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Martyn Pig: Exploring Brooks’ use of characterisation

Learning Objective:

AO3 - To be able to explain the writer’s ideas clearly offering relevant and appropriate supporting quotations.

INSTRUCTIONS

For each character, complete the following tasks:

1. Write down all the adjectives, verbs, nouns and similes used in the passage, into the relevant table

2. Write a detailed answer (using PEE) to the question: How has Brooks used language to introduce the character to the reader?

EXAMPLE:

Inspector Breece

The police. Two of them. The one who spoke was a silver-haired man with a weathered face and sharp eyes. Medium height, stout, round-shouldered. He had a crumpled look about him. Beneath his raincoat he wore a dark blue suit that didn’t seem to fit properly.

|Adjectives |Verbs |Nouns |Similes |

|Silver-haired medium |Spoke |Police | |

|Weathered stout | |man | |

|Sharp dark blue | |Face | |

|round-shouldered | |Eyes | |

|Crumpled | |Look | |

| | |Suit | |

Explain how Brooks has used language to introduce the character:

Kevin Brooks has used mainly adjectives to describe the character of Inspector Breece. The adjectives help to exaggerate the age of the person and how worn out he seems to Martyn. This is created by the use of lexical sets such as ‘silver-haired’, ‘weathered’, ‘crumpled’ and ‘round shouldered’ which suggests he’s stooping. All of these give the impression that he has been doing his job for a long time and is perhaps quite tired of it. In addition to this he uses the word ‘sharp’ to describe his eyes, which helps the reader to realise that despite his aged appearance he is perhaps still good at his job. As only one simple verb ‘spoke’ is used in the introduction to Inspector Breece which suggests he is going to be quite a calm, still character who is focused solely on the job at hand.

Glossary and Help:

Verbs – action words – show how a character behaves.

Adjectives – descriptive words – describe a character’s appearance or personality.

Nouns – names of people, places or things – draw your attention to what is being described.

Similes – draw a comparison between two things by saying that one is like the other – Help create vivid imaginative pictures.

Lexical sets – words which are similar to each other

William Pig

He paused to puff on his cigarette. I thought of telling him that there’s no such thing as the emviroment, but I couldn’t be bothered. I filled the bin-liner, tied it, and started on another. Dad was gazing at his reflection in the glass door, rubbing at the bags under his eyes. He could have been quite a handsome man if it wasn’t for the drink. Handsome in a short, thuggish kind of way. Five foot seven, tough-guy mouth, squarish jaw, oily black hair. Her could have looked like one of those bad guys in films – the ones the ladies can’t help falling in love with, even though they know they’re bad – but he didn’t. He looked like what he was: a drunk. Fat little belly, florid skin, yellowed eyes, sagging cheeks and a big fat neck. Old and worn out at forty.

He leaned over the sing, coughed, spat, and flicked ash down the plughole.

|Adjectives |Verbs |Nouns |Similes |

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Explain how Brooks has used language to introduce the character:

Alex

I watched the way her eyes blinked slowly and I watched her mouth say Thank you and I watched the coal-black shine of her hair as she took the bus ticket and rolled it into a tube and stuck it in the corner of her mouth. I watched her hitch up the collar of her combat jacket and I saw the bright white flash of her T-shirt beneath the open folds of her jacket as she strolled gracefully to the back of the bus...

I first met Alex about two years ago when she and her mum moved into a rented house just down the road from us. I remember watching from my bedroom window as they unloaded all their stuff from a removal van, and I remember thinking to myself how nice she looked. Nice. She looked nice. Pretty. Kind of scruffy, with straggly black hair sticking out from a shapeless black hat. She wore battered old jeans and a long red jumper. I liked the way she walked, too. An easy lope.

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Explain how Brooks has used language to introduce the character:

Alex’s Mum

She was quite tall, for a woman. Sort of dumpy, too. Medium-tall and dumpy, if that makes sense. Her hair was black, like Alex’s, but short. And her face was sort of grey and tired-looking, like her skin needed watering. She wore faded dungarees and a black T-shirt, long beady earrings, and bracelets on her writsts. As she hefted the box of broken glass and turned to go back into the house she glanced up in my direction.

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Explain how Brooks has used language to introduce the character:

Dean

Dean was her boyfriend. Dean West. He was eighteen, he worked in the Gadget Shop in town – computers, sound systems, electronic stuff. He was an idiot. Ponytail, long fingernails, bad skin. His face was all the same colour – lips, cheeks, eyes, nose – all rotten and white. He rode a motorbike and liked to think he was some kind of biker, but he wasn’t. He was just a pale white idiot.

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Explain how Brooks has used language to introduce the character:

Peter Bennett from Social Services

He was a weedy-looking young man with short ginger hair and a short ginger moustache that was hardly worth the bother of growing. It looked like a short ginger caterpillar. When Breece had introduced me to him half an hour earlier my first thought was that he looked like a bell-ringer. His skin was sickly and colourless and his lips were too thin. He looked as if he didn’t eat properly.

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Explain how Brooks has used language to introduce the character:

Answer the following questions:

Who receives a positive description and who receives a negative?

Who is the narrator of the story?

The descriptions of the characters introduce us to that character but because they are written in first person, they also tell us about Martyn. What can we learn about Martyn from reading the descriptions? Explain your answer.

Out of the nouns, adjectives, verbs and similes, what does Brooks use more of in his writing? Why do you think this is?

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