses deliberately
shocking, and fairly few guesses that it would come to occupy a pre -eminent position
among twentieth -century novels.61
Investigation of the stress between word and world, and the examination of literary
form and language, are most comprehensively and inf luentially undertaken in the work of

60 Friedman, A., The Novel, p. 442
61 Stevenson, R., The British Novel since the Thirties , p.115

60
James Joyce. The sustained parody, stylistic imitation, and linguistic inventiveness of
Ulysses constantly scrutinize the nature and validity of existing fictional forms, indirectly
installing language, style, and ficti onal technique as subjects of the novel. Although in the
book such interests never altogether predominate over the story of Bloom and his Dublin
day, the 'sensible world' and the element of story are much more thoroughly subordinate to
linguistic and forma l concerns in Joyce's later writing.62

First of all, if you want to teach students how to read through a psychoanalytical
lens, you should show them how to actually do the reading. You have to bring special texts
to classes and read them, teaching th em how to take notes on the side of the paper. The
students should be taught to read between the lines, to understand gestures and assign
qualities or faults to those.
To teach psychoanalytical criticism in EFL classes is hard but not impossible. You
can create videos which can be helpful for students to understand the concepts. You can
also send groups of students out, with some background information, to make videos for
each individual concept. These groups can then present and share them with the cl ass to
teach their classmates.
Help students focus on characters’ internal monologue. The use of creative drama
is a fun way to show students how to read between the lines and discover hidden narratives
and drives. With four student volunteers, two students will have a conversation whi le the
other two give internal commentary that may or may not align with the situation in “real
life.”
Another way is by helping them understand the subconscious arguments. Again,
with the use of creative drama, you can show students the way Freud perceives the
subconscious. Students form two lines facing one another, one representing the Superego
and one r epresenting the Id (students should be aware of their roles). Each student will take
a turn reading off a dilemma, and walking between the lines, each student member of the
subconscious giving advice they believe is characteristic of their role. At the end , the

62 Stevenson,R., The British Novel since the Thirties, p.132

61
student will make a decision, playing the Ego and making a compromise between the two
sides.
An important concept that the students should know while learning about the
psychoanalytical approach of characterisation is the stream of consciousness. In a writing
activity, have students write constantly for five minutes without a prompt (this amount of
time is supposedly long enough for their subconscious to take over). Then, have them go
back through it and do a form of psychobiography, applying the cri ticism they are
supposed to use as they read literature to their own writing. Have them explain what they
found to a partner to prepare them to write a critical paper from a psychoanalytic
perspective.

62
CHAPTER 3
The Challenge of Teaching Literary Character
– A Methodological Approach –

‘I’ll teach you differences’ , Kent says to Oswald in King Lear .

During my first two years of teaching English, I did not teach literature because it was
not in the curriculum of the profiles I used to have. Then I moved to another high school
and I started teaching bilingual English classes and so literature became compulsory. I
have always loved literature so I was very eager to do my best, to raise students’
knowledge, to make them love litera ture. But things were not quite simple.
In the recent years, the role of literature in EFL curriculum has been under debate.
Many teachers consider literature as an interesting and very valuable school object. Others,
on the other hand, think that teachin g literature is not so important because it can be
replaced by other contents and they say that students find it dull and unattractive. From my
point of view, literature teaching is very important because its place, as a tool rather than
an end in teaching English as a second or foreign language, will be unearthed.
The use of literature as a technique for teaching both basic language skills (for
example, listening, reading, speaking and writing) and language areas (like vocabulary,
grammar and pronunciatio n) is very popular within the field of foreign language learning
and teaching. Many teachers use literature in class even if only for translations. They ask
their students to translate fragments from literary texts like poetry, drama, short tales or
novels into their mother tongue, Romanian, because this gives students the opportunity to
practice syntactic, semantic, lexical and pragmatic knowledge.
According to Collie and Slater, there are four main reasons which lead a language
teacher to use literature in classroom. They used it because these are valuable authentic
materials, cultural and language enrichment and personal involvement. In addition to these
four main reasons, universality, non -triviality, personal relevance, variety, interest,
economy and suggestive power and ambiguity are some other factors requiring the use of
literature as a powerful resource in the classroom context.63

63 Collie, J. & Slater, S. Literature in the Language Classroom: A resource book of ideas and activities , p. 3

63
I have always been very concerned about what literary texts I should use during my
literary and language classes and I have always taken into consideration my students’
needs, interests, motivation, cultural background and language level. When teaching
characters, I have always been interested in choosing characters that are meaningful and
express real -life experiences, em otions and are related to my students’ lives and inner
thoughts.
I consider myself a lucky teacher because I have students who are very eager to
learn new things, who are motivated by the desire to learn more, especially English, and
these facts made me develop myself first, to search and find new methods, to learn from
mistakes and try to make my students learn with pleasure.
This is what literature teachers do in classroom; they teach their students
differences , that is, as many different ways to thin k about a literary work as possible. By
the means of literature, the students are able to lea p over the wall of self, to see themselves
through another’s eyes, and this is valuable experience, which can be offered by literature.
It also has much practical knowledge to offer the students. An art of words, it can help
them become more sensitive to language, both theirs and other people’s. It can make them
aware of the difference between the word that is exactly right and the word that is merely
good enough. M ark Twain calls it “the difference between the lightning and the lightening –
bug”64. Here is the text: in how many ways can it have meaning ?
While teaching literature, there are many issues that which are dependent on
approaches to reading and these are related to how and for what particular purposes we are
reading literature, especially in a non -native language. Because my students are major i n
English, many of them need it for their future university exams. From my experience, I
have understood that a syllabus has to be followed because their acquired skills will
ultimately be tested. This is the accumulation of knowledge about literature and its cultural
and socio -historical background. If we are learning literature for our own cultural
knowledge about different societies we wish to understand better, there are advantages to
this, the main reason being, the approach to reading can embrace comp lex cultural
interpretation. Furthermore, if we are reading literature for on our own personal
enrichment, we are determined to read it more closely and with passion. If the students
have a direct engagement with literary texts is more likely for them to e nsure a result of
language -based approaches. The teacher has to use literature in order to facilitate a more

64 Kennedy, X. J. & Gioia, Dana, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama , p. xxxiii.

64
systematic approach which is more frequently based on familiar strategies from the
language teaching classroom. From my experience as a teacher, th ese language -based
approaches develop a view of literature as a resource for personal and linguistic
development and they do not necessarily deliver a full interpretation, but they provide a
secure basis for one and are therefore useful in the initial stag es of reading literature. Fuller
interpretation is a higher level of reading and normally demands reference to a cultural or
inter textual heritage, but it is only through process -oriented teaching rather than through
product -based or transmissive teaching that such goals of fuller individual interpretation
can be reached.65
There are several models o f literature teaching (language, cultural, literary,
personal growth) and all these do not exclude each other because each represents different
tendencies in methodology and in classroom practice. As a teacher I have always been
forced to make a difference between studying literature for academic purpose and the use
of literature as a class resource. From my point of view, studying literature for future
exams and reading literature for pure fun, normally involve different approaches and result
in different outcomes for the student. There has been pointed out that there is a huge
distinction between knowledge about literature and knowledge of literature. Reading
literature improves vocabulary, allows complex discourse and helps critical thinking.
From my experience, the role of the teacher is very important w hile delivering
literary lessons. The modern approaches of teaching character have established distinguish
teacher -centred who has a transmissive role and uses a systematic set of procedures which
can help students to talk about and interpret a literary te xt.
This paper aims to offer an analysis of the above mentioned issues, a presentation
of the teaching models or tendencies – language, cultural, the literary or aesthetic approach
and personal growth approach – and various teaching strategies and activiti es for
classroom practice.

65 Carter, Ronald & Long, Michael N., Teaching Literature , p. 10

65
3. 1. Modern techniques of teaching literary terms related to
characterization

The study of literature involves reading literature within an academic setting in
order for students to obtain qualifications in literary stu dies. The students must be taught a
minimum baggage of critical terms , literary practices and metalanguage and the outcome
is often that students should be able to use such terms and concepts in talking and writing
about literary characters. My study also involves analysis of particular literary texts which
can also mean acquiring a compendious store of inform ation about the history of the target
literature, its traditions and conventions, its particular heritage, the nature of the influences
and relationships between the authors, texts and contexts which make up that literary
culture. One distinct advantage of such an approach is that it fosters an understanding of
literature as a body of texts, and a view of literary texts as belonging to a “background” of
specific historical, social, and ideological contexts.
I have tried all my best to teach my students thes e terms and conventions during the
optional course that I created especially for this paper (Appendix 1 – Optional Course –
The Literary Character – Modern Approaches ). I have designed this course because I
believe it to be a resource for students’ persona l development and growth, my main aim
being to encourage sensitivity and self -awareness and greater understanding of the world in
which my students live. It can also supply many linguistic opportunities to the language
teacher and allow many of the most va luable exercises of language learning to be based on
material capable of stimulating greater interest and involvement than can be the case with
many language teaching texts. Literature is a legitimate and valuable resource for language
teaching.
I have al ways believed that one potential disadvantage of the study of literature is
that it can hinder the use of literature as a resource and this is likely to happen if the
teaching and examining approaches focus more on knowledge about literature than
knowledge of literature itself. This knowledge about literature means gathering facts about
literary terms, contexts, dates, authors, titles, conventions etc. From my experience, this
method is old -fashioned because they do little for our ‘mod ern’ students who are always
bored and want to acquire knowledge using modern and interesting techniques. The
students forget these concepts easily and they have the tendency to rely on authorities

66
outside themselves. The only ones who are favoured by this system are those who possess
a very good memory and probably those who would develop in any case the necessary
literary competence whether they had a teacher or not.
My almost 10 -year experience in teaching literature, has taught me that knowledge
of literature is better off ered in terms of pleasure, enjoyment and fun activities, rather than
in terms of knowing by heart. When my aim was to teach my students the literary terms
they needed to analyze literary characters, I have used the following activities:
* Group activities – The students are asked to work together in groups to gain
understanding of what certain literary terms really mean by helping each other with
definitions and examples. Demonstrating what they have discovered to the whole class
shows a further level of u nderstanding. One activity that was successful was to divide the
class in groups and ask each of the groups to work on a different concept, like the
definition of characterization, types and methods. ( Appendix 2 – Annex 1 ) Each group has
to find a suitable definition for the term and to write an explanation in their own words.
Then they have to create a poster to share their findings with the class.
* Picture Books – these books make great mentor texts when introducing a new topic. The
students are asked to create picture books with different titles for types of narratives,
classification of characters etc. When they find out something new, they can introduce it
into the book. ( Annex 2 )
* Writing project – this kind of project was begun in the beginning of t he year and
incorporated the ideas of character, setting, plot, conflict and theme. This project, in which
students plan and then write a story, was done in small groups. The steps I took were the
following:
1. Students named and defined the main character and supporting
characters;
2. Students chose a setting – place, time and duration;
3. Students chose a theme such as friendship or bullying;
4. Students decided on the conflict and how would be resolved;
5. Students added more plot events;
6. Students made a literary analyze of one of the characters.

My first concern was to make students read more and then improve my teaching by
selecting those methods which can lead to active involvement in reading rather to a passive
reception of information about th e texts. Another big problem while teaching character was

67
to find great literature that would make my students interested in reading and analyz ing. I
think that the literature I choose has to transmit the kind of emotional and experiential
involvement whic h constitutes knowledge of literature. This kind of knowledge is more
likely to be encountered in activity -based, student -centre d approaches whose purpose is to
make students reach a higher level of personal response and involvement.
However, while trying to reac h this level, I had to answer several questions which
have guided my present study even from the beginning:
1. Do teachers find literature as a useful instrument for teaching English?
2. Do students learn values and virtues from different literary charac ters?
3. Do students’ language and discourse improve while learning literature?
4. How much language competence is required before a literary text can be read
whether in breadth or in depth?
5. What exactly is meant by literary competence, and what kind of literar y
competence do we wish to develop in our students?
It can be assumed that:
 Teachers turn to literature when they need authentic texts to enrich the students’
world of knowledge;
 Students identify themselves with the thoughts, feelings and experiences a
certain character has within a literary work;
 Teachers search and use all kinds of teaching literary characters especially
when it comes to difficult issues like literary concept and terms;
 Students who are used and taught by means of modern methods feel m ore
attracted to literature and they will be more motivated to learn and experience
new things.

Students must be offered the kind of literary characters to which they can identify
with, the experiences, thoughts and situations in which they can find resemblance with
their own daily activities. “The fundamental ability of a good reader of literature is the
ability to generalize from the given text to either other aspects of the literary tradition or
personal or social significances outside literature.”66 This kind of experience and
enjoyment need not always be inhibited by linguistic difficulty since an exciting or moving

66 Carter, Ronald & Long, Michael N., Teaching Literature , Longman, p.36 -37

68
text can itself be an incentive to overcome some of the linguistic or cultural barriers in the
text. A reader who is genuinely involve d with a text which is relevant to them will be one
who is willing to work at reading. A further point to bear in mind here is th at a reader who
is involved in the text is likely to gain the most benefit from exposure to the language of
literature. In this way the literary text can be a vital support and stimulus for language
development.
As a teacher , I believe in the value of simplified texts or readers, either in
themselves or as preparation for reading the authentic text. Simplified readers can help to
promote literary competence by introducing to students well -constructed and interesting
material w hich need some kind of inference from the person who reads it.
To some extent literary and language competence are always dependent on each
other and cannot be taken separately. As I have already said an appropriate level of
proficiency is asked before a text is read, but beyond that the process of reading will be
augmented by an important recognition of patterns of language. In many respects literary
language may be best defined as language which is patterned for particular expressive
purposes. Literary c ompetence is linked with the students’ ability to understand how
criterions of language reinforce the message.
Two things are crucial when understanding the way which a character is presented
and from which narrative point of view. A pattern I have used i s the following:
Read the paragraph and try to decide upon the main character:
A  B  C  D 
Then I have designed a set of questions to help students in their activity of
inferring, guessing and predicting:
1. Pick one of the boxes and give to r easons why you think so.
2. Which words or phrases determined you to make this decision?
3. Which character do you like more? Why?
4. Even if you do not know all the words in the paragraph, try to guess their
meanings by looking closely at the words and their context.
Beside these approaches to texts which were mainly directed towards eliciting
responses to the themes and context of those texts by means of careful scrutiny of both the
type and sequence of questions to be asked, the teacher can propose s ome language -based
approaches borrowed from language teaching, such as jigsaw reading, matching, gap –
filling, the use of paraphrase.

69
Jigsaw reading comprises the re -ordering of a text which has been scrambled. It is
student -centred; it forces the individua l to look closely at the language of text and, more
specifically, at the poetic discourse, and it stimulates learner -learner interaction in a puzzle.
It is important that before learners are asked to do an exercise of this type by themselves
they should wo rk through one example with the teacher. This applies to any exercise, but
the purpose here is to indicate the type of questions or prompt which will keep the
interaction going. In this respect, the term “jigsaw” is appropriate as it indicates a serious
of small increments which, when added together, will “complete the picture” that is reveal
at least one complete level of meaning in the poem. The exercise is not simply a
mechanical one, to get the poem into the right shape; nor does it resemble a crossword
puzzle, where you try to find the solution, if necessary by guessing, as quickly as possible,
and then move on to the next item.
For this kind of exercise, I have used the well -known poem “ The Road Not Taken ”
by Robert Frost. As presented here the stanza s are not scrambled, but have been marked A
B C and D for ease of reference:

The Road Not Taken

A Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And, sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

B Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear:
But, as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
C And both that morning equal ly lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day,
But, knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted that I should ever come back.

