An exercise in approaching fictional characters through drawing

When we finished reading Morality Play by Barry Unsworth, I asked my students to think of the final class. A few years ago I would normally have relied on students' creativity and looked forward to watching something interesting. What they did always looked like a performance. Once I was even lucky to see a real one. We read Lord of the Flies by William Golding. My students were so inspired by the rich symbolism of the novel that wrote a play in which the conch, the fire, Piggy's glasses and other symbols became characters. However my experience of more recent years has made me rather cautious. Students are willing to do new things but somehow they prefer me to be the first to suggest ideas, 'Yes, we would like to turn the final discussion of the book into an interactive class, but... would you be so kind as to tell us what to do?' is a position I meet with more often than not these days. I decided not to take risks. I outlined a few activities myself and prepared a set of questions to serve as guidelines for the discussion. At the same time I said that they were free to change whatever they liked or do something totally different. One of the tasks given by me was to think of a symbol to represent each character. A group of three or four students was to draw symbols or use suitable pictures from the Internet. The other students were to try and guess which character was meant, evaluate the choice, analyse how well the symbols epitomised the nature of this or that character and suggest their own symbols if dissatisfied. This is what they did. Instead of searching for symbols they drew and painted the characters. There were two sets of pictures. Olga Gorokh is keen on anime and manga and her drawings betrayed Japanese influence. Alina Zubareva is an ingenious amateur painter and the portraits she created were manifestations of her interesting individual style.

Both girls started their presentation by showing the pictures and asking the other students to make a guess at who was depicted. They mostly did it correctly, after which discussion began. Naturally, at first they argued about the appearance of the people portrayed in the pictures as they compared the images they had formed while reading with what they saw now. Nicholas seemed too young and naive, Jane looked too beautiful. Others said that Nicholas was only two or three years older than they were and Jane 'was beautiful to look upon' - the exact words of the author! Springer really had the kind of face he 'could pull any way' and Stephen, Olga's fourth character, was somewhat criticised as he appeared to be a handsome young man, which didn't coincide with their own response. He had never been their favourite. Only once he had earned their praise (in the memorable scene when he played Truth before Richard de Guise). Then it was Alina's turn to conduct the discussion. After the guessing part was over, she refused to listen to the students' impressions and asked them to forget who was depicted in her pictures and try to interpret the personality of each subject as if they were coming to them with a fresh eye. That was the most interesting and mysterious moment. A strange thing happened. Those students whose initial reaction was 'Come on! It can't be Martin!' ended up talking about a person so similar to Martin that they were thoroughly astonished themselves. So that was a lively discussion in which all were involved. They enjoyed that part of the final class very much.

You may wonder what would have happened if I had asked the students to act the roles of the characters. Actually, I did ask them to do that. I wanted them to act a scene from the novel. However they didn't do that. I also suggested that each student should choose a role for herself and do everything as if she were that character. If they had done what I planned, Martin would have spoken about Nicholas, Straw would have introduced Springer, etc. They did something in the same line but it was different. They felt free to change the assignments as I strongly encouraged then to do so. For instance, one student played Margaret who spoke about what happened to her after she had left the players. I am a theatre-lover and I like to use drama in the classroom. Now the question as to whether using drawing and painting was a valuable learning experience arises. My answer is both — yes and no. Yes, because my students were active, talked a lot and were able to concentrate on the essential features of the characters - the character analysis part was there. No, because they didn't speak on the challenges and risks of acting, how an actor should be who he was playing and also himself, how he could be trapped in his part; on such issues as what truth was, what justice was, and what was the connection between the two. I wanted them to think on how art could help people reach the truth, how difficult it was to get rid of stereotypes, how painful it was to suddenly realize that 'men can give meanings to things' and as a result answer their own questions without God's help. We had touched upon those issues when we discussed the novel chapter by chapter and I would have considered my job as a teacher well done if now they had presented at least a summary of the major themes and ideas.

By no means do I want to make education boring, depriving it of all the fun both students and teachers can get from it, but how to combine it with academic seriousness is a challenging question I try to resolve each year.

An Exercise in Approaching Fictional Characters through Drawing

Larissa Sluchevskaya

Bryansk State University

The article examines the use of fine arts as a tool in literary discussion. The author shares her experience of organizing students' final discussion of the novel Morality Play by Barry Unsworth focusing on character analysis.

Опыт подхода к литературным героям через рисунок

Лариса Случевская

Брянский государственный

SECTION 5. REVIEWS