C_DESC2.txt Driver File Contents (ASManager2.zip)

Name: <  >
Class: <  >
Date: <  >

Creating Character
Through Description 2

In these activities you are learning about and practicing the use of six basic strategies for developing a character. They are:

1) Description
2) Dialogue
3) Action
4) Reactions of other characters
5) Setting
6) Narrative

This activity focuses on developing a character through Description.

By describing a person's external characteristics, such as dress, posture, mannerisms, carriage, stature, etc., we can often depict the inner character.

Here is a description from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn:

"...In the camp you could pick him out among all the men with their bent backs because he was straight as a ramrod. When he sat at the table it looked like he was sitting on something to raise himself up higher. His eyes didn't shift around the mess hall all the time to see what was going on, and he was staring over Shukhov's head and looking at something nobody else could see. He ate his thin gruel with a worn old wooden spoon, and he took his time. He didn't bend low over the bowl like all the others did, but brought the spoon up to his mouth... His face was all worn-out but not like a "goner's" -- it was dark and looked like it had been hewed out of stone. And you could tell from his big rough hands with the dirt worked in them he hadn't spent many of his long years doing any of the soft jobs. You could see his mind was set on one thing -- never give in."

1) Please copy any two phrases which show the man's character through his physical posture. Put the phrases in the space below at the angle brackets.

<  >

2) What does the way in which he eats and looks about the room tell you?

<  >


Name and save this file now. (Press ctrl+S, type a name for the file, and press enter.)

====================

In an earlier activity, you were able to change the Fat Man description to a Thin Man description by selecting opposite descriptors and substituting them into the paragraph. This next activity is a bit more challenging. Change the description so the man is the same as all the other prisoners. He conforms, he is a "goner" just like all the others. Where Solzhenitsyn has chosen to contrast his character, you must change the language to make the character conform.

For example:

...In the camp you could pick him out among all the men with their bent backs because he was straight as a ramrod.

Might become:

...In the camp he was indiscernible from all the other men, his back being as bent and stooped as the rest.

Go through the paragraph carefully. Make your changes to the wording, but not to the paragraph structure or flow. Then have a friend or your partner read it to see if you were successful. Is the character now a "goner"?

...In the camp you could pick him out among all the men with their bent backs because he was straight as a ramrod. When he sat at the table it looked like he was sitting on something to raise himself up higher. His eyes didn't shift around the mess hall all the time to see what was going on, and he was staring over Shukhov's head and looking at something nobody else could see. He ate his thin gruel with a worn old wooden spoon, and he took his time. He didn't bend low over the bowl like all the others did, but brought the spoon up to his mouth... His face was all worn-out but not like a "goner's" -- it was dark and looked like it had been hewed out of stone. And you could tell from his big rough hands with the dirt worked in them he hadn't spent many of his long years doing any of the soft jobs. You could see his mind was set on one thing -- never give in.

Using your revised paragraph, answer the same two questions that you answered before.

1) Copy two phrases that show the man's character through his physical posture. Put the phrases in the space below.

<  >

2) What does the way in which he eats and looks about the room tell you?

<  >


If you haven't done so already, name and save this file now. (Press ctrl+S, type a name for the file, and press enter.)

====================

end of activity
Copyright Renaissance Learning, Inc.
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