70

D I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The teacher should avoid beginning with the open question:”Which do you think is
the first stanza?” Such a question invites “hit or miss” answers but does not encourage
investigation of the text. The following suggested questions do not form one half of a
dialogue, because there is no attempt here to predict answers, but otherwise form an
approximate sequence:
a) Who is the “I” in the stanzas A, C and D?
b) What does “the other” refer to in stanza B?
c) What is the subject of “took” in stanza B?
d) Why did he choose t hat road?
e) So why must stanzas B and C follow A, not precede it?
f) When the incident described in stanza A take place?
g) What is the tense of the opening lines of stanza D?
h) Could D be the opening stanza?
i) If D were the opening stanza, what information in A is redundant?
j) But is the sequence A D possible?
k) Why not?
l) Did the poet ever go back to the starting poet?
m) How does the answer to l) above determine the order of stanzas B and C?
n) Complete the sequence, using not more than five words for each item:
1. The poet had an option
2. He made his choice
3. …………………………….
4. …………………………….
Other questions are possible and also follow -up questions to partial or tentative
answers. Note that in general the lower -order questions lead to higher -order question. In
some cases a low -order ques tion leads directly to a higher -order question as in g) – h).

71
Matching exercises are related to jigsaw reading activities in so far as they involve
a fitting together of different parts. Similarly, too, one aim of matching exercises is to
make students use those responses which can build up sensitivity to the whole. One
primary activi ty of matching is to collect examples of openings and closings to texts and
help students match the correct pairs. Doing so requires both recognition of stylistic
similarities, continuities of character and thematic correspondences. Such exercises may be
useful as a pre -reading exercise for short stories or narrative poems. It is an exercise which
can also be adapted to the requirements of different language levels and interpretive
abilities; for examples, the length of opening and ending can be extended or , if necessary,
linking passages can be inserted with the link to different openings explicitly signalled .
Other possibilities include: matching character descriptions from different stories;
matching three or more settings to a single story; isolating the “odd man out”, that is, the
description or setting or incident that does not belong to a particular story . Further ideas
include matching quotations or sayings with characters; pictures, photographs with
characters or places; descriptions, profiles with c haracters; plot abstracts or summaries
with beginnings or endings of texts; texts with genres; stories or poems with titles; prose or
poetry or drama dialogue with epoch or period; texts or setting or even characters with
particular pieces of music; senten ces jumbled together from two different works to create
two separate stories .
Students’ attention to the language and form of a text can be drawn by means of a
targeted cloze procedure which is an established procedure in tests of language
competence. How ever, it is increasingly employed for purposes of language development
where the aim is to draw attention to the use of particular linguistic features such as
connecting words between sentences or signal ling words across paragraphs. In such cases
of cloze to literary texts, the most important thing is to remove those words which draw the
students’ attention from performing an important literary job.
As with most gap-filling exercises , the teacher can decide whether to ask students
to retrieve a word or words without guidance or reference to a group of words listed
beneath the text. The strategy of gap -filling in the literature class is well -suited to pair and
group work. It can be a student -centred activity. It leads to involvement with the text. This
involvement works on two levels: first, there is a natural interest in the success or
otherwise of one’s lexical predictions (even though it should be stressed that filling the gap
with the “right” word is not th e point of the exercise); second, the making of any kind of
choice depends on reading the entire text very carefully and on studying how one word

72
suits with the others. The exercise raises a number of useful points of language use, even
though the main poi nt is to promote sensitivity to the use of words for literary purposes. It
is a task -based, activity -centred strategy which makes the teacher’s role a supporting and
supportive one. The teacher should, however, encourage students to justify their choices a t
all stages and be prepared to account for their choices to others in the group. Gap -filling
activities emphasize that a student’s engagement with the text needs to be both linguistic
and experiential. It is a productive way of increasing the students’ aw areness of the
patterns of words in a literary text. Choices of words in an exercise depend on sound
patterns as much as on meanings.
While doing these kinds of exercises, I have come to realize that one major
advantage of gap -filling as a language -based strategy is that students were able to compare
alternative versions of different texts. When I chose them , I realized they are able to
explore various lexical choices, testing the different effects of one single word over another
by taking into considerati on the grammatical and semantic, and in case of poetry, sound
patterns into which they fit; they may even prefer some of their choices to the ones
eventually revealed to be the poet’s choices.
An extension to this activity can lead to an exploration of th e possibilities of
paraphrase . The technique is a relatively simple one of juxtaposing two or more versions
from texts which are being read or are to be read – one the original and the other a re –
written alternative version. Clearly, paraphrasing texts can work most successfully if the
texts are short or are opening lines or stanzas. As with texts which are compared for
thematic correspondences, the basic principle is that the essential qualities of something
are most effectively and memorably highlighted b y means of some simple contrast. The
process of comparing alternative versions leads to an active involvement with a text and to
a sense of the text as something dynamic and fluid, open to creative exploitation, rather
than as a static fixed order of words on a page served as if to a passive consumer.
Paraphrase holds out numerous possibilities. For example, key lines in a poem can
be extracted and paraphrased in order to help students to isolate particular stylistic or tonal
qualities. Paraphrase can invo lve alternative versions in which words or phrases are put in
a different order or it can adopt a more extreme but rather more playful strategy of mimetic
paraphrase in which comic versions of well -known texts are produced.
In his two -volume book, Short a nd Sweet – Short texts and how to use them , Alan
Maley (Penguin Books, 1995) present s a list of twelve generalized procedures and

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classroom activities which I have used for both language acquisition and text exploration.
The list includes the following pro cedures:
1 Expansion
Key criterion : the fragment must be expanded in some way.
The students were asked to:
 Add one sentences or paragraph at the beginning or end of a text.
 Add defined words within the text (e.g. adjectives, compound nouns etc.)
 Add certain sentences within the text.
 Add subordinate clauses within the text.
 Add comment within the text.
2 Reduction
Key criterion : the text must be contracted in some way.
The students were asked to:
 Remove specified items (e.g. adjectives).
 Turn it into telegraphs.
 Put sentences together.
 Take out certain clauses/sentences.
 Use a different format in order to rewrite them.
3 Media Transfer
Key criterion : the text must be transferred into a non -identical form.
The students were asked to:
 Transfer it into visual form (e.g. pictures, graphs, maps, tables etc.).
 Turn poem into prose (or vice versa).
 Turn a newspaper article into a story (or vice versa).
 Turn a headline into a proverb (or vice versa).
 Turn a poem into an advertising slogan (or vice versa).
 Turn a prose narrative into a screenplay.
4 Matching
Key criterion : the text must be matched with something else.
The students were asked to:
 Match a fragment with a symbol.
 Match a fragment with a song title.
 Match a fragment with another one.

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 Match a fragment with a genre of music.
5 Selection/Ranking
Key criterion : the text must be picked taking into consideration a certain point of
reference. (In the case of Ranking, several texts must be put in order of suitability for a
certain point of reference.)
The students were asked to:
 Choose the best fragment for a given reason (e.g. writing for the school magazine).
 Choose the most/least difficult or formal/personal or simple/complex text.
 Choose the text that is more or less like the original version.
 Choose words from a text to stand as an actual title.
6 Comparison/Contrast
Key criterion : issues of resemblance/contrast must be identified between the texts.
The students were asked to:
 Find words/expressions that both texts have in common.
 Find words/phrases in one text which are identified in the other.
 Find common ideas.
 Find facts present only in one of the texts.
 Make a comparison between the texts in terms of grammatical and lexical
complexity.
7 Reconstruction
Key c riterion : coherence must be established to an incomplete text.
The students were asked to:
 Place appropriate words/phrases into gapped texts.
 Put in order jumbled words, lines, sentences, paragraphs etc.
 Rebuild sentences or fragments from a word array.
 Reconstruct a written text from an oral presentation.
 Take out sentences which do not ‘belong’ in the text.
8 Reformulation
Key criterion : the text must be written in such a different way from the original without
loss of its initial meanings.
The students were asked to:
 Rewrite a story from single words or from memory.
 Use keywords to write a text again.

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 Write a text in a different format. (e.g. poem as prose)
 Rewrite in a different style.
9 Interpretation
Key criterion : the students’ k nowledge or experience must be used to identify the
meaning(s) of the text.
The students were asked different questions like:
 What does this resemble from your own experience?
 What does this remind you of?
 What images can you identify with your own ex perience?
 What associations can you make?
 What questions would you like to address the author?
 Rephrase questions on the text beginning: what?, who?, where?, when?, why?,
how?
 Do you think the text is true?
10 Creating text
Key criterion : the text is t o be used as an example for the creation of new texts.
The students were asked to:
 Write a parallel text on a different subject.
 Use the same story to create a new text.
 Use words from text A to create a new text B.
 Using the same title, write another text.
 Add new sentences to the text to give it another shape.
 Use a combination of these texts to create a new one.
11 Analysis
Key criterion : the text has to be consented to some form of language -focused careful
examination.
The students were asked to evaluate their works based on:
 Identify the ratio of one -word verbs to two word verbs.
 What tenses have you used?
 Number the words the text contains.
 Underline the ways in which a certain word is referred to in the text.
 Underline all the words to do with a certain topic in this text.
12 Project work

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Key criterion : the text is used as a platform for some other related practical works with
a concrete outcome.
The students were asked to:
 Use the text as the centrepiece of an advertising campaign. There are some steps
the students should focus on: deciding on the product, designing the campaign posters,
slogans, jingles etc. Then present the product as a TV advertisement (which must
incorporate the text). The prod uct should be tapped.
 Design a questionnaire on a certain problem for other groups to complete. Tabulate
the results and present them to the other students.
 The text must have a particular point of view. Prepare a brief magazine article
which agrees or not with this point of view. Work in pairs. Collect ideas and examples
to support your own point of view.

Another way to approach literature teaching is the cultural model which stresses
the value of literature in encapsulating the accumulated wisdom, the best that has been
thought and felt within a culture. The most significant ideas and sentiments of human
beings are expressed by literature and teaching literature implies a way through which
students can be connected with a range of expressions – often of universal value and
validity – over a historical period. Teaching literature within a cultural model enables
students to understand and appreciate cultures and ideologies different from their own in
time and space and to come to perceive traditions of thought, feeling and artistic form
within the heritage the literature of such culture endows. The cultural model is associated
with a more teacher -centred, transmissive pedag ogic mode which focuses on the text as a
product about which students learn to acquire information.
In order for a text to achieve some learning purpose, some degree of apparatus is
vital. When an apparatus is prepared, the first element will be a pre -reading (or pre –
listening) question or stimulus. It is important not to spend too long on this. The pre –
question or stimulus should always start from what the students will understand. No matter
how long or complex the text, a pre -reading question can be form ulated to give the
students confidence in what they do know rather than allowing them to be distracted by
what they do not know. It is important, therefore, never to start with difficulties or things
the students will not understand. Students should not be asked to do too much – better a
brief pre -question with fuller follow -up than a multiple part question, especially in the
earliest stages. The pre -question/stimulus can be used to lead where the teacher wants to go

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towards the teaching aim. Once the text has been presented, teaching aims should be
defined in relation to levels as regards the learners’ own development: at the earliest level
the focus will be on language – what is happening, how it is different from what learners
have already acquired or lea rned, how familiar/unfamiliar is this particular example of
language use, why is something being done with language in this way, who is doing it and
to what effect?
From that stage will develop a growing language awareness which becomes the
second stage i n representational learning development. The samples of language used can
be longer, and gradually more complex, with a greater variety of sources, registers,
dialects. As confidence in handling texts grows, the third stage, text awareness will be
reached. By this time learners are building up a reading frame of reference, which is vitally
important as a continuing source of information and comparison: texts must always be
related to other texts, and judged or evaluated contrastively, even at the most subje ctive
level of students preferring one text rather than another. The enabling language which
helps them express judgments , and discuss, justify, challenge, interrupt, criticize ,
contradict, is at this stage a fundamental part of language acquisition: alrea dy beyond the
purely referential, it has become the language of choice and of processes of evaluation and
selection.
Attention must be given to verbal or visual elements , to the morphology involved
in punning wordplay , to the sounds evoked or exploited, to what is new to students as
well as to what is known, to what is apparent in a text and what might be hidden, to
cultural references. All of these, at the simplest, non -technical level, are areas of text
curiosity whi ch can be exploited. The teacher has to avoid explaining too much, standing
in front of the text. “What do you think it might refer to?” is always a more useful stimulus
that teacher -talking input. Thus the process becomes one of involving the student in t he
ramifications of the text, or some of them, developing skills in inference, cultural
recognition, questions of social status, register and point of view, all of which slowly build
into textual awareness through language awareness and knowledge of the la nguage and the
ideas, culture, politics, sensibilities, and language users it represents.

While using literary texts for characterization, as a teacher I always have to take
into consideration some cultural aspects like proverbs, idioms or formulaic exp ressions ,
things that can be found in a society but not in the other, customs, traditions and festivals,
superstitions, beliefs, connotative meaning, humour, taboos etc.

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To teach my students these differences I have always used with great success the
following texts and developed certain activities on them. Text A ( Arrow of God ) is a
translation, Text B ( Brideshead revisited ) draws on a rich oral tradition and C is taken from
a well -known British novel ( The Dragon’s Village .).

TEXT A
He beat his ogene GOME GOME GOME GOME… and immediately children’s voices took
up the news on all sides. Onwa atuo!… onwa atuo!… onwa atuo!… he put the stick that in
the iron gong and leaned it on the wall.
The little children in Ezeulu’s compound joined the rest in welcoming the moon.
Obiageli’s shrill voice stood out like a small ogene among drums and flutes. The Chief
Priest could also make out the voice youngest son Nwafo. The women were in the open,
talking.
“Moon”, said the senior wife, Matefi, “may your face meeting mine bring good
fortune.”
“Where is it? Asked Ugoye, the younger wife. I don’t see it. Or am I blind?”
“Don’t you see beyond the top of the ukwa tree? Not there. Follow my finger.”
“Oho, I see it. Moon, may your face meeting mine bring good fort une. But how is it
sitting? I don’t like its posture.”
“Why?” asked Matefi.
“I think it sits awkwardly – like an evil moon.”
“No,” said Matefi. “A bad moon does not leave anyone in doubt. Like the one
under which Okuata died. Its legs were up in the air .”
“Does the moon kill people?” asked Obiageli, togging at her mother’s cloth.
“What have I done to this child? Do you want to strip me naked?”
“I said does the moon kill people?”
“It kills little girls,” said Nwafo.
“I did not ask you, ant -hill nose. ”
“You will soon cry, Usa bulu Okpili .”
“The moon kills little boys
The moon kills ant -hill nose
The moon kills little boys”… Obiageli turned everything into a song.

TEXT B

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… Here, discordantly, in Eights Week, come a rabble of womankind, some hundreds
strong, twittering and fluttering over the cobbles and up the steps, sightseeing and
pleasure seeking, drinking claret cup, eating cucumber sandwiches; pushed in punts about
the river, herded in droves to the college barges; greeted in the Isis and in the Union by a
sudden display of peculiar, facetious, wholly distressing Gilbert -and-Sullivan badinage,
and by peculiar choral effects in the College chapels. Echoes of the intrude rs penetrated
every corner, and in my own college was no echo, but an original fount of the grossest
disturbance. We were giving a ball. The front quad, where I lived, was floored and tented;
palms and azaleas were banked around the porters lodge; worst of all, the don who lived
above me, a mouse of a man connected with the Natural Sciences, had lent his rooms for
Ladies’ Cloakroom, and printed notice proclaiming this outrage hung not six inches from
my oak.
No one felt more strongly about it than my scout.
“Gentlemen who haven’t got ladies are asked as far as possible to take their meals
out in the next few days,” he announced despondently.
“Will you be lunching in?”
“No, Lunt.”
“So as to give the servants a chance, they say. What a chance! I’ve g ot to buy a
pin-cushion for the Ladies’ Cloakroom. What do they want with dancing? I don’t see the
reason in it. There never was dancing before in Eights Week. Commem. Now is another
matter being in the vacation, but not in Eights Week, as if teas and a ri ver wasn’t enough.
If you ask me, sir, it’s all on account of the war. It couldn’t have happened but for that.”
For this was 1923 and for Lunt, as for thousands of others, things could never be the same
as they had been in 1914.

