A level English Lit homework
Assignment One: write a study of a person you know well in the style of an author of your choice. you must provide an example of your chosen author's characterisation. hand in by October 13th
Liz, Lizi, Lizabet: 5ft 7 of legs, hair and lips. Gangly during childhood, but now coltish and heading for leggy. Honeyed complexion; tanned skin and gold hair mostly straight with a laid back curl and streaks of white blond from summer afternoons spent lying in the park. Brown eyes seemed perpetually surprised by the world, perfect bee-stung lips she hadn’t yet noticed she had hung slightly open, forever on the verge of a gasp. Too pretty to be unpopular yet too questioning to truly fit in with the herd of highlighted, glossy darlings who had befriended her. Nose always in a book; the latest Gossip Girl or Danielle Steele when she was sprawled over a sofa in the common room, Grave’s Greek Myths or White’s Once and Future King when wedged into one of the cramped alcoves of the senior library, a worn and scribbled-on Muji notebook when lying on her front, Lolita-esque, under the cherry blossom tree in the school gardens. Flute-like laugh spun and shattered at another insipid joke as she charged down to lunch, part of a sea of tanned legs, high heels, flying hair, to eat two bites of salad and half a fat free yoghurt before excusing herself, eyes flicking from the floor to her hands to the floor again, and walking-running-walking to the door nearest the sixth form toilets.
*****
Lizi: heels fashionably high, black ankle socks, the same skirt she’d had since Form Two skimming her thighs, the v neck jumper bought purposefully large (though she’d scream in mock horror if you reminded her it was the same size as “Fat Vicki”s ) almost covering the pleated hem of her skirt. Tie loose, top two buttons opened, cuffs frayed from absent minded chewing, Urban Decay lip gloss and a blunt 2h pencil poking out of a breast pocket and distending the off-the-shoulder hang of her jumper. Nails carefully French polished, French polish artlessly chewed off, “Ollie”s number scrawled across the lavender veins on the underside of her wrist (“call me!”), a conjugated IR verb smudged and gray underneath it, not quite washed off from yesterday’s French test. Bag too small to hold books (those were carried casually under one arm, the very study of a Hollywood movie’s college student) held instead Maybelline mascara, passport photos of a dozens girls and boys, packed in together flashing perfect white teeth and perfect pink tongues for the camera, half a pack of Marlboro lights- candy-pink lighter tucked inside, orbit gum (green, not blue!), jumbled pens (candy apple red, glittery purple, cherry scented pink, one solitary blue - run out of ink). Mobile phone, tiny, expensive, battered to hell through constant use and abuse, never more than an inch away, small prescription bottle, original label worn half off, containing a mini pharmacy of rounds, ovals, capsules, in myriad colours: pills for filling you up, emptying you out, killing your pain, keeping you up, bringing you down, pills for selling, swapping, for swallowing for the hell of it - because it was Tuesday and nothing but gum and cigarette smoke had passed your lips for 20 hours. She knew, or claimed to know what each one was (though not where she had acquired it from), usually she was right.
*****
Liz: after school, play rehearsal. Converse all-stars as old as the century (bought two days before the millennium eve in a fit of post-grunge irony and January-sale madness) filthy and falling apart yet still elegant framing her bony ankles. £120 jeans - (“Seven” she had told him as though the number alone would mean something to a boy wearing pants and socks bought for him by his mother) worn and ripped at the knee during some kind of “outdoor activity” hung low, showing heart-breaking hip bones and an eternity of concave honeyed skin between them, naval pierced by a silver and ruby bar twinkled just below a child’s t shirt surgically altered with kitchen scissors and mother’s sewing machine to show collar and breastbones ballerina-prominent, a flash of pink bra strap. Hair twisted and held in place with a chopstick from Noodle Time revealed lobes pierced by tiny diamonds (fifteenth birthday present from her father) and a swan-like neck dusted at the back with miniscule blond baby hairs, delicate and begging to be touched, stroked, kissed as “Elizabeth”, her full name at last, exhaled on a breath of wonder, ghosted goosbumps down her neck.
