Responding to Character Prompts

[Rachelrachel]

Could anyone offer some advice on responding to character, rather than theme, based prompts? For example:

All women in the film face prejudice. To what extent do you agree?
Winston's ability to think freely is what we admire most about him. Discuss.
Lisa is the true hero of Rear Window. Do you agree?

I am very confident responding to themes, but find it difficult to discuss specific characters without retelling the story. Does anyone have any advice?

[s110820]

Could anyone offer some advice on responding to character, rather than theme, based prompts? For example:

All women in the film face prejudice. To what extent do you agree?
Winston's ability to think freely is what we admire most about him. Discuss.
Lisa is the true hero of Rear Window. Do you agree?

I am very confident responding to themes, but find it difficult to discuss specific characters without retelling the story. Does anyone have any advice?

Hey Rachel,

Since I'm not a VCE student, I don't really know much about the VCE curriculum or what it entails, but I would be more than happy to help either way. Here's how I would approach the questions:

- Firstly, since the questions look extremely complicated on the surface, I would break the question down into manageable chunks.

Question 1:

"All women face prejudice" --> Personally, I slightly agree with this statement. While I'm not familiar with your text, women still face prejudice in some shape or form, regardless of their class, wealth or social status in society. Some may face prejudice more than others but I wouldn't say that "some women don't face prejudice at all"!

"To what extent do you agree" --> In a "to what extent do you agree" type of question, the trick is to not fall into the trap of simply saying "yes" or "no" - in fact, it's about nuance and a discerning perspective. It's like flipping a coin - sometimes you can often get one side of the coin (one perspective), and may not get the other side of the coin (another perspective) as much, but that doesn't mean that you can't acknowledge the opposing perspective.

Question 2:

"Winston's ability to think freely" --> Again, I'm not exactly sure who Winston is or what his role is in your text, but when I read the words - "the ability to think freely" - I think of the concepts of autonomy and agency. Autonomy refers to the ability to make your own decisions about what to do rather than being influenced by someone else or told what to do and agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. For example, the structure of cultural attitudes, assumptions, values and beliefs of a particular time, place or era, as well as the structure of society, may determine or limit an individual's agency and their decisions.

"What we admire the most" --> Again, I don't really know much about your text, but from what I can understand, the question is asking you something along the lines of "do you think having the ability to display autonomy and agency is something to be admired or ashamed of?"  - start from there and see how you go!

"Discuss" --> This is a pretty broad term but it generally means to talk or write about (a topic) in detail, taking into account different issues or ideas. For a question that asks you to discuss something, it may be useful to consider and analyse both perspectives of the question itself and the cultural assumptions, attitudes, values and beliefs that underpin the time, place and era as well as the author's intentions.

Question 3:

"Lisa is the true hero" --> Essentially, what makes Lisa a good and sympathetic character? How does the author make the audience sympathise with Lisa and her actions?
"Do you agree?" --> More or less a "yes" or "no" type of question, but generally, I would consider and discuss both perspectives if possible and if necessary.

- Then, if it's for exam preparation, I would extensively research the author's life and the social/historical setting that they grew up in as well as the social/historical context that the text was set in, before the exam day.

- However, in terms of characters, it's important to understand how they developed, what their key characteristics are and the nature of their relationships with other characters in the text. Make notes, annotate and highlight as much as possible but only what you think is important to you and what you would benefit from knowing.

I'm sorry if my advice isn't really "in-depth" or extensive - as I said before, I'm not a VCE student but I'm sure that other people in the forums would be able to help you more effectively. But just in case, I have linked a few resources that you might find useful:

- The Five Types of Text Response Prompts by Lisa Tran: https://www.vcestudyguides.com/blog/the-5-types-of-text-response-essay-topics
- And this ATAR Notes thread that you might find useful: https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=154565.0

Hopefully, that helps

Have a great week and kind regards,

Darcy Dillon.