TEXT C
I hesitated to int rude on her sorrow, but I could not leave her in such a state. I approached
her slowly. She heard my footsteps and raised her head.
“Please, don’t go. I put my hands over her shoulders. I want to talk to you.”
“About what? She asked dully.
“A lot. Abo ut you and about myself.”
We sat opposite each other on either side of the grave, motionless and silent. She
looked at me closely. I wondered if my face showed that I, too, had cried out in the dark.
“Are you – are you the same as I?” she paused and wait ed for my answer.

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“You man – was I given to a man by my family and passed away like –“ I looked
down at the grave. “It was not quite the same, but something like that.”
Her interest was kindled.
“We sinners.” It was her soul speaking. Her face darkened and then cleared,
becoming younger and comelier. A struggle was going on within her: her duty to mortify
the flesh as she had been taught was the right thing to do, and the urgent instinctive will to
live and love.

While using the texts above I have crea ted the following activities to help them
understand the cultural differences they might encounter when I teach literary characters.
Personalising – before reading the texts I have always made associations with their
personal experiences. For example, as a pre -reading activity of Text A, I asked them to
think about a family gathering and describe why they met, the location, and the activities
they di d together and after that they had to read the text and identify the dissimilarities.
Another example is using the brainstorming activity before reading Text C. I asked the
students to think of a moment when someone was sad, to describe the situation and w hat
they did to help. After this, they read Text C and wrote who is sad and why.
Another way of teaching cultural awareness is by providing explanations and this
can be done by offering texts which have notes on the sides of the text. For example, in
Text A they meet a term unknown to them – a compound which means a special enclosed
space in an African village in which a collection of huts is held and wher e a man lives with
his wives and children – and the best way is to provide the definition for the students.
Another good example is to provide glosses like with Text B in which students encounter
two names, Gilbert and Sullivan , who are British, a playwrig ht and a composer, who wrote
a series of popular, satirical operettas.
Another successful activity was to ask students to infer cultural information and I
managed to do this by providing special questions designed to encourage students to talk
about cultur al differences. For example, for Text B, I ask questions like:
What is a scout at Oxford University?
a. a servant
b. a student who has to share his room with another senior student
c. a student’s close friend
For the term ogene in text A, I ask the following question:
An ogene is:

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a. a leather drum used to summon people?
b. an iron gong which is beaten with a stick?
c. musical instrument?
An activity that students enjoy doing is m aking cultural comparisons . They like
this kind of activities because they love learning new things about different cultures and
compare them with our own. For example, I ask students to think about a celebration held
only by Romania students, after that I draw a table and ask students to complete it.

Table 1 Cultural comparisons
Romania/Targoviste Oxford
Name of celebration
Reasons for holding it
Location
Ways of celebrations

After completing it, they read Text B and fill in the second column. As an after –
reading activity, I ask students to find five similarities and dissimilarities between the
celebrations and write them down.
Another way of teaching cultural differences and making comparisons is by
providing a lesson based on particular beliefs and superstitions and Text A – Arrow of
God. During the first activity, s tudents are asked to brainstorm on Romanian particular
beliefs or superstitions related to the moon. They have to write them down and discuss
them with a partner first and then with the whole class. Then, they read Text A and identify
the beliefs related t o the moon. They are asked to compare them.
A good method of teaching cultural differences is by making associations . The
students are asked to make free -associations around a particular word with special
connotations or figurative meanings. For Text A, t he word is birthday , in Text B, the moon
and in C Oxford . Then the students are asked if these words have different connotations in
Romanian language and if they take particular symbolic meanings in Romanian texts.
One particular activity that I use with g reat success is the one in which I provide
cultural background information as reading/listening comprehension . The students listen
to a mini -comprehension and I tell them that this gives them information about particular
cultural aspects of the text. After listening, they have to apply it to the text they have just

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heard. For example, after listening to a tape about the Chinese Revolution, they have to do
this for Text C, The Dragon’s Village .
Extension activities
After reading the texts, I ask them to thin k critically about them and, in this way;
they get personally involved in the cultural aspects of the texts. As follow -up activities I
use the next two:
a) Role -play: the students have to imagine that they are the students and dons at Oxford
University dur ing the days before most colleges admitted both male and female students.
They have to be aware of the fact that colleges were for men only, although there were
some colleges exclusively for women. They have to decide who will play the role of the
don and who will be the student. They have to debate whether or not the colleges should be
mixed. (Text B)
b) Discussion : the teacher brings into discussion if there are the advantages and
disadvantages of arranged marriages? The students debate upon the topic. (T ext C)
c) Project work : the teacher asks students to work in groups and do a poster presentation
in front of the class on the changes the British society underwent after World War I. (Text
B)

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3. 2. Modern ways of presenting the narrator’s point of view in terms of
teaching literary character

My students always ask me questions about literature and why they should read it.
As an answer, I use the third tendency in teaching literature and literary characters which is
the aesthetic approach. This aims to offer some answers to several questions: ‘ Why read
literature?’, ‘Why analyze literature and characters? ’ and ‘ How to analyze them? ’.
The clearest answer to their questions is the fact that is enjoyable and enriching.
Everybody should love a good story and a great character and many great works of
literature tell memorable stories of very interesting people. The main reason for reading is
that these stories provide an escape from our daily lives by transporting us to different
times and places. I always tell my students that it is very interestin g to live for a few hours
someone else’s life, understand their inner thoughts, experiences and feelings.
Unfortunately, there are many who do not read and, as teachers, we have to find ways of
making them take a closer steps to books. Every single page th ey read is a big step for their
future development.
The answer to the second question, ‘ Why analyze literature and characters? ’,
refers to the fact that literary analysis, in its broadest sense, is any attempt to understand a
literary text. Every time w e close a book and think about what we have read we are doing
some form of literary analysis. An analytical approach to literature means close
observation and reaching certain conclusions. It is about finding out models and becoming
aware of the character’ s intentions and actions.
Three elements are present when considering novels: the events of the book, the
author who made the book and the reader who is responding. Another way of making this
point is to say that in the events of the book, the reader mee ts the author. Of these two, it’s
the author that i s the most important. The author controls what a character is like; the
reader should try to respond to that character in a way that is true to what the author has
done.
One important thing to be conside red when analyzing a character is ‘ With what
purpose does a novelist present his character/characters in those manners? ’. A number of
answers can be given to this question, such as to create excitement a nd suspense, to
produce mystery; to show something im portant about the way people live their lives, to
arouse expectation. What all these points have in common is the relationship between the

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reader and what the novelist has written. Therefore, the author arranges events in order to
control what the reader t hinks and feels. What the reader thinks and feels will depend upon
how the author allows him or her to see what is going on. One can talk about the author
controlling the reader’s point of view. This is important because a novel is a specially
written work ; it always tries to encourage readers to look at things from a particular point
of view. This looking is always a matter of what is going on – the events, the characters –
and the angles from which they are seen.67
Whenever students read a novel, t hey ca n always ask themselves: ‘How is the
author inviting m e to understand the characters?’, ‘ What is the effect of this a nd how is it
achieved? ’. The name usually given to the business of how authors relate events to readers
is narration . Narration is a matter both of viewpoint and of attitude. I will present some
different ways in which stories are narrated and how I have been teaching them.
One important of teaching characters is by making students understand the role of
the author within a novel/story. One of the basic features of narration is grammatical. A
verb (a word that indicates an action or state of being) comes in three forms, known as the
first, second or third person. Here is the singular form of the verb ‘to write’:
First person : I write
Second person : you write
Third person : he/she/it/one writes
A story is usually sustained in the first and third of these. There have also been
narratives written in the second person. However, most narratives, are either first or third
person. Both of these offer different opportunities to the author.
In the novels in which the narrator, who refers to himself/herself as ‘I’, tells the
story in which he/she is directly involved. In this story, the reader’s point of view is limited
by what the narrator presen ts and wants to offer because he is subjective. The only inner
thoughts and sentiments, that first person narrator experiences, are his own. Because of all
these, the reader can see characters as they actually are, but only as they are seen through
the nar rator’s eyes. Therefore, there are some questions which need to be answered when
teaching first person narrative: ‘ Is the author a reliable source? Does he possess biases
and prejudices that can influence the ways he tells the story? ’

67 Gill, Richard, Mastering English Literature , p. 105 -106

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While teaching first person narrative , I commonly associated it with non -fictional
literary forms such as biographies, memoirs or diaries and through them I use modern
approaches of teaching literary characters through journals and diaries.
There are various activities and a spects of teaching the first person narration that
are important in shaping the students’ responses as active readers:
* The students feel very close to the narrator and this happens because they can access the
narrator’s mind and thoughts. They can see a nd, to a great extent, share what a first person
character feels. Empathy – putting oneself in someone else’s shoes to feel exactly the same
– is something they are bound to experience while reading a book in the first person
narrative. First person narrat ions allow the students to explore what it feels like to be
frightened, guilty, apprehensive, grateful or whatever. It also allows them to explore
extreme feelings due to a mental instability or a bad dream.
* In many cases, all that we know is what the n arrator knows. Reading first person
narrations is quite close to the way we know things in our own lives. We often know what
other people think from what they tell us or infer i t from what they do, but we do no t know
this in the same way in which we know w hat we ourselves think.
* Analyzing the narrator’s heart and mind allows students to explore mental change and
growth. When they follow a character through his or her life they can understand how they
adjust to experience. For example, Jane Eyre is not always the passionate and wilful girl of
her youth; she becomes disciplined and self -controlled as an adult.
* A very interesting case of a character maturing is Pip in Dickens’s Great Expectations .
The novel is about what makes a true gentleman. Pip believes that wealth, London society,
education and refined manners can make him one. But they do no t. Pip has to grow up so
that he can see through his snobbery and recognize his pretensions to gentility as false.
Real maturity of vision comes when he sees that the true gentleman’s values are those of
the kind, loving, generous and faithful Joe. But not all narrators change; Huck never does.
Even when he looks back on his life, there’s no difference between the judgments he
passes on himself now as opp osed to when the events took place.
* Many times it is stated that the reader is the one who understands a first person narrator
better than any other character. Usually this is true, but not entirely. Many characters
presented using third -person narratio n are better understood by students. This is
particularly true of the novels of George Eliot and Henry James. And we can feel very
close to characters so presented.

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* Another important fact for students is that they can discover and understand the world
from another viewpoint which can be different of their own. From my experience as a
teacher , this is one of the main attractions of first person narration. To follow Jane’s or
Pip’s or Huck’s narrative is to see the world from someone else’s perspective. Thi s may
even spill over into our lives; through reading we might begin to understand how the world
looks from someone else’s point of view.
There are many activities that can be used in classroom when teaching first person
narratives:
How would you describ e the way the story begins?
 dramatic
 conventional
 confusing
 startling …
Underline the sentences in which the narrator:
 address the reader directly
 assumes that he knows what the reader is thinking
How would you define the relation established between the reader and the narrator?
 disconcerting
 relaxed
 overpowering
 tense
 friendly
Tension is created in the story through several techniques: repetition (the repeated use
of any element of language – a sound, a word, a phrase, a clause or a sentence), syntax (the
way in which linguistic elements – words or phrases – are arranged to form grammatical
structures) and a crescendo effect (fictional devices used to bring a narrative to a climax).
 Underline examples of repetition
 Are the sentences in the text primar ily:
– long and flowing
– short and arrhythmic
The teacher can ask several questions as a post – reading activity like:
Who is the narrator/ the ‘I’ of the story?
Is the protagonist of the story referred to as ‘I’ (first person) / ‘He’ (third person)?
Does he relate events that he has personally experienced?

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Is he presented as likable?
Is the reader encouraged to sympathize with his views?
What do you find about the character as a person and as a storyteller?
Are there unbelievable or unlikely elements in his story telling?
Why did the author choose the first person narrative technique?
 to lend authenticity to his work
 to add humour and satirical bite
 to examine the psychological making of the narrator.
Rewrite the text from first person to third person narrative. What is lost and what is
gained?68
Another type of narrator that the students need to know while analyzing a literary
character is a third person narrator, when a story is told by someone outside the action
(because he refers to everybody in the story in the third person: ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘they’).
During this form of narration the person who is telling the story is like an observer who has
witnessed what has happened, but plays no part in the events. One type of third person
narrator is the omnis cient narrator who is a kind of god; he is all -knowing. He knows
everything about the fictional world he has created: he can read other characters’ innermost
thoughts; he is able to be in several places at once, he knows exactly what is going to
happen and how each char acter will behave. He is free to tell us much or as little as he
wishes. An omniscient third person narrator who interrupts the narrative and speaks
directly to the readers is called intrusive69. Other writers or theoreticians call it editorial
omniscience. This kind of narrator may use these intrusions to summarize, philosophize,
and moralize or to guide the reader’s interpretation of events. This kind of narrator was
particularly popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
One of the opportunities third person narration offers a novelist is degrees of
knowledge. As a teacher I ask students: ‘ What does the narrator choose to know about the
minds of his or her characters?’. This is a very different situation from that of the first
person narrator. Wi th first person narration, it is only the narrator’s mind that can be
directly known; in third person narration, the novelist ha s a choice. Some novelists do not
choose to know very much. Hardy, for instance, often writes as if the narrator knows no
more t han an observer or a passer -by would (in fact, he often brings in travellers who look
at the character and then pass on).

68 Delaney, Denis &Ward, Ciaran & Fiorina, Carla Rho, Fields of Vision ,p. E101 -102
69 Idem, p. A55 .

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When an author uses a limited omniscient narrator ( also selective omniscience),
he chooses a character in the story and tells the sto ry from his perspective. This character
becomes the centre of revelation and the reader sees the events and other characters from
his viewpoint. If the narrator moves back and forth between an omniscient viewpoint and
the viewpoint of the focal character, we refer to the narrative technique as ‘free indirect
style’. Free indirect style is perhaps the most widely -used mode of narration in modern
fiction. Limited omniscient narration involves the reader more than pure omniscient
narration. By associating the narrating voice with one of the characters in the story, the
author gives it an identity and therefore makes it more interesting for the reader.70
Here is a list of activities that I have used during my literature classes when I
analyzed the third person n arratives with my students:
Make a list of the actions the character takes.
Find a line reference for each emotion and explain its origin.
What adjectives would you use to describe the character?
Is the protagonist of the story referred to as ‘I’ or ‘he/she’?
Does the narrator show the characters through dialogue/ monologue/ interior
monologue or does he tell the reader about characters when describes their
personality, appearance, feelings, motives for their behaviour?
Identify the lines where the narrator:
 shows character through dialogue
 tells the reader about the character’s feelings
Rewrite the text in the first person narrative. What are the differences?
In some novels there are multiple narrators. For instance, in Emily Bronte’s
Wuthering Heights the whole of the book is narrated by Lockwood, a visitor who knows
very little about the customs of the wild part of England in which the novel is set. He is the
primary narrator. However, for much of the time the secondary narrator, Nelly, relates the
incidents. She has known most of the main characters from their childhood, so is able to
give Lockwood a broad view of events. But because she was not present when some of the
incidents took place, she has to depend upon tertiary narrators – Cathy, He athcliff and
Isabella among others. Some are very minor figures – servants in the house – yet they all
contribute something.

