Longer Fiction or Drama I

Unit 3 is the first longer-fiction-or-drama unit, and the length changes what is analysable: characters can now change, conflicts can intersect, and setting acquires a social and historical dimension.

Jane Austen's first draft of Pride and Prejudice, written in 1796-97, was called First Impressions. The old title names the novel's subject: a clever young woman judges two men quickly, gets both wrong, and has to change her mind. A long work has room for this kind of change, and this unit is about tracing it.

The CED's additions on character:

• The description of a character creates expectations 期待 for that character's behaviour, and how a character meets or fails those expectations is meaningful.
• Details associated with a character contribute to a reader's interpretation of them.
• A reader's understanding of a character's perspective may depend on the perspective of the narrator.
• A character's perspective may shift during the narrative.
• When narrators or characters compare another character to something else, they reveal their own perspective as much as the compared character's.
• Readers can infer motive 动机 from a character's actions or inactions.

That last word - inactions - is the one worth keeping. What a character declines to do is evidence, and it is usually more revealing than what they do.

• A dynamic character 动态人物 develops over the narrative and often makes choices that directly or indirectly cause change.
• Character change can be visible and external - health, wealth, circumstance - or internal, in belief, value, or understanding.
• A static character 静态人物 remains unchanged or is largely unaffected by events.

The unchanged character is not a failure of characterisation 人物塑造; it is often the measure by which the change in others is visible.

Setting now includes the social, cultural, and historical situation in which the events occur - not only time and place.

This widens what setting can do. A social setting supplies the constraints a character must act within, and constraint is what turns a choice into a revealing one.

• A narrative is delivered through a series of events that relate to a conflict.
• Events include episodes 情节片段, encounters, and scenes 场景 that introduce and develop plot.
• The significance of an event depends on its relationship to the narrative, the conflict, and character development 人物发展.

That third statement is the test for essay selection: an event matters to your argument only if you can say what it does to the conflict or to a character. Retelling a striking scene that does neither is plot summary 情节概述, which earns nothing.

• Conflict 冲突 is tension between competing values 价值观, either within a character - an internal conflict 内心冲突 - or between a character and an external force - an external conflict 外部冲突.
• A text may contain multiple conflicts, and often two or more intersect 交叉.
• A primary conflict 主要冲突 can be heightened by additional conflicts that intersect with it.
• Inconsistencies 不一致之处 in a text may create contrasts that represent conflicts of values or perspectives.

Note the definition: conflict is between competing values, not merely between people. Two characters who want the same object are in a dispute; two characters who want incompatible goods are in a conflict, and only the second produces meaning.

Unchanged from Units 1 and 2: a claim requiring textual defence, textual evidence, and details identified in combination.

• A thesis statement 论题句 expresses an interpretation of a literary text and requires defence through textual evidence.
• It may preview the development or line of reasoning of that interpretation - but is not required to list the reasons.

The key word is interpretation. A thesis that states what happens in the text is not a thesis; it is a summary. A thesis must say what the text means or does, which is by definition arguable.

• A line of reasoning 推理线索 is the logical sequence of claims that together defend the overarching thesis.
• It is communicated through commentary 评析 explaining the logical relationship between evidence and claim.

• Writers use evidence strategically - to illustrate, clarify, exemplify, associate, or amplify.
• Evidence is effective when commentary explains its logical relationship to the claim.
• Evidence is sufficient 充分的 when its quantity and quality provide apt support.
• Developing an interpretation is a recursive process: an interpretation can emerge, and change, as you read and write.

That last point is permission worth taking. If your reading changes while you draft, revise the thesis to match it.

Grammar 语法 and mechanics that follow established conventions allow writers to communicate clearly. On this exam, control of language is not a separate mark but a condition of the others: an unclear sentence cannot deliver commentary a reader can credit.

Worked example (a real AP exam task). A Question 3 literary-argument prompt asks you to choose a work and analyse how a character's conflict contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole. A weak answer narrates the plot around the conflict. A scoring answer identifies competing values and lets them intersect: "The protagonist's external conflict with his family over the inheritance is heightened by an internal one: he wants the independence the money would buy, and he wants to remain the son who never asked for it. Because the two conflicts share a single object, resolving either resolves neither - which is why the novel ends with a choice that satisfies no one, including him." Two conflicts, named as values, and an interpretation of the whole.

A real text: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

"Till this moment, I never knew myself."

Worked analysis.

• The narrator's voice. The first sentence sounds like a law of nature, but the next pages show that it is really the wish of mothers with unmarried daughters, Mrs Bennet above all. The narrator states a "truth" in order to laugh at it.
• Setting with social and economic weight. The Bennets' house will pass to a male cousin, Mr Collins, when Mr Bennet dies, so the five daughters need to marry. Money and marriage are the pressure under every polite conversation.
• Conflicts that intersect. The outside conflict is social (rank and money divide Elizabeth from Darcy). The inside conflict is her own quick judgement: she believes Wickham's story against Darcy because it fits her first dislike.
• The significant event is reading. Darcy's letter tells her the facts about Wickham. Her reply, "Till this moment, I never knew myself", marks the change: she sees that her famous judgement was pride.

Claim: Austen makes Elizabeth's turning point an act of reading rather than an action, so the novel's real conflict is not between two lovers but between a quick first judgement and the patience to revise it.

Read this original passage from the end of a longer story, then answer before reading the model answers.

Twenty years later Wen stood again at the village bus stop. The shelter had been rebuilt in glass; the timetable was electronic. He found himself reaching, as he always had, for the coins in his left pocket, though the driver now waved everyone on with a phone.

1. Has Wen changed, or not? Use a detail.
2. How does the setting reflect a theme 主题?
3. Write a claim that connects the character to the setting.

1. Partly unchanged: his hand still goes for coins, a habit from twenty years ago, even though he has been away long enough for the village to transform.
2. The rebuilt shelter and phone payments show a world that moved on; it suggests the theme of returning home to find home has changed more than you have.
3. For example: "The modernised bus stop measures Wen against the village: the place has changed completely, while his reflexes have not, so his return exposes how much of him stayed behind."

• Inactions reveal motive. What a character declines to do is often the strongest evidence available.
• The unchanged character is the measure by which change in others becomes visible.
• Setting now includes the social and historical situation - it supplies the constraint that makes choices meaningful.
• Conflict is between competing values, not merely between people. Name the values.
• An event matters only if you can say what it does to the conflict or to a character. Otherwise it is plot summary.
• A thesis must state an interpretation, not what happens. Summary cannot be defended.

Vocabulary card meanings

dynamic character: A person in a story who changes in an important way. static character: A person in a story whose nature stays the same from start to end. intersect: To meet or cross, as two plot lines can.