This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Plot is the novel’s story line – what the book is essentially about. Here is the plot outline (story summary) for the novel Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert:
Emma Bovary is a young woman who dreams of a romantic life away from home. When she finally marries and gets all she desired, she feels unsatisfied with her role as a housewife. To quench her hunger for romance she has an affair with an unsuitable lover. As she fights for a life of glamour, things soon deteriorate in Emma’s life, leaving both her and her husband penniless and unhappy.
The themes in a novel are the issues that it attempts to address. Themes can range from universal and timeless issues such as friendship and war to more specific themes such as homelessness in London.
Themes
Brainstorm the themes of the book you’re reading now.
In an armchair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have seen, or ever shall see.
She was dressed in rich materials – satins, and lace, and silks, all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table…
It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.
“Look at me,” said Miss Havisham. “You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?”
Characters in novels or even the narrators of novels do not always express the views of the author. In fact, sometimes the author has views which are contrary to a character’s point of view.
The character whose viewpoint we are expected to adopt is called the hero. The villain is the ‘evil’ character who we want to see fail.
Literary novels tend to continue to be a success over a long period of time even though they affect new readers in new ways.
Many novels are now transferred into different media, e.g. film. This gives the story a much wider audience although often directors choose to change the endings of stories to suit the particular media they are working in.
Can you think of a novel which was altered as a result of being made into a film?
You may ask any question you wish so long as it does not offend anyone else in the room.Questions must not promote yes/no answers but make the character think.
The purpose of hot-seating:
To help you reach a better understanding of a particular character. To get you thinking about unanswered questions in the text.To encourage you to debate interpretations of characters.
Write an alternative ending for [novel name]. Try to be realistic about what might have been and as far as possible, imitate the author’s style of writing.