*****
Simply “L” in her journals: her tearstained, blood-spotted, notebooks decoupaged in lips, eyes, faces; Christina Ricci looking pale and interesting, Johnny Depp looking dark and smouldering, Brian Molko, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey. Poems full of self-conscious rhymes, structures learned in GCSE English, but seeped throughout with the depth and strength of feeling found only in someone toeing the line between childhood and adulthood. Rants and insecurities, petty snipes and seams of vitriol, despair and elation and terror of falling, falling and breaking.
“L” : everyone reduced to initials in her paper world - a zoo of E’s and M’s. FV (fat Vicki) featured in her crueller entries; also the entries full of self-doubt and loathing (“what have I become?” “how can I be this person?” “I must eat less - I’m having an FV day”). But throughout the alphabet soup one single, solitary name sings out, conspicuous only by it’s fullness, for the references are of the most mundane; “met ***, smoked fags, drank JD, ran over lines for “Usher”” or “Saturday night, in with ***, he tolerated my chick flicks (is Sense and Sensibility a chick flick anyway?) shared one of mother’s valiums, passed out. Hope he doesn’t notice I drooled on his hoodie”. One name, alone. James.
Look Closer
James: Begin with what you see. Chocolate hair that falls, despite every effort, into eyes that are startlingly green and always looking, seeing, processing. Tall and slim; a shade over scrawny thanks to years on the fencing team and each Saturday morning in bed that had been given up for three hours rowing practise on a cold river. Uniform smarter that those of the rugby team, but worn a tad too comfortably to look geeky, a crushed packet of fags and a battered copy of The Birthday Party stuffed into his back pocket, jumper slung round his shoulders (prefects badge scratching at his earlobe), tie knotted loosely round the open collar of his shirt. Illegal doc Martins are scuffed and he carries no bag - just a ring binder, Moleskine and biro, all black (his teachers indulge him this flagrant deviation from their meticulous regime of colour-coded exercise books as long as the work ripped out of an a4 refil pad is on time and another flawless A grade).
But look past what you see, past the boy who passes his name on a trophy every three paces, past the relaxed perfection of an over-achiever so bright he can do, wear, say anything he likes as long as it doesn’t knock him from his pedestal. Look past the horse-play with boys both popular and not, the ease with which he flits from social group to social group, seemingly a favourite of everyone, look past the admiring glances thrown his way by fourth form girls and third form boys, the nods of respect and acknowledgment he gives teachers and receives back from them.
Look instead at the nervous flick of his eyes, at the calculation visible through them, the practised smile, nod, wave, jesting insult he throws as, dancer-like, he weaves down a crowded lunchtime corridor; route planned out with the tactical nous of a navel commander. Look as his head jerks sideways, attention grabbed by a gale of girlish laughter, as he seeks and finds Lizi in its midst and exchanges a series of looks: “How are you?” “ballsed up that Latin test, fancy a fag?” “Can’t - Oxbridge meeting” “Lame - coffee before the rehearsal?” “Absolutely - Belushi’s?” “3.45” .
Look as he slides into his seat near the back of Additional Maths, knowing the answers to every question but answering only one in four as his mind wanders over the perfect and mysterious landscape of Elizabeth; his oldest friend, his most unattainable target. Look as his hand nervously doodles stars, jagged shapes, writes 3.45, Belushi’s three times in his diary as if he hasn’t already memorized it, as if they haven’t met there every Thursday before every play rehearsal since third form. Look at his index finger, nail chewed to ruins, as it glides over his lines as Prospero, his license to be as self-assured, as responsible as everyone else already thinks he is. Look as his foot taps a tattoo on the floor, as his knee jiggles impatiently.
Watch as he casually strolls towards the side door as the final bell rings, the tension visible in every muscle belying his hidden eagerness. Watch as he slips inconspicuously down the side of the science block to smoke a quick cigarette as he waits for Lizi to primp and preen and switch her uniform for something less schoolgirl chic.