70 Delaney, Denis & Ward, Ciaran & Fiorina, Carla Rho, Fields of Vision , p. A56 .

89
It is important to make students aware of what the effects of this technique are. One
effect is that we see the world of Wutherin g Heights as a community. The characters in it
owe their identity in part to the fact that other characters know who they are and what has
happened to them. This is an important antidote to the view that Wuthering Heights is a
book of rampant individualism .
The other point about multiple narrations in Wuthering Heights is that it opens up
an issue that is often present in books that employ this narrative mode. This issue is that of
the relativity of viewpoint. Because characters are different and because they see different
parts of the story, the issue is raised as to how trustworthy are the various narrations. The
students decide that what they tell us is trustworthy, but many of the narrators also give us
their views. It’s much more difficult to know wha t to make of these. Should we, for
instance, take the protestations of Cathy and Heathcliff as the truth or should we rely more
on the solid and sensible Nelly when we come to judge what has gone on? The point is that
because the narration is multiple ther e is no way of coming to a final decision. What we
have are different perspectives.
A very good method of teaching the narrator’s point of view was by creating Point
of View Flash Cards –a set of note cards to help students understand narrative
perspectiv e. These cards should include an example on one side and the name and
definition on the other. Thoughts and feelings should be underlined in the examples.
(Annex 3 )
To practice these points of view, I use the lesson called Point of View Practice –
during which students pass around copies of books and attempt to identify the narrator’s
perspective. The teacher chooses the 8 books the students will be passing around. It is
helpful if there are multiple copies of each book so that students may work in grou ps.
(Annex 4 )
When the story seems not to have a narrator, the author uses a dramatic or
objective point of view. This narrative technique can be understood as if there is a video
camera that was left running. In these stories, the narrator does not interf ere between the
story and the reader/student. It seems as if he is not present and steps aside, allowing the
story to present itself through setting, action and dialogue. The most important fact I had to
teach my students was that the reader cannot enter t he minds of the characters because they
are presented with material which the student alone must analyze and interpret. The
narrator is the one that decides when to switch the video camera on and off and what
material to present and choice will obviously a ffect the reader’s response. The dramatic

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point of view is widely used by modern writers because of the apparently impersonal and
objective way it presents experience. My students liked this point of view very much.
The attempt done by a writer to repres ent the conscious and subconscious thoughts
and impressions in the mind of the character is called stream of consciousness . Through
this technique, the reader is transported inside the character’s mind, where he can perceive
the world of the story through the thoughts and senses of the character. The character is
called the focalizer. The famous writers James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and William
Faulkner were the ones that developed a stream of conscious technique called interior
monologue at the beginning of the 20th century. The term is adopted from drama, where
monologue refers to the part in a play where an actor expresses his inner thoughts aloud to
the audience. In fiction, an interior monologue is an extended presentation of a character’s
thoughts, not i n the seemingly helter -skelter order of a stream of consciousness, but in an
arrangement as if the character were speaking out loud to himself, for us to overhear.71
To teach this I have used Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce, where the students
receive a transcript of one of the character’s thoughts which contains no commas, full stops
or capital letters. I have conducted several activities to help my students interpret this
interior monologue. To do the se, here is a list of activities that can be used in classroom
when analyzing stream of consciousness narratives:
Read the following fragment from the novel Ulysses by James Joyce.
Molly, Leopold Bloom’s wife, is lying in bed and thinking of the day when h e asked her to
marry him. (…)The sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the
rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to
propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leap year
like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I
was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a woman ’s body yes that was one
true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you toda y yes that was why I liked him
because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round
him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I
wouldn’t answer first only looked out over t he sea and the sky I was thinking of so many
things he didn’t know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain
Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they

71 Kennedy, X. J. & Gioia, Dana, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama , p. 24.

91
called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his
white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and
their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the Jews and the Arabs
and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl
market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and
the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the
carts of the bu lls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors
all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and
Ronda with the old windows of the Posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to
kiss the iron and the wine shops half open at night and the castanets and the night we
missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that
awful deep down torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the
glorious sunsets and the fig trees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets
and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the Jessamine and
geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the moun tain yes
when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and
how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and
then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me w ould I yes to say yes
my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so
he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said
yes I will Yes.72

* After reading, the students are asked to say what they thought of on their way to
school and specify any associations of ideas/ sensations/ memories.
* The students are then told to focus on the character of Molly. Is she
predominantly intellectual or sensual? Find images in her monologue which appeal to each
of the five senses.
* Then they focus on the description of Gibraltar. Find references to colours/
flowers/ ethnic groups/ animals/ birds/ place names.
* Students are told to express which images in the description suggest heat/ joy/
exoticism/ eroticism?

72 Joyce, James, Ulysses , p.95 -96

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* While examining the structure of the text, the students have to identify the units of
meaning which are connected:
 by and
 by because
 by yes
 by the juxtaposition of ideas/ images. Find examples of each.
* An activity has to be done on the use of repetition (the repeated use of any element of
language – a sound, a word, a phrase, a clause or a sentence). The students are asked about
the word s/ phrases/ sounds that are repeated.
Students have to say if the ‘action’ in the text is present ed from outside or inside
the mind of the character. They also have to write five lines commenting upon this.
Then, students have to rewrite a short passage from a more traditional novel using
this technique. The students are asked to try to write their th oughts like the character and
read them in front of the class (writing activity).

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3. 3. Modern techniques of teaching literary characters

One of the principles of literary study that what we call form and content is that
they cannot be separated. This is as true in nov els as it is in poetry. You canno t split off the
sounds and rhy thms of a poem from its meaning and nor can you talk about the way a
novel is written in isolation from what it is about. In fact, the indivisibility of thes e two
things is present in the language we use about novels. The word ‘viewpoint’ can mean both
the angle from which something is looked at and the attitude of the one who does the
looking. Therefore, whenever you think about how a novel is narrated, you w ill also be
thinking about the attitude the author (and the reader) is taking up towards the characters
and events. All you have to remember is that the attitude will emerge in and through the
narration. The point may be made in the following way. The reader thinks something about
a character because the mode of narration has made such thinking possible.
Many of my students have asked me what the difference between character and
characterization is. A distinction has to be drawn: a character is a person in a literary work;
characterization is the way in which a character is created.
When I analyze characters in fiction together with my students, I always ask them
the following questions:
 What is the character’s relationship to the plot: do they have a major part or a
minor one?
 To what degree are they developed: are they complex or one -dimensional
characters?
 What is their growth during the entire story: do they change their personalities a
lot or to they remain at the same stage they are at the beginni ng?
While I took these things into discussion, I always teach my students the following
terms:
The protagonist is the central character of the plot and without him/her the story
wouldn’t exist. In all the stories there is an antagonist , the character agai nst whom the
protagonist struggles but in many novels this does not have to be is human. For example, it
may be the natural environment in which the protagonist lives, the society or even death.
Sometimes the students make confusion between the terms pro tagonist and
antagonist with ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ because many main characters are a mixture of good

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and evil elements. Other characters in a story can be called major or minor characters,
according to their importance in the story.
Round characters , like real people, have complex, multidimensional personalities.
They are able to show emotions, they possess deep intelligence and they grow and change
during the entire plot. Main characters are usually round.
Flat characters are different from the flat ones because they have only one
characteristic. They usually possess bad features like envy, jealousy, endless optimist.
However, I always tell my students that the term ‘flat’ should not be mistaken by
‘insignificant’ or ‘badl y drawn’. Some highly memorable characters, particularly in
satirical or humorous novels, can be defined as flat, for example the miser Scrooge in
Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol .
Dynamic characters have a development within the plot as a result of t he
experience they have. The most remarkable characters can be found in initiation novels
which tell stories of young people who grow into adults, for example Mark Twain’s
Huckleberry Finn . Main characters are usually dynamic.
Unlike dynamic ones, static characters cannot be touched by the events of the plot.
They are not able to learn from their experiences and as a result they do not grow. Usually
this type of character is a minor one, but there are writers who turn a static character into
the protagonis t, the main reason being the analysis of this type of personality.

To teach all these, I use many activities like the following:
* I ask my students to complete The Character Analysis W orksheet based on a certain
character ( Annex 5 )
* Another activity is to use graphic organizers – Characterization Bubbles – to analy ze the
characters ( Annex 6 )
* To discuss about a character I use another worksheet – Literary character’s silhouette –
which students like very much ( Annex 7 )
* To compare the characters I u se the worksheet Comparing two literary ch aracters
(Annex 8 ).
While analyzing a literary character, it is also important the way in which the
author wants to present his character. For this aspect, I always teach my students two basic
methods: telling and showing .
Telling means the direct intervention and opinions of the writer and he always
interrupts the narrative to comment on the character’s personality, thoughts or actions. A

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good example of the telling technique that I use in class is the one in thi s short extract from
D. H. Lawrence’s novel Sons and Lovers . The writer describes his character in the
following way:
Arthur Morel was growing up. He was a quick, careless, impulsive boy, a good
deal like his father. He hated study, made a great moan if he had to work, and escaped as
soon as possible to his sport again.73
When the writer takes a step back and lets the character reveal himself, he uses the
technique of showing . The author’s voice is silent. I tell my students that they have to
discover th e character gradually that they have to be very attentive and receptive to use
their knowledge and good memory to reach conclusions about the character’s identity.
Modern writers have the tendency to use second over the first, but most writers use a
mixtur e of both methods.
During my teaching of character, I use fragments from novels in which the students
can find out many things about a character’s feelings, attitudes and values and by
examining what he does during the plot. The most important thing I teach them is to find a
way of understanding the motives for the character’s actions and look for the hidden forces
that make him behave in a certain way. I ask them ques tions like: Does the character
behave different from the other characters? What can you learn by comparing the
protagonist to some of the other less important characters?
Useful information about the characters can be provided by the time and place in
which the story unfolds. My students are presented fragments of novel from different
historical period and they are asked to identify the way in which the characters act and if
there is any connections between them. Another important aspect is the characters ’
physical surrounding (where they grew up, where they choose to live) because this helps
them understand their psychological grown. Another helpful insight is given by the social
setting. To teach this, I use the novel Wuthering Heights, written by Emily Bronte. While
teaching this particular novel, I ask students to: Name the characters that share the values
associated with their social background. Which character rejects it? I also draw my
students’ attention upon the characters’ names because these can provide clues to their
personalities. Emily Bronte’s choice of Heathcliff as a name for the hero of her novel
Wuthering Heights conveys the character’s wild, rugged, almost primitive nature. (Heath =
wild, uncultivated land; cliff = high rocky land that us ually faces the sea)

73 Lawrence, D. H., Son and lovers , p.40

96
Our parents have always told us no to judge a person by his/her appearance, but in
novels these judges can provide important information about a character’s personality. For
example, the clothes the protagonists wear in Wuthering Heig hts indicate his social and
economic status. Details of a character’s physical appearance may prove useful in
determining his age and a general state of his physical and emotional hea lth. (Annex 9 )
In order for my students to learn characterization better , I have asked them to work
in groups and make school boards with all the information provided above. These school
boards were presented in class and then hung against the walls of the Phonic laboratory
where the literature classes are often held. In this way, the students have them in their
visual contact.
Anothe r school board was done using the following questions, which are of great help
when analyzing literary protagonists:
 Is he a major or a minor character? Is he the protagonist/ antagonist of the story?
 Is he a round or a flat character?
 Is he dynamic or static ?
 Does the author reveal the character through showing or telling , or does he use
both techniques?
 What does the way the character speaks reveal about his character?
 What information does the way the character behaves provide?
 Is he similar to or dif ferent from other characters in the story? How does he relate
to the other characters?
 Has the setting shaped the character’s personality? Does the setting reflect his
mood or emotional state?
 Does the character’s name have any importance, relevance or ass ociations?
 What kind of information does the author provide about the character in question?
 Do you learn anything of the character’s inner life or just factual or superficial
information?
 How does the writer use language? Consider sentence structure, voca bulary, use of
imagery, and other effects.
 What can you detect of the author’s attitude to the character?74
Some other set of questions to answer when analyzing a literary character would be
‘Where does the story take place?’, ‘What kind of world do the cha racters live in? ’ The

74 Delaney, Denis & Ward, Ciaran & Fiorina, Carla Rho, Fields of Vision , p. A42 -44

97
term we use to refer to the general locale and the historical time in which a story occurs is
the setting . The term is also used to refer to the particular physical location in which an
episode or scene within the story takes place. The general setting of a novel may be, for
example, a large city like London, while the setting of the opening scene may be the
kitchen of the main character.
Some settings are relatively unimportant. They serve simply as a decorative
backdrop helping the reader to visualize the action and adding authenticity to the story.
Other settings are closely linked to the meaning of the work: the author focuses on
elements of setting to create atmosphere or mood, or the setting plays a major role in
shaping the cha racters’ identity and destiny. Broadly speaking, there is a direct ratio
between the attention given to the setting and its importance in the total work. If the setting
is sketched briefly, we can assume that it is of little importance, or that the writer wishes us
to think that the action could take place anywhere and anytime. If, on the other hand, the
passages describing the setting are extensive and highly developed, or are written in
connotative or poetic language, we can assume that the setting is bei ng used for more
profound or symbolic purposes.
Some of the main functions of setting are:
 The setting used as a mirror – These settings are used to reflect the character’s
moods and emotions. For example, barren landscapes mirror the characters’ despair and
desperation or stormy weather may provide a suitable backdrop for emotional turmoil.
 The setting used as an antagonist – The setting of the story usually has the purpose
of shaping the characters’ personalities and destinies. Someone who was born and raised in
a slum is more likely to have a different vision on life than someone who grew up in the
countryside, in close contact with nature. The characters are the direct products of the
environment they grew up in.
 The setting used to reveal character – The way in which a character understands and
sees the setting can tell more about his state of mind. If the character thinks that an urban
landscape is desolate he actually thinks this about himself. Many writers make use of the
outer world setting to p resent us an insight into the character’s inner world.
 The setting used to reinforce theme – In this case the setting is used to clarify the
plot of the novel. For example, a solitary house built in hostile surroundings can express
the theme of character’s fight with the environment.

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 The setting placed in time – To understand the setting better, I ask my students to
be attentive to the historical period, time of year and time of day presented in a story. If the
story is taking place usually durin g night, the author wants to create a gloomy, mysterious
atmosphere and the character has a similar personality.
 The social setting – Like the physical and temporal setting, the social setting may be
relatively unimportant or it may play a determining rol e in a novel or story. In many novels
characters are presented as products of their social class, and many authors have explored
the themes of conformity to or rebellion against the values and mores of specific social
settings.
When analyzing setting in o rder to analyze character, I use the following questions:
 Can you identify the setting of the work in time and space?
 How is it? Briefly sketched or described in detail?
 On what are the descriptions of the setting based on? Visual images or something
else?
 Whose characters eyes are used to present it? Why does the author use that
particular character? What can be understood about his personality?
 Does the setting influence the way the characters behave?
 At what time of day/ year does most of the action ta ke place? Is this relevant for the
character’s analysis?75

75 Delaney, Denis & Ward, Ciaran & Fiorina, Carla Rho, Fields of Vision , p. A35 -36

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3.3.1 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through fairy tales

Nowadays students use computers and media almost all the time and this thing is
of vital to importance for me as teacher. I have always tried to turn technology into my best
friend while teaching the literary character in a modern way. Even if they have the
tendency of becoming addicted to computer games, they also like using internet to watch
movies or to read books online. These activities have boosted the book sales and have
turned people to reading again, mainly because these movies have be en massively
promoted , the appearance of computer games, release of soundtracks, DVD’s, written
blogs which are personal public journals , the invention of blooks: serialized books on
weblogs, literary and movie sites on the internet, the MOO (Multi -Object Oriented) on -line
chat rooms that enable communication among book and film fans worldwide mostly in
English . Even though fantasy has been label led as an escape literature, nevertheless it
possesses deep roots in reality, offering archetypal, everlasting vistas of the human
experience, giving the modern man, a chance to keep his humanity, to reflect upon the past
and hopefully learns his lesson in building his future. Authors of children’s literature face
a challenge that, while not identical, is quite similar to the once facing ESOL material
writers: Their possibilities of conveying meaning are inhibited by their readers’
incomplete control over the written code and relatively limited vocabulary.76
Some teachers see this as a big disadvantage in teaching literature, but I have tried
my best to turn it into an advantage. I have used repetition during my classes. For example
if my students did not know the meaning of some literary terms I have planned c ertain
online activities (prezi presentations, interactive lessons) in order to use them. Another
useful thing I used, were the visual imagery, for example pictures that supported the
informational content ( Annex 10 and Annex 11 ).

