Free Sample Essays > North American
Wolf by Gillian Cross
Choose two characters from the novel WOLF, one that you are supposed to feel sympathy for and one that you are supposed to oppose. Discuss how and why you are positioned to respond to these characters in such a way.
The novel Wolf by Gillian Cross has many well-developed issues about reality and what it is like to be living among the poorer of people. There are also many well-used characterization techniques that portray how we are to respond and feel towards certain subjects. The reader has to believe what they want about the characters through the way that they are constructed and in which sequence they are told. Some have mainly bad things said about them which gives the reader a negative feeling towards them. Some characters on the other hand are read as being either mistreated, we get a sympathetic feeling towards them, or they are told as being the “hero” which gives the character a sense of greatness. In some cases the reader may have trouble finding a definite feeling towards a character. In each instance the reader positioning is important to our understanding of the novel and what it is about.
The novel WOLF by Gillian Cross is constructed on the basis of complex and undefined characters. They are the main idea and story line brought up throughout the novel, explaining about the life of a girl with a harsh relationship with both her parents and living in amongst the third world citizens in the pooper suburbs of London. Cassy, the main character, is a character you are positioned to feel sympathy for. Through-out the novel she is rejected and ignored. She is pushed and shoved in the opposite directions that she wants to find. In the beginning of the novel, she is woken to find her Nan sitting at the base of her bed packing Cassy’s clothes into a suitcase. She realizes what this means and tries to ask but she is forced upon her the unreal fact that “you don’t have a reason to visit her own mother”. She leaves the house with no sense of direction but past experiences when she had been with her Nan, traveling to her mother’s house. She is taken into an environment where she could easily be raped, abducted, kidnapped or even killed. She has no friends to go to, and she is feeling lost when she realizes her mother does not live where she used to. She has no knowledge of her father and she tries her hardest to find out who and where he is.
The characters here are based upon those found in many movies, books, songs, T.V shows and fairy tales, where there are supposed goodies and baddies. A fight or dilemma occurs where something bad happens and is resolved in the end. In the end of WOLF, Mick Phelan, Cassy’s dad, is taken away and arrested. A typical happy ending. Her dad, Mick, is a character that we are supposed to feel hatred and anger towards. We [next page]