Watch as he swallows and breathes deeply once, twice and walks into Belushi’s, greets “Luciano” (though the man is English born and raised) and slides into their favourite corner. Watch as he shreds a napkin, pulls out a biro and scrawls half a line of Prospero onto one of the larger corners, ears pricked to the sound of the door. Watch as he turns fearfully and joyfully when Lizi, (“Elizabeth”) finally flies through the door in a flurry of hair (“Jamesie!”) and plants a kiss on his cheek, a punch on his arm, calls out for two lattes and plonks herself at the other end of the sofa. Watch his relief as the woman who torments his dreams, who steals his mind every other waking moment, his perfect tormentor melts away and reveals his oldest friend Liz, bouncy and sparkling and unaware of the milk froth on the tip of her nose.
Author's Note: Authors, in case it wasn't particularly clear: James on Lizi, Will on James. Bonus points will be given if anyone can name the authors these are written in homage to. Please feel free to drop me constructive feedback in the comments
Liz, Lizi, Lizabet: 5ft 7 of legs, hair and lips. Gangly during childhood, but now coltish and heading for leggy. Honeyed complexion; tanned skin and gold hair mostly straight with a laid back curl and streaks of white blond from summer afternoons spent lying in the park. Brown eyes seemed perpetually surprised by the world, perfect bee-stung lips she hadn’t yet noticed she had hung slightly open, forever on the verge of a gasp. Too pretty to be unpopular yet too questioning to truly fit in with the herd of highlighted, glossy darlings who had befriended her. Nose always in a book; the latest Gossip Girl or Danielle Steele when she was sprawled over a sofa in the common room, Grave’s Greek Myths or White’s Once and Future King when wedged into one of the cramped alcoves of the senior library, a worn and scribbled-on Muji notebook when lying on her front, Lolita-esque, under the cherry blossom tree in the school gardens. Flute-like laugh spun and shattered at another insipid joke as she charged down to lunch, part of a sea of tanned legs, high heels, flying hair, to eat two bites of salad and half a fat free yoghurt before excusing herself, eyes flicking from the floor to her hands to the floor again, and walking-running-walking to the door nearest the sixth form toilets.
*****
Lizi: heels fashionably high, black ankle socks, the same skirt she’d had since Form Two skimming her thighs, the v neck jumper bought purposefully large (though she’d scream in mock horror if you reminded her it was the same size as “Fat Vicki”s ) almost covering the pleated hem of her skirt. Tie loose, top two buttons opened, cuffs frayed from absent minded chewing, Urban Decay lip gloss and a blunt 2h pencil poking out of a breast pocket and distending the off-the-shoulder hang of her jumper. Nails carefully French polished, French polish artlessly chewed off, “Ollie”s number scrawled across the lavender veins on the underside of her wrist (“call me!”), a conjugated IR verb smudged and gray underneath it, not quite washed off from yesterday’s French test. Bag too small to hold books (those were carried casually under one arm, the very study of a Hollywood movie’s college student) held instead Maybelline mascara, passport photos of a dozens girls and boys, packed in together flashing perfect white teeth and perfect pink tongues for the camera, half a pack of Marlboro lights- candy-pink lighter tucked inside, orbit gum (green, not blue!), jumbled pens (candy apple red, glittery purple, cherry scented pink, one solitary blue - run out of ink). Mobile phone, tiny, expensive, battered to hell through constant use and abuse, never more than an inch away, small prescription bottle, original label worn half off, containing a mini pharmacy of rounds, ovals, capsules, in myriad colours: pills for filling you up, emptying you out, killing your pain, keeping you up, bringing you down, pills for selling, swapping, for swallowing for the hell of it - because it was Tuesday and nothing but gum and cigarette smoke had passed your lips for 20 hours. She knew, or claimed to know what each one was (though not where she had acquired it from), usually she was right.
