English 121—Yanover Response Paper #1: Character Questionnaire

Value:20 points

Format:Typed. Include the following (double-spaced) heading at the top left of the first page and your last name and page number at the top right of every page:

Your Name

Yanover

English 121 Section #

Response Paper #1: Your character & the play’s author & Title

Due Date

PART 1:

Instructions:Answer all of the questions about your character (using the first person as if you were the character) in full sentences and as fully as you are able based on information provided in the play and, where necessary, extrapolating from the information provided in the play, that is, speculating or guessing based on the evidence. In your answers provide citations of where you found the information (and/or integrate quotations and in-text citations into your answers).

  1. What is your name? (Include your full name currently as well as previously, for example, if it changed in marriage, what you are called/by whom, nicknames, etc.) Does your (first and last) name have a literal meaning? What is it? What connotations does your name have?
  1. What are you? What defines you? List and describe the roles you play.
  1. What is your age? (How do you know?) Is it the same throughout the play? How does your age affect your status, behavior, and choices?
  1. What is your sex/gender? How do your speech/behavior and character traits fit or break with your gender?
  1. Are you from the city or the country? What country are you from? When do you live? Where do you live? Have you always lived in the same place? When/Where/Why did you move? How did your life change as a result?
  1. What social class do you belong to? Have you always belonged to this social class? Does it influence your speech/actions/perceptions in the play? How?
  1. What was your upbringing like? How many siblings do you have? What was/is your relationship with your parents and siblings like?
  1. What is your marital status? Are you in a steady relationship? What is your relationship like with your significant other or spouse? Does it change in the play? How and why?
  1. Do you have any children? If so, how many, what ages, what importance do they seem to have to you? What is your relationship with your children like?
  1. What is your occupation? Did you choose it? Does your position come with a title? Does it fit your own, your family’s or society’s expectations of you? Why or why not? What are your responsibilities and skills? How does your occupation affect your role in society? Does your position free you to move about and to act upon society or constrain your movements and actions? Does your position gain you respect from others? Does it gain you authority over others? Have you always held the same job or position? When, how, and why did it change?
  1. Describe yourself: What do you look like? Are your movements quick or slow? Are you clumsy or graceful? Are your actions deliberate or impetuous? Does this affect or influence the way others see and relate to you? How?
  2. What are your dominant personality or character traits? Where do you show them? How do they affect your position in society and relationship with others? What experiences have contributed to the development of your personality? Why are you like this?
  1. What motivates you? What do you want most? What do you fear most? Why? How do you go about getting what you want and avoiding what you fear? What consequences do these desires/fears and corresponding actions have and for whom?
  1. What is your IQ? What is your educational background or training? From whom have you learned? Who are your role models? What is your relationship with them?
  1. What do you believe? What do you believe in? What do you value? Where or from whom did you learn these beliefs or values? Are they consistent throughout the play? How do they change? Are these beliefs widely held in your society? Are you a rebel or a conformist or both and to what degree?
  1. With whom in the play do you have relationships? Describe the relationship with each. What is it based on? How is it affected by your respective ages, positions, genders, etc.? What is the history of your relationship? How has it changed? How do you talk to one another? How formal, how free, how straight-forward or truthful is your speech? What might constrain it? Whom do you trust? Whom do you detest? Why? What is your history with these people?
  1. How do you cope with hardship? To whom do you turn?
  1. Describe and analyze your speech patterns:
  2. Is your speech formal or casual, or if it varies, in what situations is it formal and in what casual?
  3. Are you emotional in your speech or controlled? When, with whom, or about what subjects might you tend to be emotional and when, with whom, about what might you be controlled?
  4. Do you speak openly or cautiously? Do you think about what you’re going to say ahead of time or tend to blurt it out spontaneously?
  5. Do you initiate speech or wait for others to do so? How are you at maintaining a conversation? Would you be the one to keep the conversation going, or would the other person have to work to keep you talking?
  6. Do you tend to ask questions, make statements, makeexclamations? Do you tend to speak in full sentences or fragments? When you speak, do you speak at length, offer many explanations, or do you keep your responses brief and to the point? Do you generally speak to communicate something specific; that is, do you generally have a point to make when you speak, or might you speak even if you have nothing all that important to say?
  7. Are you confident in your ability to speak and in what you have to say? Do you whisper or speak in a low voice? Do you tend to shout? If you are generally confident, what might make you hesitate? If you are generally timid, what might give you the courage to speak? Are you easily flustered or thrown off? Are you manipulative or easily manipulated?
  8. Do your speech patterns remain consistent no matter whom you’re talking with or change depending upon your audience? How, where/with whom, why?
  1. Over whom do you have/exert authority or power? How have you demonstrated that authority/power in the past, and how do you demonstrate that authority/power now? Consider both speech and actions. What (about your identity, role, status) gives you that authority/power?
  1. Who has/exerts authority or power over you? How have you responded and how do you respond to their demonstration of authority/power? Again, consider both speech and actions.

PART 2:

What additional questions do you wish had been asked or think should have been asked? Number them starting with 21. Then answer them.