1st blog due by Sunday at 12pm!

Blog Assignment 1 Explanation

Blog Assignment

Your task over the next few weeks of reading Great Expectations is to track the development of the major characters. For the first blog, I would like you to analyze one of the following passages from the text for one character. Chose from:

Pip

“…I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the Hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.”

Mrs. Joe

“By this time my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind him: while I sat in the corner, looking guiltily on.”

Joe

“It were a bit lonesome then,” said Joe, “living here alone, and I got acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip;” Joe looked firmly at me, as if he knew I was not going to agree with him; “your sister is a fine figure of a woman.”

Answer the question: What do we know about the character’s personality based on this evidence?

Your entry needs to include:

· a claim or topic sentence stating directly what we know about the character

· an introduction to the evidence providing context for the quotation

· analysis (5-7) sentences explaining how the quotation supports your claim

First blogs will be checked in over the weekend. We’ll talk about responses to blogs next week.

Blog Model

Below is a sample post--a model of the kind of paragraph I want you to create fro your first blog. it begins with context, then the claim and then reference to the quote, followed by the analysis connecting the quote to the claim. I've numbered the sentences as well. Don't be afraid to make connections between the quote you choose and other parts of the novel as well. Have fun blogging!

Blog 1--Pip

“And then I looked at the stars and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.”

1Throughout his childhood, Pip is made to feel like a criminal and an ingrate among his sister and relatives. 2Aside from Joe, all the adults in his world consistently intimidate him, making him aware of loneliness, of being alone. 3In helping the criminal, he is aware that he is doing something wrong—stealing from his sister and uncle, but it is not just out of fear that he does it, it is also out of kind kinship to the criminal who is cold and alone and without pity. 4Pip sees himself in the criminal and throughout the first 5 chapters he cannot but think of the criminal. 5This quote betrays Pip’s awareness of a cold uncaring universe, and the fact that without other people, there is no hope. 6 Just as Joe is the one comfort to Pip, so Pip becomes the one aid to the convict. 7He can’t help but see his own fate in that of the convicts. 8He imagines both looking at the same stars, and neither can see any help coming from the stars (heaven). 9It is only in through the comfort of others that he can be saved.