*****
Liz: after school, play rehearsal. Converse all-stars as old as the century (bought two days before the millennium eve in a fit of post-grunge irony and January-sale madness) filthy and falling apart yet still elegant framing her bony ankles. £120 jeans - (“Seven” she had told him as though the number alone would mean something to a boy wearing pants and socks bought for him by his mother) worn and ripped at the knee during some kind of “outdoor activity” hung low, showing heart-breaking hip bones and an eternity of concave honeyed skin between them, naval pierced by a silver and ruby bar twinkled just below a child’s t shirt surgically altered with kitchen scissors and mother’s sewing machine to show collar and breastbones ballerina-prominent, a flash of pink bra strap. Hair twisted and held in place with a chopstick from Noodle Time revealed lobes pierced by tiny diamonds (fifteenth birthday present from her father) and a swan-like neck dusted at the back with miniscule blond baby hairs, delicate and begging to be touched, stroked, kissed as “Elizabeth”, her full name at last, exhaled on a breath of wonder, ghosted goosbumps down her neck.
*****
Simply “L” in her journals: her tearstained, blood-spotted, notebooks decoupaged in lips, eyes, faces; Christina Ricci looking pale and interesting, Johnny Depp looking dark and smouldering, Brian Molko, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey. Poems full of self-conscious rhymes, structures learned in GCSE English, but seeped throughout with the depth and strength of feeling found only in someone toeing the line between childhood and adulthood. Rants and insecurities, petty snipes and seams of vitriol, despair and elation and terror of falling, falling and breaking.
“L” : everyone reduced to initials in her paper world - a zoo of E’s and M’s. FV (fat Vicki) featured in her crueller entries; also the entries full of self-doubt and loathing (“what have I become?” “how can I be this person?” “I must eat less - I’m having an FV day”). But throughout the alphabet soup one single, solitary name sings out, conspicuous only by it’s fullness, for the references are of the most mundane; “met ***, smoked fags, drank JD, ran over lines for “Usher”” or “Saturday night, in with ***, he tolerated my chick flicks (is Sense and Sensibility a chick flick anyway?) shared one of mother’s valiums, passed out. Hope he doesn’t notice I drooled on his hoodie”. One name, alone. James.
Look Closer
James: Begin with what you see. Chocolate hair that falls, despite every effort, into eyes that are startlingly green and always looking, seeing, processing. Tall and slim; a shade over scrawny thanks to years on the fencing team and each Saturday morning in bed that had been given up for three hours rowing practise on a cold river. Uniform smarter that those of the rugby team, but worn a tad too comfortably to look geeky, a crushed packet of fags and a battered copy of The Birthday Party stuffed into his back pocket, jumper slung round his shoulders (prefects badge scratching at his earlobe), tie knotted loosely round the open collar of his shirt. Illegal doc Martins are scuffed and he carries no bag - just a ring binder, Moleskine and biro, all black (his teachers indulge him this flagrant deviation from their meticulous regime of colour-coded exercise books as long as the work ripped out of an a4 refil pad is on time and another flawless A grade).
But look past what you see, past the boy who passes his name on a trophy every three paces, past the relaxed perfection of an over-achiever so bright he can do, wear, say anything he likes as long as it doesn’t knock him from his pedestal. Look past the horse-play with boys both popular and not, the ease with which he flits from social group to social group, seemingly a favourite of everyone, look past the admiring glances thrown his way by fourth form girls and third form boys, the nods of respect and acknowledgment he gives teachers and receives back from them.
Look instead at the nervous flick of his eyes, at the calculation visible through them, the practised smile, nod, wave, jesting insult he throws as, dancer-like, he weaves down a crowded lunchtime corridor; route planned out with the tactical nous of a navel commander. Look as his head jerks sideways, attention grabbed by a gale of girlish laughter, as he seeks and finds Lizi in its midst and exchanges a series of looks: “How are you?” “ballsed up that Latin test, fancy a fag?” “Can’t - Oxbridge meeting” “Lame - coffee before the rehearsal?” “Absolutely - Belushi’s?” “3.45” .
Look as he slides into his seat near the back of Additional Maths, knowing the answers to every question but answering only one in four as his mind wanders over the perfect and mysterious landscape of Elizabeth; his oldest friend, his most unattainable target. