Characters
Understanding a writer's use of language (words) is the key to understanding the characters that they have created. For example would you want to meet this character on a dark night?
| Descriptions of Hagrid If the motorbike was huge, it was nothing compared to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild. Long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, and hands the size of dustbin lids and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins. In his vast, muscular arms he was holding a bundle of blankets. A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair. The giant squeezed his way into the hut ,stooping so that his head just brushed the ceiling. He bent down, picked up the door and fitted it easily back into its frame. |
What is it about this description that makes the reader afraid?
Is it the things we associate with the words –such as:
| | ‘black beetles‘ Insects we may dislike/black suggests a dangerous time-‘night’ or ‘death’? |
| | ‘Long tangles' 'wild, tangled’ Do they suggest that this character is a bit wild and uncontrolled? |
| | ‘His face was almost completely hidden’ Does this add to the mystery and create fear in the reader? |
| | Are ‘giants’ generally characters to avoid in fairy Stories? |
We call these ideas or associations ‘connotations’.
We can use this in a sentence ‘The word has connotations of….’
In an exam essay you would use the PQC system
| P point Q quotation C comment |
Point J.K.Rowling obviously wants the reader to fear the strange giant at first as she describes him as having:
Quote ‘a wild, tangled beard, with eyes, glinting like black beetles’.
Comment The words ‘wild’ ‘tangled’ and ‘black’ all have connotations of danger and suggest threatening or dangerous things, while the idea of eyes ‘glinting like black beetles’ is a simile that suggests an evil or menacing creature.
How might this piece of writing be graded by an examiner?
| P J.K.Rowling obviously wants the reader to fear the strange giant. This idea on its own is good and gets a level 4. |
| Adding the quote to the POINT could get you a level 5: P J.K.Rowling obviously wants the reader to fear the strange giant at first as she describes him as having Q ‘a wild, tangled beard, with eyes, glinting like black beetles’ |
| For a level 6 and above you need to use the PQC in full: P ‘J.K.Rowling obviously wants the reader to fear the strange giant at first as she describes him as having Q ‘a wild, tangled beard, with eyes, glinting like black beetles’. C the words ‘wild’ ‘tangled’ and ‘black’ all have connotations of danger and suggest threatening or dangerous things, while the idea of eyes ‘glinting like black beetles’ is a simile that suggests an evil or menacing creature. |
Now you try using PQC when looking at the way J.K Rowling describes Harry Potter. Does Harry sound like the stereotypical hero?
| Description of Harry Potter Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry has always been small and skinny for his age. He looked even smaller and skinnier than he really was because he had to wear old clothes of Dudley's and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was. Harry had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair and bright-green eyes. He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Sellotape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose. The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead which was shaped like a bolt of lightning. |
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