Sometimes my students complain about the fact that texts can be quite difficult for
their understanding. In such cases, texts can be adapted for their English knowledge,
finding a variety of student -centred tasks in Pre -reading, While -reading and Post -Reading
Activities. When teaching literature, the teacher’s role is that of a guide and resource
provider who constantly tries to stimulate his students to make them get involved actively
into reading and ask t hemselves questions related to the texts and discover their own

76 Newman, M., Towards and ESOL Literature , p.9

100
responses, providing only the basic principles of interpretation. The students’ aesthet ic and
educational growth prove the value of literature which also stimulates the learners’
initiative an d awareness to studying.77
To help them with this problem, I used children’s texts in the beginning. I used
stories and fairytales, mainly because they were not specifically written for native speakers
and because they already know many of them. There are c ertain activities that I have used
while using children’s texts in class:
• Parallel reading – this method can be used to compare a traditional story with a modern
one.
• Reading or listening for specific detail – the students are provided with grids the y have to
fill in .
• Reading strategies – deducing meaning from context.
• Discourse analysis – finding the problem and the solution inside the tale. The students
might be put to rewrite a new fairytale using the problem/solution pattern.
• Identifying the role and influence of the narrator on the reader . Students are given the
tale without the narrator´s statements to analyse how they can alter the reader´s opinion
and point of view.
• Vocabulary :
(i) contrasting different registers: informal (e.g. do a bunk) and formal (e.g. upon)
(ii) phrasal verbs e.g. get off/ break in (these could be classified in the semantic
field of crime)
(iii) collocations: house -proud wife/ brimming full
• Mini -reading aloud to develop students’ awareness of intonation, rhythm and stress.
• Discussions : role of parents and children, the family, 'manners.'
The text is short and funny and extremely adaptable for many different levels and
activities. This is ultimately what the teacher needs when trying to find suitable material.
Texts that lend themselves to a variety of different approaches are what we as teachers
should be looking for.78
Activity 1
Pre-reading
1. The teacher asks students to talk about Little Red Riding Hood and then the following
questions:

77 Newman, M., Towards and ESOL Literature , p.10
78 www.developingteachers.com/articles_tchtraining/litemma2.htm

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* Do you know who the characters in the tale are?
The teacher gives students a handout and asks them to identify the characters from
the tale by reading the words in the box. They have to place the correct ones in the basket
and the wrong ones in the dustbin.

a woodsman, a hunter, a fox, Little Red Riding Hood, a mother, Sleeping
Beauty, a fairy, a godmother, a wolf, a fireman, a dwarf, a granny, a
werewolf, two wicked stepsisters, a stepmother

Figure 1 Basket or Trash?

*Do you think you know the story well enough?
The students receive handouts with the drill and they have to match a – f with 1 – 6
to complete the sentences about the story.

Table 2 – Little Red Riding Hood – exercise
a. Little Red Riding Hood wore….
b. Her grandmother lived…
c. She was ill and needed…
d. Little Red Riding Hood’s mother told
her…
e. Little Red Riding hood carried…
f. As she set out on her way through the
woods, the girl met…
1. far away in the woods.
2. some care and attention.
3. a beautiful red velvet cap which her
granny had given her as a gift.
4. a basket with some cakes which Little
Red’s mother had baked.
5. a wicked wolf.
6. never to leave the path to avoid the
dangers of the woods .

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*After completing the task, the students have to write what happens next. When
finishing the task, students are asked to compare what they wrote with their desk mate’s
writing. Are the endings similar or different ?
*Students are divided into groups and each group is assigned a character: Little Red
Riding Hood , Granny, the wolf and the woodsman. They are asked to interview them.

While -reading
The students are asked to read the following text The Wolf’s Tale written by Louise
Cooper and answer some questions based on it.
“You all know the story of Little Red Riding Hood, right? Well, I'm sure of one
thing. You don't know what really happened. No one does, except me. I know people don't
believe in fairy tales these days, but the Riding Hood story happ ens to be true. I should
know. You see, I'm the wolf. And the rest of them —the girl, the woodsman, all the other
people —they got it wrong. All wrong.
They think I killed and ate old Granny. I didn't. I wouldn't have harmed a hair of
her head, but when I tried to tell them so, of course they couldn't understand me. So the
woodsman cut me open. Oh, how that hurt. I can remember the pain; it was horrible. Even
now I have nightmares about it, and I shudder and cry out in my sleep, until I wake up
screaming.
They didn't kill me, you see. They thought they did, but they didn't. I can't be killed
that way. It has to be something else. A silver bullet, that's the only thing that will work. A
silver bullet, for a werewolf.
Because that's what I really am. I was att acked by a werewolf one night, years ago.
It bit me, and infected me with its curse. I'd give anything to be free. I'd rather die than live
like this, changing every full moon into a monster that no one can control. I'd give
anything to be what I used to b e. A harmless human being. A little old lady, who was kind
to everyone. Red Riding Hood thought she knew all about her dear granny.
But she didn't. No one does. Only me . . . and, now, you. ”79
1. Why couldn’t they kill the wolf?
2. How do you think a wolf can be killed?
3. Writing activity – group work: Create your own ending.

79 Cooper, Louise, The wolf ’s tale

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The students are asked to think of a possible conclusion to this story. They can
write or even draw a comic strip. Then the students read some statements about the tale
and decide if they are true (T) or false (F).
1. Little Red Riding Hood is the narrator of the story.
2. Riding Hood’s real story is known by the wolf.
3. The wolf in the story is in fact a werewolf.
4. Old Granny was killed and eaten by the wolf.
5. The woodsman killed the werewolf.
6. A werewolf can only be killed by a silver bullet.
7. A werewolf attacked Little Red Riding Hood.
8. A curse is something that may change your life.
9. The werewolf seems very happy with its life.
10. Little Red Riding Hood knows her granny very well.

After that , the students answer the following questions.
1. Who tells the story?
2. Why does the wolf have nightmares?
3. Do you like the wolf/werewolf? Why/ Why not?

Post-reading
The students can be offered o variety of activities they can do to end this activity.
1. They are asked to write a mystery story about werewolves. They have to pretend
they meet the werewolf and ask him as many questions as they can think of.
2. They can pretend they are Little Red Rid ing Hood. They have just m et the
werewolf and think there i s something strange about it that reminds her of her Granny. She
has to tell her Mum what happened and what she thinks about that.
3. The students have to suppose that Little Red Riding Hood meets Robin Hood in
the woods. They are asked to write the dialogue between them.
4. The students have to think about 5 pieces of advice Snow White would give
Little Red Riding Hood.

Activity 2
One of my students’ favourite writers is Tolkien. He is the father of modern epic or high
fantasy who created a believable ‘secondary universe’ of his own in his masterpiece The

104
Lord of the Rings . He said that fantasy appeals to all minds and it is a path to knowledge.
Tolkien brilliantly mixed various elements from myth s, legends and fairy tales in his
trilogy.
I have used his masterpiece in class many times because students like the movie so
much, because they know the plot and characters.
From my point of view, the most successful activity I used is called Knowledge
Chart: ‘Know, Want to Know, Learned’ . This activity is based on a graphic organizer
which helps students share their information about the story and ask research questions
which they will answer during a unit of study. The role of the teacher is to check in
various ways what students already know in terms of notions, vocabulary etc. After that,
students provide feedback on what they want to know . In the last rubric, students write at
the end of the lesson. They complete it with the new things they have learned . Example:

Table 3 Knowledge chart

Activity 3
A nice activity for s tudents is based on watching Winnie the Pooh – Character
Traits video on YouTube. After watching each character, pause the video and the teacher
asks the students:
*What are some character traits for this character?
*How do you think this character feels?
*Why do you think they feel like this?
During this lesson, the class is going to explore the characters from Little Red Riding
Hood and Hansel and Gretel . KNOW WANT TO KNOW LEARNED
The books are trilogies. The
characters are elves,
wizards, trolls, dragons etc.
They always have happy
endings. The bad characters, the Orcs.
Tolkien’ specific influences:
fairy tales and Scandinavian
myths etc.

105
The teacher gives the following instruction s:
 Retell the story of Little Red Riding Hood . Ask the students to vote on which of
these characters they like the best and encourage them to explain their choice.
 Project the character profile template for the character that received the most votes
on the board. Complete the templa te together as a class.( Annex 12 )
 Retell the story Hansel and Gretel .
 Place the students into pairs. Provide each pair with a charac ter profile template for
Hansel , Gretel or the Wicked Witch. Ask the students to complete the appearance
section only.
 Encourage the students to share their ideas about their chosen character’s
appearance. As the students listen to their class mates, allow them to add to what
they have written.
 Allow time for the students to complete the rest of the worksheet for their chosen
character. Monitor and support the students as required.
As a feedback, the teacher encourages each pair to share their i deas about each
character from the story. Record these ideas on the board.

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3.3.2 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through journals

Writing journals can be a very attractive and important part in teaching English .
This technique is most important in teaching literature because students must be
encouraged to write some journals throughout the study of the piece s of literature, detailing
their own reactions and feelings to certain literary characters or situations .
There are several activities that I use while teaching characters through journals:
 Keep a journal to record the chronological sequence of events
 Keep a diary of one of the major characters, recording in a diary form what s/he is
doing and how she/he is feeling .
 Select a major character and keep a journal of his/her development, noting scenes
that illustrate character traits, how the author’s use of language develops the
character, how the character interacts with other characters, how the character
relates to the themes.
 Have students review their character journals and consider their character's
emotions and personality through the course of the play. On a separate piece of
paper, have they write down the three or four traits and emotions that they feel best
describe their character.
 Introduce the idea that colours can carry symbolic meanings. If necessary review
the definition of symbol: an object that represents or suggests an idea or concept.
As a class, generate a list of colours and the emotions with whi ch they might be
associated. For example: black may represent anger; yellow, joy or happiness, and
so on.
 Ask students to return to the traits they wrote down in Step 1 and select two or
three key colours to represent the emotions and personality of the c haracter they
have selected. (For example, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet is violent and impulsive,
so bright red, black, deep green or even dark purple might be appropriate colou rs to
represent his personality ). Instruct students to create a design for the co ver of their
journal using these colours.
 Encourage students to embellish their journals using any available art materials.
Remind them that whatever materials they choose should somehow represent their
character's persona.

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 Invite students to create a ske tch of their character for the cover of their journal that
they feel best represents that character's overall persona.

Double -Entry Journals

When teaching students characters, I have used a double -entry journal to keep track
of the studied vocabulary, but not only. These journals offer them the chance to express
their opinions on a certain character, to find a justification for them , to understand better
the book they read and study. The double -entry journal represents a two -column diary. In
the left column, titled “Quotes”, students must write a paragraph from the studied literary
text, a quotation or a concept, the students want to enlarge upon, understand or question. In
the right column, titled “Reflections”, students analyze upon the paragraph, they present
their own ideas and believes. Double -entry journals offer pupils a way of interaction
directly with the text they study , by analyzing it and writing ideas based on what they think
and feel related to the text they read . Students analyze the information and connect it with
the text, developing their reading comprehension skills .

Table 4 Double entry journal

Activity
1. Students are asked to write a double entry journal after they read The Tragedy of
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark , by William Shakespeare and have done previous classes on

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this topic. Students use this graphic organizer to improve their reading comprehension of
the literary character, in order to analyze and draw conclusions.

Table 5 – Graphic Organizer – Hamlet80

Quotations Reflections and Analysis
"If there be any good think to be done/
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,/
Speak to me." (I, i, 130 -2) Horatio; he doubted the existence of the King's
ghost, but then he sees the ghost himself and begs
the ghost to explain his presence. The ghost leaves,
and Horatio wants Hamlet to see the ghost because
he thinks the ghost will speak to Hamlet. Horatio
seem s like the ghost is a good friend.
"…But to persevere/
In obstinate condolement is a course/
Of impious stubbornness, 'tis unmanly
grief,(I, ii, 92 -4) The King; he thinks that Hamlet has been mourning
his father's death too long. He wants Hamlet to
recognize him as the new King and Hamlet's
mother as the King's wife. This seems strange. Why
would the king rush Hamlet's mourning? I don't
think a child can take too long in mourning a
parent's death.
"Within a month,/
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous t ears/
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,/
She married –O most wicked speed…" (I, ii,
153-6) Hamlet; he is disgusted and angry that his mother
remarried his father's brother so quickly after his
father's death. I can't blame Hamlet. That would
make me angry, too. I wonder if Hamlet will do
anything about that?
"Let not the royal bed of Denmark be/
A couch for luxury and damned incest./
But howsom ever thou pursues this act,/
Tain not thy mind, not let they sould contrive/
Against thy soul contrive/
Against thy mother aught." (I, v, 82 -6) Ghost; Hamlet meets his father's ghost. The ghost
tells Hamlet that his brother (Hamlet's uncle) fell in
love with his wife (Hamlet's mother) and killed
him. The ghost tells Hamlet to avenge his death, but
that he s houldn't do anything against his wife
(Hamlet's mother).

80 http://www.essay.uk.com/essays/education/essay -cultivating -students -interest -in-reading/

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Another activity that I use during my literary classes when I want my students to
use characterization through diaries is the following:
I present students the following situation: Imagine you are at Stonehenge during
the day when Tess was captured. You have to identify yourselves with Tess or with Angel
Clare.
Students receive the following instructions : Write a last entry in your diary . By
doing these, they have to follow these steps:
1. Decide upon one character you want to identify yourself with, think about what you
feel.
2. Talk about those feelings with your partner until I say stop.
3. Start writing, keep your pen moving and do not stop the motion for about five
minutes. Don't worry about your s pelling mistakes the words you do no t know.
4. Read the draft and make the necessary changes, if any.
5. Go to your partner and read him/her what you have written. He/she reads his/hers
to you.
6. Note down what you like the most and want to hear more about. Tell y our partner
about it.
7. Work on the preliminary version again and improve it according to the previous
discussion.
8. Put it aside and write again. Write for about fifteen minutes. Be more careful with
your spelling.
9. Read again and analyze your piece of writing .
10. Exchange the diary entry with your partner and make some more final comments.
11. Write again if necessary.
When the activity ends, the teacher conducts a discussion based on how they felt to
be in the character’s shoes. The teacher can ask students to prese nt their creative writings.
From my point of view, this activity is quite challenging for students, but it is also lively
and stimulating. The students are able to re -create and internalize the characters’ feelings,
actions through self -reflection. Reading and writing skills are developed in an integrated
way, and the students are also encouraged to think and communicate freely on a given
subject.

110
3.3.3 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through trials

Mock trial based on Tess D’Urbervilles
Another activity based on Tess D’Urbervilles is the one in which students are ask ed
to read the following text: From Phase the fifth: The Woman Pays
[…] When he spoke it was in the most inadequate, commonplace voice of the many varied
tones she had heard from him Tess!'
́′Yes. dearest ′.
′Am I to believe this? From your manner I am to take it as true. O you cannot be out of
your mind! You ought to be! Yet you are not … My wife, my Tess – nothing in you warrants'
such a supposition as that?' I am not out of my mind, she said′
′And yet – He looked vacantly at her, to resume with dazed sense: 'Why didn't you tell me
before? Ah yes, you would have told me, in a way – but I hindered you, I remember!′
These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble1 of the surface while
the depths remained paralyzed. He turned away, and bent over a chair. Tess followed him
to the middle of the room where he was and stood there staring at him with eyes that did
not weep Presently she slid down u pon her knees beside his toot, and from this position she
crouched in a heap.
′In the name of our love, forgive me!' she whispered with a dry mouth. 'I have forgiven you
for the same!'
′And. as he did not answer, she said again′
′Forgive me as you are forg iven! I forgive you Angel.'
′You – yes. You do.'
'O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case You were one person: now you are another
My God – how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque – prestidigitation' as that!'
He paused, contemplating his definiti on: then suddenly broke into horrible laughter – as
unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell
′Don't – don't! It kills me quite, that!' she shrieked. 'O have mercy upon me – have mercy′.
He did not answer; and. sickly white, she jumped up.
'Angel! Angel! W hat do you mean by that laugh?' she cried out. Do you know what this is
to me?' He shook his head.
′I have been hoping, longing praying to make you happy! I have thought what joy it will be
to do it. What an unworthy wife I shall be if I do not! That's what I have felt, Angel!' 'I
know that.'

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'I thought, Angel, that you loved me – me, my very self! If it is I you do love, O how can it
be that you look and speak so? It frightens me! Having begun to love you, I love you for
ever – in all changes, in all di sgraces, because you are yourself I ask no more. Then how
can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?
'I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you.'
'But who?'
'Another woman in your shape.'81
After reading it, the students discuss the following que stions:
1. How does Angel react to Tess’ revelation?
2. What is the only thing Tess keeps as a secret from Angel?
3. What is Angel's deep -down reaction when he finds out?
4. What is the main reason for which Angel cannot forgive her?
5. What is Tess’ reaction to the way Angel laughs ?
6. Why do you think she canno t understand his behaviour?
7. What do you think about Angel's statement that the he is in love with 'another
woman' in Tess' shape? Can you consider Angel as being honest ?
8. What do you think related to the title 'The W oman Pays' ? What does the author
want to imply by using this title ?
All these questions and answe rs will be used as written proof s for the Trial of Tess,
a trial done from the perspective of the 21st century. To conduct this trial, I had to prepare
the students very well; they were divided into groups, usually of their choice: judge,
prosecutor, defence lawyer, bailiff, witnesses, and jury. I have also taught them the
specific expressions used in Cour t, cross -examinations questions, the way in which they
can present the evidence they found (using quotations from the novel) and asked them to
think of objects they could bring along in the trial for that purpose.
After this class, I planned a new one in which at the beginning they had to
brainstorm on the crimes committed by characters from the previous text. Students worked
together as a group to become the prosecution or defence for the characters they chose ,
while also acting as the jury for the other groups. Students used many sources to research
for their case, including the computer and novel. In the end , as homework, students had to
put down an eloquent piece of writing to accompany their trial work.

81 Hardy, Thomas, Tess D’Urbervilles , p. 262 -263

112
These d ramatic activities, such as imaginin g a trial, encourage students to “reflect
on the experience and meaning” of the reading. Students work together to create their own
meanings, an essential characteristic of constructivism. Through drama, students create a
new world in which the characters, themes, and motivations of the novel combine with and
affect students’ understanding of the world in which they live. Most important, students are
empowered to see how the themes of literature relate to their own lives.82
At the end of the trial, students had to:
 Prove they understood the class reading.
 Write interpretive presentations of the literary characters .
 Use previous knowledge of persuasive devices to a writing piece and a
presentation.
 Articulate persuasive arguments about literature.
 Write an essay using a persuasive style.
 Find, interpret and manipulate textual evidence to stand and support one side of an
argument.
 Work effectively in groups .
 Prove oral presentation skills.
 Analyze the quality of information used to support an argument .
 Assess objectively their own work.

Development of the mock trial

1. I asked students to brainstorm on what they already know about courts, trials , cases
and roles of the people involved within a trial . They used the handouts I previously
gave them. ( Annex 1 3)
2. I tried to make students remember famous trials they have knowledge about from
media, books, movies etc and describe them.
3. I asked students to identify the similarities and dissimilarities between the trials
presented in these different media.
4. I explained the mock trial activity to them : they will take part in a trial inspired by
Tess’ situation .

82 Wilhelm, Jeffrey D. – Learning by Being: Drama as Total Immersion . Voices from the Middle , p.3-10

113
5. When students proved they knew the legal vocabulary provided previous and
related information as well as roles in trials, I asked them to brainstorm characters
and situations from their current piece of literature that would require a trial. I
created an example to begin the discussion.
6. While the students were brainstorming, recording their ideas, they were also asked
to make a pos ter for each character who could have an involvement in the trial.
They wrote the character’s name as the main heading of the poster over a two –
column chart — one for crimes they committed , the other for its motivation. They
hung the charts around the room so the groups could use them during later sessions.
7. I divide d the class into small groups, four to five students each.
8. Students kept gathering information on the character criminals and their crimes by
moving through the room, from poster to poster . Students were able to list potential
crimes —anything the character did that caused problems in the reading.
9. After the students had filled out the character charts, I asked them to examine all of
the information that had been compiled. When students completed work on the
charts, I invited each group to choose a character to try at the mock trial. I reminded
students the roles to pursue and asked each group member to cho ose a role for the
trial. Alternative ly, I assigned individual characters along with a role to each group
by distributing cards with the character’s name and either “defend” or “prosecute”
randomly.
10. Once characters and roles had been selected or assigned, I discussed the
expectations and requirements of the trial and the accompanying persuasive writing
piece.
11. I walked students through the process, using a think -aloud process that
demonstrates for students why they chose the main arguments, how they found
information in the text, and how they put it together in a summary of the case.
12. As students were discussing c haracters and situations from the text, they listened
for comments that indicate students were able to identify specific evidence from the
story that connects to their trial. The connections that they made between the details
in the novel and the details t hey chose as their supporting reasons for their mock
trial and persuasive writing piece would reveal their understanding and engagement
with the novel. I monitored student interaction and progressed during group work
to assess social skills.

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Mock trial ba sed on Julius Caesar

The teacher asks students to read the following fragments from Julius Caesar,
written by William Shakespeare.
BRUTUS
Good countrymen, let me depart alone,
And, for my sake, stay here with Antony:
Do grace to Caesar's corpse, and grace his speech
Tending to Caesar's glories; which Mark Antony,
By our permission, is allow'd to make.
I do entreat you, not a man depart,
Save I alone, till Antony have spoke.
…….
ANTONY
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Cae sar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answ er'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest –
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men –
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an ho nourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

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Yet Brutus says he was ambiti ous;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove w hat Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is i n the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
First Citizen
Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.
Second Citizen
If thou consider rightly of the matter,
Caesar has had great wrong.
Third Citizen
Has he, masters?
I fear there will a worse come in his place.
Fourth Citizen
Mark'd ye his words? He would not take the crown;
Therefore 'tis certain he was not ambitious.83

After reading, students are asked the following questions:
If you could assign Antony a role in the mocking trial, which one would you
choose? What about for Brutus?
What is the role of the rhetorical questions in the fragment? Can you give an
answer for them?

83 Shakespeare, William, Julius Caesar , p. 112 -114

116
Does Antony’s opening speech differ from Brutus’? What does this tell about the
characters?
What does Antony feel for the conspirators?
Choose one of the fragments below and say with which one do you agree more?
′ Antony cheapens the ruth, he flatters, he persuades, he deceives, he mocks and
he manipulates the sentiments of the crowd.′
′Antony genu inely feels what he is saying and he knows what the crowd is really
feeling.′
Which of the participants in the mock trial should use them?

The advantages of using mock trials to analyze a literary character in class are:
– Students improve their knowledge of written , oral and visual language (e.g.
style, vocabulary, literary terms etc.) in order to communicate effectively
with numerous audiences and for different reasons.
– Students use a wide range of strategies while learning different writing
process eleme nts meant to communicate with different audiences for
different purposes.
– Students take part in them as reflective, knowledgeable, critical and
creative members of some literacy communities.
– Students use written, oral and visual language to fulfil their own aims (e.g.
for learning new things , to enjoy the learning process , to exchange
information with other students ).

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3.3.4 Modern techniques of teaching li terary characters through socio grams

One of my favourite activities during teaching literary character in a modern way is
Character Sociogram . The students are taught to make a graphic by thinking about the
relationship of the main character with the other characters in the story. Usually during this
kind of activity, students work in groups. They have to follow the next steps:
1. They have to put down the characters’ names in separate boxes.
2. They have to use arrows to connect the boxes. On these arrows, they have to
write a word or two describing the relationship between the 2 characters.
3. They write a question one character can ask another.
4. Students assume the roles of the various characters and answer the questions.
5. Students can add other characters and boxes if appropriate .
Example of a character sociogram:

Figure 2 Literary character sociogram

A modern activity that can be used is the Thought Bubbles . This represents a very
good post -reading activity. The teacher gives students sample texts or book quotes and
they have to fill in the chart, analyzing what the characters say and think.
For example, when analyzing Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings, the following
bubbles can be used:

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Figure 3 Characterisation bubbles

Students are very drawn by character webs (also known as literary sociograms),
because many of them are visual learners and these visual maps of the relationships
between the main character s in a story provide a very useful resource for them. To use
these literary sociograms, students must be engaged with a range of narrative texts
appropriate to their developmental level. Before they complete them, the students have to
read different texts in order to understand the charact ers in the story, the motives they
behave the way they do, their development and the way in which he/she connects to the
other characters. In the beginning, students work in pairs to create a character web, but the
culminating product is the creation of ch aracter webs alone.
Using a computer is even simpler because these webs can be developed and
manipulated over time. To denote the importance of the character within the story, I tell
them to u se bigger or smaller boxes. As the narrative chang es and develops within the
story, these might be redone and completed. Written at the computer, a version of the
character web is a clean, tidy product for display, for using in portfolios and as a record of
learning.
Tips for using sociograms in literatu re classes: Character says : his name is
Strider and he is a ‘mere Ranger
from the north’. He tells Frodo the
Nazgul are close and he is not
carryin g a trinket. Character thinks : Frodo and the
Hobbits are in terrible danger. He
knows Frodo caries ‘The One Ring’
and his destiny is to help all those
who oppose the evil Sauron. He
fears they will get caught.
I think: that Strider is a
hero and his identity and
mission/part will be
revealed later on in the
book. He will manage to
help the Hobbit run away
form the enemy. I think: that Strider is a hero and
his identity and mission/part will
be revealed later on in the book.
He will manage to help the Hobbit
run away form the enemy.

119
 I teach my younger students to use pictures of characters and word cards to
construct their sociograms.
 The students work in small groups and then share their work with the other
groups.
 Sociograms can be a very useful tool in the exploration o f the power
relationships implied in non -fiction literary texts such as newspaper reports and
feature articles, aiding in the development of critical literacy skills.
 Listening with close attention to students’ explanations of the sociograms they
do, can be regarded as an insight look into their comprehension and their ability
to make connections within texts.
A good activity in which teachers can use sociograms is when they do not
understand and are intrigued by the ideas of a feud lasting several generations . Such feud
is the one between the Montague and Capulet , which, so tragically, influenced the
destinies of Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare’s tragedy. Before teaching social
sociograms, I asked students to do some research both on a theme of clas sical tragedy (the
role of fate and fortune, the inevitable nature of tragedy, or the isolation of the tragic hero)
and one of the literary themes of Romeo and Juliet : family hostility and its effects on the
innocent, the use of deception and its consequen ces, or effects of faulty decision making.
After discussing about the researches they made, the students read the following
extract from Romeo and Juliet :
(Act II. Scene 2)
Romeo : [Juliet appears above at a window]
But, soft! what light through yonder' window breaks?
It is the east and Juliet is the sun!
Arise', fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid are far more fail than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious,
Her vestal livery" is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it; cast' it off.
It is my lady: O, it is my love!
O, that1 she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing: what of that?

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Her eye discourses, I will answer it.
I am too bold, tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the f airest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do intreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
Juliet : Ay me!
Romeo : She speaks:
O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white -upturned wondering eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him,
When he bestrides" the lazy -pacing clouds
And sail upon the bosom of the air,
Juliet : O Romeo. Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love";
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
Romeo : [Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
Juliet : 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man.
O, be some other name.
What's in a name that which we call a rose

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By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd.
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name
And for thy name, which is no part of thee.
Take all myself.84
After reading the fragment, students work in groups and answer the following
questions in writing:
1. What images are predominated in the passage? Identify them.
2. Romeo and Juliet are compared to many things. Make a list.
3. How does Romeo react when Juliet starts talking ?
4. What does Juliet ask Romeo to do for her?
5. What aspect of the Shakespearean theatre makes this scene possible? Why do you
think this story still fascinates modern readers? What is the secret of its power?
Then, the class gathers as a group, and com pares answers. The teacher asks students
to divide a sheet of paper in half lengthwise, place the House of Capulet on one side and
the House of Montague on the other. This is done to help them illustrate the relationships
of the characters.
The teacher asks students to complete t he character sociogram , either Romeo or
Juliet (Annex 1 4).
The teacher tells students they have to use the sociogram above to create
sociograms for the characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet . The students are divided into
groups and each group is given a differe nt major character: Hamlet, Claudius, the Ghost ,
Polonius, Horatio, Laertes and Ophelia. The teacher reminds them to place each character
in the very centre of the diagram. The diagram has the following question as a title: Which
character would you choose to walk th e battlements with at midnight?. The main idea of
the acti vity is to graph the lines of affiliation between as many of the play's characters as
they can. For example, Horatio might answer either Hamlet or Marcellu s, but whom would
each of them choose and why ? These answers are graphed like this:

Marcellus < –––––––– Horatio –––––––– > Hamlet

84 Shakespeare, William, Romeo and Juliet , p. 150

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Another sociogram students can do is on Twelfth Night , also written by Shakespeare.
Figure 4 Twelfth Night socio gram

In order to analyze characters, students can use graphic organizers and charts . A
very attractive activity that I used in class is called ‘ The Character T -Shirt’ . The aims of
this activity are: students learn various literary terms and how to build a very good
analysis of a character.
At the end of the activity the students will be able to understand the characters’
actions and feelings, the difference between the two types of characterization (direct and
indirect) , the difference between character s (static and dynamic) , the difference between
conflict s (internal and external) .
The teacher gives students a handout – Understanding Character – in order to
introduc e lite rary elements. ( Annex 1 5). Students are asked to read through each of the
elements and definitions aloud. Using this piece of literature as a resource and the
Character Analysis Chart ( Annex 1 6), students can begin analyzi ng a character of their
choice . This activity can be done in groups or as an independent activity.
The teacher gives the Character T -shirt instructions to the students
The front of the t -shirt must include:
Story Title / Author / Character’s Name / Picture of Character/ Description of Character

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The right sleeve must include:
Strengths of character

The left sleeve must include:
Weaknesses of character

The back of the T -shirt must include:
Internal/ External Conflicts Static/Dynamic Character Climax
Figurative Language85
This activity can be done on one of the two pairs of characters in Pride and
Prejudice by Jane Austen and Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding : Elisabeth Bennet /
Bridget Jones or Mr. Darcy/ Marc Darc y.

***

A great novel that can be used for many activities while teaching characterization is
The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• Describing a literary character based on setting
Students read a fragment from the book in which Gatsby’s mansion is described;
specifically what the place looks like after Gatsby's death. Students answer the questions:
How does Nick feel about it? What does the sentence "the party was over" mean?
Gatsby 's house was still empty when I left – the grass on his lawn had grown as long as
mine.
(…) I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of
his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, f aint and
incessant, from his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear
a material car there, and saw its lights stop at his front steps. But 1 didn't investigate.
Probably it was some final guest who had been away at the ends o f the earth and didn't
know that the party was over.86
After reading the fragment, how would you characterize Gatsby? Which qualities of
his is Nick talking about? Are they positive or negative ones? If personality is an unbroken
series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some

85 http://www.essay.uk.com/essays/education/essay -cultivati ng-students -interest -in-reading
86 Fitzgerald, F.S., The Great Gats by, p. 198

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heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate
machines that register earthquakes ten thousand m iles away. This responsiveness had
nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the
"creative temperament" – it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such
as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely f shall ever find again.
No – Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on (Gatsby, what foul dust
floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive
sorrows and short -winde d elations of men.87
The very last lines of the novel are poetic and full of symbolism. Think about what
the expressions "the green light", "we beat on" and "boats against the current" can
represent. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes
before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out
our arms farther … and one fine morning – So we beat on, boats against the current, borne
back ceaselessly into the past88.
The student s consider answering the following questions:
Does this novel have villains and heroes as characters? Why ? If yes, who would
you include in these categories and why?
Nick is a character which takes part in the action but he is also acting as an
objective commentator. Do you think this narration style work s? Why, why not?
Does Fitzgerald use weather to reflect the mood of the story? In what way?
Do you think it is a good idea to read a book written in the 1920's? What makes an
old book still valuable ? And which of its themes are eternal in the American
psyche?
 Gatsby Symbols
The students are asked to investigate the symbols met in The Great Gatsby . They
have to d escribe the meaning/function of each symbol encountered . Some of the symbo ls
are characters while some are actions. Think about all of th em in the following way: what
are the function and meaning of this symbol?
– Gatsby's uncut books/Nick's unread books
– Wolfsheim's cufflinks.
– Gatsby's car/Gatsby's clothes

87 Fitzgerald, F.S., The Great Gats by, p. 223
88 Idem, p. 225

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– Tom Buchanan pushing people around/Tom Buchanan quoting things "he's
read"
– The faded timetable (showing the names of Gatsby's guests)
– Anti-Semitism.
– Prejudice
– Weather
– Time, seasons
– The ash heap
– The green light at the end of Daisy's dock
– East versus West Egg
– Gatsby's career/Nick's career
– Dan Cody
– T.J. Eckleberg
– Silver and gold (colour)
– White (colour)
– Green (colour)89
 Project class ~ Gatsby Art
Students are asked to work in groups to draw posters of each of these major
symbols and images from The Great Gat sby. They must use descriptions taken from the
novel to describe their representations.
– Draw the T.J. Eckleberg billboard.
– Draw the front page of a Town Tattler and on it, list all of the gossip about
Gatsby. Leave room at the bottom so you may add more gossip as you continue
reading the novel.
– Draw a timeline including major events that precede 1922 and major events that
follow the publishing of The Great Gatsby.
– Draw a work order for caterers, gardeners, etc. for one of Gatsby's parties.
– Draw up a list of comments made by Nick or others about women.
– What kind of narrator is Nick? What does he have to convince us of? What do
you know about him? Draw up a list.
– Draw a picture of the owl -eyed man and others who frequent Gatsby's parties.

89 https://www.teachervision.com/literature/gatsby -symbols

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– Draw a picture of the ash heap. Include Mr. Wilson's gas station.
– Make a "Who's Gatsby?" chart which lists gossip about him on one side and facts
about him on the other. Leave room so you may add information as you continue
reading.
– Create a map of Long Island and New York City, tracking the forays of Nick and
others. (If you are industrious include New Haven and the Midwest on your map.)90
 Character sociogram
Choose a character you like and one you don’t from The Great Gatsby , and
complete the chart below.
Character Sociogram: A Graphic Organizer for Better Understanding Character
Physical Appearance
What does the character look like?
Use words that appeal to the five senses.
Behaviour/Actions
Describe your character doing some action;
How does your character behave around others?
Name of Character
Character's Reactions to Others
How does your character act and react around others?

Reactions of Others to Character
Describe your character through the eyes of
another character or others capturing the
attitude others have toward the
character.
Speech /Dialogue/Mannerisms
Describe how your character speaks and dialog ues with others
Are specific mannerisms used to convey a message?
Figure 5 Literary character sociogram – graphic organiser

90 https://www.teachervision.com/literature/gatsby -art

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3.3.5 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through skaz

Teenage skaz is a characteristic that individualizes this age category and makes it
unique when trying to understand the particular traits of teenager protagonists. The
following texts provide this technique of teaching literary character and there are many
activities that can be done in them.
As a pre -reading activity, the teacher introduces the term skaz and offers students
examples of this technique.
After that, the teacher gives students handouts with the following texts and some
questions based on them.
*Twain's u se of the Missouri African -American dialect in the speech of Jim
provides the dialogue with an air of authenticity rarely seen in A merican fiction up to this
time?
Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how
the first thing he would do when he got to a free state he would go to saving up money and
never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was
owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both wor k to buy
the two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an Ab'litionist to go and
steal them. It most: froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in
his life before, just see what a difference it made in him the minute he lodged he was about
free. It was according to the old saying, give a nigger' an Inch and he'll take an ell.' Thinks
I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger which I had as good as
helped to run away, coming right out fla t-footed and saying he would steal his children –
children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no
harm.
I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My conscience got
to stirring me up hotter than e ver, until at last I says to it, 'Let up on me – It ain't too late,
yet – I'll paddle ashore at the first light, and tell.' I felt easy, and happy, and light as a
feather, right off. All my troubles was gone. i went to looking out sharp for a light, and s ort
of singing to myself. By -and-by one showed Jim sings out -'We's safe. Huck, we’ s safe!
Jump up and crack yo' heels, dat's de good ole Cairo at las'. I jis knows it!' I says:I’ll take
the canoe and go see. Jim It mightn't be, you know.' He jumped and go t the canoe ready,
and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on, and give me Ihe paddle: and as I shoved
off. He says: 'Pooty soon I'll be a -shout'n for joy. en I'll say, it's all on accounts o' Huck: I's

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a free man, en I couldn't ever ben free ef i t hadn ben for Huck: Huck done it. Jim won't
ever forgit you, Huck; you s de bes' fren' Jim's ever had; en you's de only fren' ole Jim's got
now.' I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says Ihis. it seemed to
kind of take the tuckf all out of me I went along slow then, and I warn't right down certain
whether I was glad I started or whether I warn't. When I was fifty yards off, Jim says: Dan
you goes, de ole true Huck: de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole Jim '
Well, I just felt sick But I says, I got to do it – I can't get out of it.91
Students answer and debate on the following questions:
– What does Huck's reaction to Jim's ideas reveal about his character? Is Huck
coherent in his reasoning?
– What does he decide to do? How does he feel at first upon making his decision?
And later? Why do you think he in so undecided?
– What do you think Twain is trying to say through his depiction of Huck?
– Translate into modern standard English Jim’s speech beginning 'Pooty soon I'll be
a shout’n for joy' .
After that students read the following fragment from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.
Salinger and identify the point of view of the author. They have to b ring arguments to
support your opinion.
Old Sally didn't talk much, except to rave about the Lunts, because she was busy
rubbering and being charming. Then, all of a sudden, she saw some jerk she knew on the
other side of the lobby. Some guy i n one of those very dark grey flannel suits and one of
those checkered vests. Strictly Ivy League. Big deal. He was standing next to the wall,
smoking himself to death and looking bored as hell. Old Sally kept saying, "I know that boy
from somewhere." She always knew somebody, any place you took her, or thought she did.
She kept saying that till I got bored as hell, and I said to her, "Why don't you go on over
and give him a big soul kiss, if you know him. He'll enjoy it." She got sore when I said that.
Finally, though , the jerk noticed her and came over and said hello. You should've seen the
way they said hello. You'd have thought they hadn't seen each other in twenty years. You'd
have thought they'd taken baths in the same bathtub or something when they were little
kids. Old buddyroos. It was nauseating. The funny part was, they probably met each other
just once, at some phony party. Finally, when they were all done slobbering around, old
Sally introduced us. His name was George something – I don't even remember – and he

91 Twain, Mark, The adventures of Huckleberry Finn , p. 115 -117

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went to Andover. Big, big deal. You should've seen him when old Sally asked him how he
liked the play. He was the kind of a phony that have to give themselves room when they
answer somebody's question. He stepped back, and stepped right on the lady's fo ot behind
him. He probably broke every toe in her body. He said the play itself was no masterpiece,
but that the Lunts, of course, were absolute angels. Angels. For Chris sake. Angels. That
killed me. Then he and old Sally started talking about a lot of pe ople they both knew. It was
the phoniest conversation you ever heard in your life.92
Students read the following fragment from A Clockwork Orange by Anthony
Burgess and have to list any words they don’t know. The teacher helps them to work out
the meaning o f the unknown words .
"Please, I must do something. Shall I clean your boots? Look, I'll get down and
lick them." And, my brothers, believe it or kiss my sharries, I got down on my knees and
pushed my red yahzick out a mile and half to lick his grahzny vonny boots. But all this veck
did was to kick me not too hard on the rot. So then it seemed to me that it would not bring
on the sickness and pain if I just gripped his ankles with my rookcrs tight round them and
brought this grahzny bratchny down to the floor. So I did this and he got a real bolshy
surprise, coming down crack amid loud laughter from the vonny audience. But viddying
him on the floor I could feel the whole horrible feeling coming over me, so I gave him my
rooker to lift him up skorry and up he came. Th en just as he was going to give me a real
nasty and earnest tolchock on the litso Dr Brodsky said:
"All right, that will do very well." Then this horrible veck sort of bowed and danced off like
an actor while the lights came up on me blinking and with my r ot square for howling. Dr
Brodsky said to the audience: "Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by,
paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied
by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter th ese the subject has to switch to a
diametrically opposed attitude. Any questions?"
"Choice," rumbled a rich deep goloss. I viddied it belonged to the prison charlie. "He has
no real choice, has he? Self -interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that gr otesque act
of self -abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He
ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice."93
As a post -reading activity, the teacher asks students to answer the following
questions :

92 Salinger , J. D., The Catcher in the Rye, p. 235 -236
93 Burgess, Antony, A Clockwork Orange , p. 121 -122

130
 What similarities can you find between the three pieces? And what differences?
Make two columns and enter in the similarities and differences.
 For each of the fragments write a paragraph before the text to set the scene for the
story, and a paragraph at the end of the text, which tells us how the story ended.
 Reduce each text to one -word title. The word must occur in the text.
 Rewrite the story using only forty words or less.
 Transfer the information in the texts into short articles for the local newspapers,
adjusting them to the period they were written, namely 1884, 1952, 1962. Give
them appropriate title.
 Choose ten words from each of the texts and use them to write completely different
stories.
 Make a list of all the words that relates to human feelings.
 Prepare a role -play with the three main protagonists meeting during a support –
group session for teenagers. Each of them uses as many words as possible taken
from the text they have been assigned. Does your conversation make sense taking
into consideration th e choice of words?

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3.3.6 Modern techniques of teaching literary characters through elements of
psychoanalyses

Comprehension of the text often means much more than mere decoding of its
language: in many cases, ability to paraphrase or summarize the text is far from actual
comprehension. The students must be made to express thoughts and share opinions, to
negotiate meaning and take part in communicative exchanges that simulate real -world
ones. Such tasks activate the students' knowledge of the world and bring the text closer to
their personal experiences. For example, the students may be urged to imagine themselves
in the character's place and find solutions to the situation. Shift of perspective – to a place,
time, culture and situation that are closer to the students' own life experience – helps them
to activate their feelings and thoughts, personalize the tragedy, and it facilitates creative
response to the text.
For role plays , the teacher can use his/her imagination freel y. The roles can be
those commonly encountered in real life (e.g. mother/son, shop assistant/customer, waiter
/customer) or literary characters. The teacher chooses pairs of students and gives each of
them one part of the instructions (A or B); the interl ocutors do not see the instructions the
other one gets. Then they are invited to enact the conversation, while their classmates make
guesses concerning the situation and the characters.
Such situations are easy to imagine and implement. The students can i dentify with
the roles easily, as they are close to their real -life experience. They can be devised for all
levels of language proficiency, and situations can be imagined to accompany any text. The
students can also contribute with their own situations. Al l in all, such simple dialogues
fulfil very well the teacher's aim: to facilitate free language production. They also highlight
the importance of linguistic aspect and give learners practice in functional, strategic
language.

Situation : You have to work very hard for a scholarship and your test results are
good, but the scholarship was granted to somebody else. Your best friend tries to
help you to get over your disappointment.
Roles : you, your friend situations or moral dilemmas are exceptionally suitabl e for
role play. Consider the situations:

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Dialogue 1:
Situation : Huckleberry Finn is hiding Jim, a runaway slave, on his raft. Two slave hunters
approach and ask him if he saw any runaway slave. Huck is torn between the need to do
his social duty and his humanitarian feelings.
Roles : Huck's opposing inner voices (the students are asked to face each other)
Voice A : urges Huck to do his duty and inform the authorities on the runaway slave
Voice B : urges Huck to help Jim, a human being in great danger
In cas e of situations when the characters' thoughts contradict their words, the
dialogue can be managed in the following way:
Dialogue 2:
Situation : same
Roles : Huck's thoughts vs. Huck's words (the students stand back to back); a slave hunter
A – The slave hunter: asks Huck if he saw any runaway slave
B – Huck's inner voice: thinks he should tell the truth
C – Huck's inner voice: tells lies
Similar dialogues can be imagined for Hamlet, who is torn between the need to
avenge this dea d father and his pacifist, meditative, nature, and whose thoughts often differ
from his words. Critical situations or strange behaviours can be analysed by setting up
dialogues between characters who are involved in the situation, or view it from the outsi de:
Dialogue 3:
Situation : Hamlet has declared his love for Ophelia, but now behaves strangely and has
been very rude to her
Roles : Ophelia and her friend
Ophelia – complains about Hamlet's strange behaviour
Her friend – tries to comfort her and find some logical explanation for his strange
behaviour

In another kind of activity, the teacher may ask the students to take on the role of
some characters they studied, fill out a biographical card with their ass umed identity, and
perform a role play in front of their classmates. The other students are asked to watch them
play, take notes, and discover who the characters are. After the role play, they must tell
their guesses and give arguments.
At a later stage, the teacher can use the literary text communicatively, by
suggesting situations that are close to the learners' life experience. The students may also

133
be invited to contribute. In groups of pairs, they discuss the text and transfer the situation
of the tex t into their own world: they change the names of the characters, the place and
time of action, essential details are adapted, and new details are added. This way, the
students can relate the text to their personal background and internalize its meaning mor e
easily. Then they are urged to perform the conversation on their own, being as creative as
possible.
Dialogue 4:
Situation : (to follow the text about Huck Finn): Your brother is late and your mother is
very upset because he has a lot of homework to do. Y ou know he went to the movie with
his friends, but mother would punish him severely if she found out the truth
Roles : you – your inner voice – your mother
Mother – wants to know the truth
Inner voice – you know your mother is right and that your brother sh ould work harder (his
grades are terrible)
Your words – you tell lies to cover for your brother

Activities
C.G. Jung and Shakespeare observed human personalities in many ways. About
three hundred years after Shakespeare, Jung wrote a theory of the human personality in
which he claimed that the individual’s personality possesses four distinct but connected
aspects. According to him, our personality is made of intellect, emotions, sensations and
intuition (the ability to "intuit" or reach decisions or anal yze situations based upon an
inherent knowledge or sense of what is right or wrong, for example, a woman's intuition).
The most important and hard part of these aspects is that they should be in balance
within an individual. If they truly are then t he person is said to be INDIVIDUATED.
Psychoses are produced when one of these four aspects dominates and blocks the others.
For example, in Hamlet’s case, the intellect is dominant. He is not able to act normally
because his intellect interferes with his emotions. Laertes’s dominant is the sensation one
mostly. He is known for his lecherous and carefree life in Paris and seeks instantly to kill
anyone who has caused him pain or grief. Emotion plays a large part, but intuition and
intellect are n ot parts of his personality. Ophelia is primarily emotion and when she is
spurned she is unable to cope on an intellectual level and goes insane.

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Students are asked to analyze the characters on this basis . As well, they have to
try to figure out how each of the following balance or mirror Hamlet: Horatio (is he
individuated?), Claudius, Polonius, Laertes, Gertrude, Fortinbras.
Then teacher asks students to write a dialogue that might take place between Prince
Hamlet and a psychologist. In small groups, th ey can write the dialogue for the therapy
sessions that might take place at different stages during Hamlet’s mental turmoil, for
example:
– when he learns of his mother’s marriage to his uncle
– immediately after seeing his father’s ghost for the first time
– after killing Polonius
– when he learns of Rosencrantz’ s and Guildenstern’s intentions
– after Ophelia’s funeral
Another activity can consider the following fragment from Great Expectations by
Charles Dickens. Before reading the text, answer the question: When you were a small
child did you interpret certain things in a way that, as you grew up, you learned was
wrong ? Students answer and debate upon them.
‘My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue
could make of both na mes nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself
Pip, and came to be called Pip, I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority
of his tombstone and my sister – Mrs Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith As I never
saw my fath er or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days
were long before the days of photographs'), my first fancies regarding what they were like,
were unreasonably derived from their tombstones .The shape of the letters on my father 's,
gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout . dark man. with curly black hair. From
the character and turn of the inscription, 'Also Georgiana Wife of the Above.' I drew a
childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly', To five little stone lozenges.
each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat' row beside their grave,
and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine – who gave up frying to get a
living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle – I am indebted for a belief I religiously
entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers –
pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence. Ours was the marsh
country down by the river, within, as the r iver wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first
most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained
on a memorable raw" afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain,

135
that this bleak' place overgrown "- with nettles ' was the churchyard: and that Philip
Pirrip' – late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above", were dead and buried,
and Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias and Roger, infant children of the
aforesaid", were also dead and bu ried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the
churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on
it, was the marshes: and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant
savage lair -" from wh ich the wind was rushing, was the sea: and that the small bundle of
shivers" growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
′Hold your noise' cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the
side of the church porch: 'Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!'
A fearful man. all in coarse grey with a great iron " on his leg. A man with no hat, and
with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head, A man who had been soaked"
in water and smothered by mud , and lamed' by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by
nettles, and torn by briars"; who limped, and shivered, and glared", and growled"; and
whose teeth chattered in his head, as he seized me by the chin. 'Oh! Don't cut my throat sir,
I pleaded in terror . Pray don't do it, sir1 Tell us your name! said the man. Quick!
'Pip, sir.'
'Once more.' said the man, staring at me. 'Give it mouth!'
'Pip Pip. sir.'
′Show us where you live ′said the man. ′ Pint out the place!'
I pointed to where our village lay; on t he flat in -shore among the alder -trees and pollards,
a mile or more from the church.
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my
pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread When the church came to itself for
he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels39 before me and I saw the
steeple under my feet —when the church came to itself. I saw, I was seated on a high
tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously ’.94
After reading the text, students answer the following questions:
What was Pip's real name? Why did he call himself Pip?
How did Pip learn what his real name was?
Why did Pip think that his father was 'a square, stout, dark man, with curly black
hair’?

94 Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations , p. 112 -113

136
How did Pip imagine his brothers? Why did he imagine him this way?
What has Pip understood about himself and his relationship to the world that raw
afternoon?
Why did the steeple go ′under Pip's feet′?
What is the 'first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of t hings’ which Pip
has? Where does he find himself physically? And where does he fi nd himself in
relationship to his family'.
Which of Pip's impressions are distinctly those of small child?
Do you think children see things as Dickens has shown us in this sce ne?

In order to teach charact ers through psychological analyz e, students read the first
extract from The Rocking Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence. They are asked: What does
the opening remind you of ?
‘There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had
no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she
felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly,
as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault
in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew. Nevertheless, when her
children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart go hard. This troubled her,
and in her manner she w as all the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she
loved them very much. Only she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard
little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody. Everybody else said of her: "She
is such a goo d mother. She adores her children." Only she herself, and her children
themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes.
There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and
they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood ’.95
……. The communication within the story is made through the visual sense, the eyes .
When the question of whether the mother nurtures love feelings for her children arises, the
story teller states from the first paragraph that "only she herself, and her children
themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes."96 When talking about the
house voices, the narrator states again , "They would look into each other's eyes, to see if
they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had

95 Lawrence D.H., The Rocking Horse Winner , p. 115
96 Idem, p. 1

137
heard."97 Even from the beginning when Paul tells his mother that he thinks he is a lucky
boy, the narrator mentions , "The boy saw she did not believe him; or rather, that she paid
no attention to his assertion. "98 In characterizing Paul, the story -teller often underlines the
fact that the boy's eyes are means of communicating his mood or a n inner feeling , as in
these passages :
..1….The boy watched her [his mother] with unsure eyes.
..2….Wildly the horse careered, the waving dark hair of the boy tossed, his eyes had a
strange glare in them.
..3….But Paul only gave a blue glare from his big, rather close -set eyes.
..4…."Well, I got there!" he announced fiercely, his blue eyes still flaring, and his sturdy
long legs straddling apart.
..5….The boy gazed at his uncle from those big, hot, blue eyes, set rather close together.
..6….The child had never been to a race -meeting before, and his eyes were blue fire.
..7….The child, flushed and with eyes blazing, was curiously serene.
..8….The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that had an uncanny cold fire in them, and
he said never a word.
..9….He became wild -eyed and strange, as if something were going to explode in him.
10…."I've got to know for the Derby!" the child reiterated, his big blue eyes blazing with a
sort of madness.
11… But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes.
12….His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging his
wooden horse.
13….He neither slept nor regained consciousness and his eyes were like blue stones. 99
…… .About the boo k The Rocking H orse, the author mention s, "When he [Paul] had
ridden to the end of his mad little journey, he climbed down and stood in front of his
rocking -horse, staring fixedly into its lowered face. Its red mouth was slightly open, its big
eye was wide and glassy -bright.”100

……. The narrator wants the reader to know that "[t]he gardener, a shortish fellow with a
little brown moustache and sharp little brown eyes, tiptoed into the room, touched his

97 Lawrence D.H., The Rocking Horse Winner , p. 5
98 Idem, p. 3
99 Idem, p. 18
100 Idem, p.19

138
imaginary cap to Paul's mother, and stole to the bedside, staring with glittering , smallish
eyes at the tossing, dying child."101

……. D. H. Lawrence's special attention to the eyes makes us understand and convey the
inmost feelings of characters during certain situations . In other circumstances , it intensifies
the mysterious and sometimes unsettling atmosphere of the story by leaving open to
question what a gaze or a glare stands for . The author makes the correct appeal to the fact
that an efficient communication between human beings is nonverbal and those glaring
eyes, frowns, furrowed brows and shrugs most of the times provide a better
communication process than actual words.
Then students read the second extract and answer the question:
Which sentence is repeated and why?
‘Although they lived in style, t hey felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never
enough money. The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not
nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up. The father 'went in to
town to some office. Bu t though he had good prospects, these prospects never materialized,
There was always the grinding sense of the shortage of money, though the style was always
kept up.
At last the mother said: "I will see if I can't make something." But she did not know where
to begin. She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the other, but could not find
anything successful. The failure made deep lines come into her face. Her ch ildren were
growing up, they would have to go to school. There must be more money, there must be
more money. The father, who was always very handsome and expensive in his tastes,
seemed as if he never would be able to do anything worth doing. And the mothe r, who had
great belief in herself, did not succeed any better, and her tastes were just as expensive.
And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more
money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time, though
nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys
filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking -horse, behind the smart doll's -house,
a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money! There must be more
money!" And the children would slop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look

101 Lawrence D.H., The Rocking Horse Winner , p. 15

139
into each other’s eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each saw in the eyes of the other
two they had heard : 'There must be more money! There must be more money !"102
As a post -reading activity, students read the last fragment of the short -story:
‘The third day of the illness was critical; they were waiting for a change. The boy, with his
rather long, curly hair, was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow. He neither sle pt nor
regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue stones. His mother sat, feeling her
heart had gone, turned actually into stone. In the evening. Oscar Cresswell did not come,
but Bassett sent a message, saying could he come up for one moment, jus t one moment?
Paul's mother was very angry at the intrusion, but on second thought she agreed. The boy
was the same. Perhaps Bassett might bring him to consciousness.
The gardener, a shortish fellow with a little brown moustache, and sharp little brown eyes,
tip-toed into the room, touched his imaginary hat to Paul's mother, and stole to the
bedside, staring with glittering eyes, smallish eyes, at the tossing, dying child.
"Master Paul!" he whispered, "Master Paul. Malabar came in first all right, a clea n win. I
did as you told me. You've made over seventy thousand pounds; you have; you've got over
eighty thousand. Malabar came in all right, Master Paul."
"Malabar' Malabar! Did 1 say Malabar, mother? Did I say Malabar? Do you think I'm
lucky mother? 1 kne w Malabar, didn't I? Over eighty thousand pounds! I call that lucky,
don't you, mother? Over eighty thousand pounds! I knew, didn't I know 1 knew?
Malabar came in all right. If I ride my horse till I'm sure then I tell you, Bassett, you can
go as high as y ou like. Did you go for all you were worth, Bassett. -"I went a thousand on
it, Master Paul."
"I never told you, mother, that if 1 can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely
sure – oh. Absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you. I am lucky!"
"No, y ou never did," said the mother. But the boy died in the night.
And even as he lay dead, his mother heard her brother's voice saying to her: My God.
Hester, you're eighty -odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But
poor devil, poor d evil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking horse to find a
winner."103
The teacher puts under debate the following ideas: This is the first time the father
enters the scene. What does that suggest – Paul paid a heavy price – his life -for p roving to

102 Lawrence D.H., The Rocking Horse Winner , p.18
103 Idem, p. 22

140
his mother that he was lucky. How do you feel about his death at the end? What could be
the moral of the story?
The students are asked to do one of the following :
* Add several phrases to Lawrence's story which can lead to the conclusion that Paul's
mother might become a better person after her son's death.
*Add several phrases to Lawrence's story which can lead to the conclusion that Paul's
mother remains the same person after her son's death.
*The second sentence of the story says Paul's mother "married for love." Do you believe
she was truly in love or merely infatuated?
*Is Bassett genuinely concerned about Paul's welfare or does he simply rega rd Paul as a
"money machine?"
*When Paul's mothe r calls home from the party to ask Miss Wilmot whether Paul is all
right, is she motivated by guilt —and perhaps fear of being viewed as a bad mother —for
leaving him at home? Or is she genuinely concerned about his welfare?
* Do you think that the house v oices real? Do you think that Paul hear s them beca use he is
mentally disturbed?
*Well -to-do English parents in Lawrence's day frequently turned the care of children over
to nursemaids and others on the household .servant staff. Do you think Lawrence wrote
"The Rocking -Horse Winner" partly to chastise parents for this practice? Do you believe it
can be beneficial under certain circu mstances?
*Using psychological terms, w rite a psychological profile of Paul. Include research to
support your viewpoints.
*Using psychological terms, w rite Paul's mother psychological profile . Include your
previous research to support your viewpoints.
*Retell the end of the story using your own words .

These are just few of the activities that I have used to teach my stude nts
literary character. Some of them were successful while some proved to be quite
challenging for them. The most important things are the facts that after a year of teaching
them the optional The Literary Character – Modern Approaches they obtained many
improvements. Their reading abilities improved a lot, they had no difficulties in writing a
literary characterization, they were able to recognize many literary devices and use them in
their tasks.

141
CONCLUSION

In today’s society, teachers have to face huge challenges while teaching, dares
provided by a fast changing technology -based economy, which asks them to prepare
students for the best academic standards, but also for life. Unfortunately the curriculum,
the lack of time, the amount of information and th e continuous changes in the Romanian
educational system do not help teachers in any way. Modern educators have to find ways
to motivate students, to provide the most useful information and the most attractive means
of teaching and above all, they have to u nderstand students from many points of view:
emotional, social, physical. All in all, teachers must possess the ability to plan their lesson
in such a manner as to find the balance between the utility of the information and the
methods used to transmit the m. If the teachers have the desire to find this balance, the
success of their classes is assured because their competence depends on trying new
strategies, developing the methods and techniques that are close to their style and
personality.
My paper Moder n Techniques of Approaching Literary Characters in EFL Classes
presents ideas and practices meant to enrich the teaching strategies, to make teachers
change their minds about te aching literature, as they think it is rather unimportant and a
‘dry field ’. They believe that teaching literature can be replaced by other contents and my
main target was to identify and present the most effective means of teaching literature,
mainly literary characters as a way of developing students’ skills and intelligence. I hav e
known it will be a challenging topic especially because literature is not taught in high
school s and because of the lack of students’ interested in reading literary works.
Another aim of this thesis is to put literature and teaching literary characters into a
new light, to make teachers of English understand that literature develops communication
skills, as it enriches speaking by coming in contact with ‘real English’ and inspires cultural
growth because not every person has the money to travel or visit a foreign country, but
through literary texts students are able to step for free into other interesting worlds and
open new windows. Literary characters are very important in teaching literature to EFL
classes as they assist the reader during his/her readi ng, bearing some traits or mind setting
at certain angles or situations presented in the book.
Teaching literary characters provide genuine and outstanding resources for teachers
as they can be a source of:

142
a. Vocabulary. The writers ‘paint’ their characters giving them certain features
which bring along new vocabulary that students must acquire and use later
on in daily life.
b. Style. Characters are different, they do not behave or speak in the same way
so students are put in front of different accents, pronunc iations, dictions and
they enrich their skills.
c. Inspiration and encouragement. Students nowadays do not find real role
models in everyday life and the teachers can offer them the chance of
finding them in the literary characters they read about. The studen ts might
find the courage to try to do better if they read about in literary works. The
teachers must be attentive while selecting the characters which are likely to
appeal at learner s’ age , cultural and social background .
d. Guidance for social conduct. Students are put in front of different situations
or behaviours. They watch their literary characters behaving at a party,
while meeting friends or the Queen, or dealing with real life problems etc.
During my entire present paper, I have presented those ac tivities that I have been
teaching during my classes, the activities that were the most efficient, that were enjoyed by
my students. Literature in TESOL classes is not only about language because it also
arouses learners’ curiosity and gives them the raw m aterial for communication. Finally,
readers of literature are better able to express th emselves than those who are not improving
continuously their reading skills.

143
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144
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24. Maley, Alan , Short and Sweet – Short texts and how to use them , Penguin Books,
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10. www.merriam -webster.com

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DECLARAȚIE DE AUTENTICITATE

Subsemnata PETRESCU (VĂSII) ELENUȚA declar pe propria răspundere că
lucrarea a fost elaborată personal și îmi aparține în întregime.

Declar că nu am folosit alte surse în afara celor menționate în bibliografie, nu au fost
preluate texte, date sau elemente de grafică din alte lucrări sau din alte surse fără a fi citate
și fără a fi precizată sursa preluării, inclusiv lucrări personale.

Menționez că lucrarea nu a mai fost folosită în alte contexte de examen sau de
concurs.

Data,
26.07.2017

Semnătura,