The Eyre Affair Unit Ms. Hoffmann
An Introduction to this Unit
In
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde adapts the work of other authors in a
variety of ways. As you work your way through his novel, you will
discover a number of direct references and allusions to many different
works and characters. At some points, he summarizes key plot events of
canonical works, and at others, he imagines alternative events and
endings. His experiments with adaptation take him so far that he even
paints a picture of what these characters would act like if ripped from
the pages of their literary homes and dropped into the “real world.”
Your
project for this unit will require you to complete a similar task. You
will create your own adaptation of a literary figure (you will be asked
to focus your re-appropriation on a single character—though you may
choose to include occasional allusions and references to others at your
own discretion). However, instead of completing a narrative in the
fashion that Fforde does, you will be asked to create a blog in which
you write various posts in the voice of this character.
Character Sketch Directions
As
a first step towards this, you will need to choose a character whose
identity you wish to assume through a blog. For the purposes of this
activity, this needs to be a fictional, literary figure. This could be a
character from a novel, novella, or lengthy short story. If the
character is from a shorter work, it may be difficult to complete this
task.
Once you complete some initial research to
figure out which character you would like to use, you will need to let
me know which character you have chosen. (If you have a lot of trouble,
you may want to use a character from one of the novels that we have read
for this class). Then, you can go ahead and start working on the
following questions. You should perform some online research about these
characters in order to provide informed answers. Your completed
character sketch will be due at the end of the period.
This
will count as one of the grades for the second marking period. In order
to receive full credit, you will need to do the following:
1.
Answer each question as thoroughly as possible in the time allotted.
You should have enough writing to illustrate that you have been on task
for the rest of this period as well as second period.
2.
Reference the sites that you used to find out information about your
character. There is a space for this at the end of the questions.
However, if you want to include quotes from these sites, you need to put
them in quotation marks and include a link to the site right after the
quote.
3. Note that you will NOT receive full credit
if your entire paper is made up of quotes or if you have copied text
without attributing it to the site on which you found it. It is expected
that you will mostly perform research on various sites and type up your
synthesis of your findings for this activity.
4. Spellcheck and proofread
Please copy and paste the following questions into your own word document. Answer as many questions as thoroughly as possible.
Name:
Class:
Date:
Character Sketch
1. Character Name:
2. Name of the literary work from which the character originates:
3. Name of the author of this work:
4. Genre of this work:
5. Original publication date of this work:
6. The setting (both time and place) of this work:
7.
What does your character look like? Write a rich, adjective-filled
explanation. Include textual references to the character’s appearance.
(Do what you can to find examples using Google Books, Project Gutenberg,
and other online libraries. You will need to obtain some kind of a copy
of the text for reference for the rest of this unit by Monday, November
21st.)
8. What is your character like? Is the
character a hero, a villain, or neutral? What is your character’s
occupation? What are your character’s habits? What are your character’s
passions? What are your character’s dreams? Write a vibrant description
that accurately captures your character’s personality. Describe him/her
as you would to someone who has never read about him/her.
9. What does your character do? What/How does your character think?
10.
Describe your character’s relationships with other characters that are
from the same text. What do these others say about your character?
11.
Is your character’s childhood depicted in the piece that you chose?
Write about some significant events from his/her childhood.
12. Write about other significant events that happen to your character.
13.
Write some important quotes that your character says. If you character
never speaks, include some important quotes about your character.
14.
Include the links from which you obtained your information. (You should
have sites listed other than Wikipedia and those like SparkNotes. Do
some real research; you need to get inside of this character’s head):
If you are having trouble:
1. Refer to one of the following resources:
-A reference to the importance of character traits and examples of them:
http://character-in-action.com/character-traits-make-a-whopping-difference/
-More character traits:
http://cte.jhu.edu/techacademy/web/2000/kochan/charactertraits.html
2. A resource describing the basics of analyzing a literary character:
-http://www.enotes.com/topics/how-write-character-analysis
3.
Think in terms of something that you know and work from there. For
instance, assuming that this character has access to a Facebook page,
think about the sort of things that they would post or include in their
profile. You could include these sorts of things in your answers to the
questions above.
4. Ask!
