Reading & Creating Texts – Unit 1
Having considered related elements of plot and setting, you should now be ready to compare the characters in the texts. In examining main and secondary characters, first consider their common behavioural traits and the elements of personality that they share. Characters may have similar values and morals, and they may also make similar judgments of the behaviour of others. In addition to comparing the characters themselves, it is also worth comparing their responses to confrontation or conflict. Most characters will generally undergo some sort of transformation over the course of a narrative and such transformations can also be explored
MAIN CHARACTERS Both ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘Twelve Angry Men’ feature main characters with a strong moral code. Atticus Finch and the unnamed Eighth Juror are firmly established as being willing to pursue justice and fairness, even in the face of strong opposition. The following extracts serve as the introduction to each character In this passage from ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, Scout Finch relates the story of her father's earliest experience as a lawyer in Maycomb. The passage illustrates Atticus' horror at the fate of his first clients and clearly demonstrates his underlying values.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, HARPER LEE When my father was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began his practice. Maycomb, some 20 miles east of Finch's Landing, was the county seat of Maycomb County. Atticus' office in the court-house contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checker-board and an unsullied Code of Alabama. His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Atticus had urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defence for anybody. They persisted in pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticus could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that was probably the beginning of my father's profound distaste for the practice of criminal law. Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006, pp. 4-5.
This passage from the play Twelve Angry Men is taken from the moments just after the first vote by the jury Expecting a unanimous guilty verdict, the other jurors are shocked when the Eighth Juror casts an opposing vote. Facing surprise and even hostility from his fellow jurors, the Eighth Juror is required to defend his decision and outline the reasoning behind his vote.
VCE ENGLISH UNIT 1&2
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