We’re ready for the essays guys! Your favourite part of the course! Remember we are using PEEL to structure our essays.That’s Point, Evidence, Explain and Link Back.
We’ve already taken a look at the questions from the past papers and its clear that we can comfortably answer most of the questions. We probably won’t spend much time on the ‘setting’ based ones purely because we haven’t spent time focusing on this in our discussions during class.
The first question we are going to look at is this:
Choose a novel or short story in which there is a complex character for whom the reader has some sympathy. With reference to appropriate techniques, explain the nature of the complexity and discuss how your response to this character adds to your appreciation of the text as a whole.
We could answer this question by looking at one of three characters: Pip, Miss Havisham or Estella. It makes the most sense to answer it using Pip as he is the narrator and protagonist of the story. If you have a think about Pip’s character, he isn’t always the greatest person despite being in a secure environment. At times he is actually downright unlikeable. We will take him as our character for this essay.
To plan out this essay then we first of all need to think of 5 points from the book that show us Pip is a complex character. There are a lot of points that you could make. Here’s the 5 points we have:
Pip helps the convict out of fear but also kindness
Pip discovers that life could be different if you are wealthy as he is introduced to Miss Havisham and her world
Pip is unkind to Joe and embarrassed by him he starts to live his life in London
Pip looks after Magwitch and turns his life around
Pip fully changes his character for the better by understanding a good work ethic and being morally good.
If these are our 5 points we need to get evidence from the text that supports this. Your first job is to work out what quotes from the text we will use to back up these 5 points. Once you’ve got your quotes we’re ready to start writing!
For your paragraphs you will be using PEEL to structure your response – POINT>EVIDENCE>EXPLAIN>LINK BACK
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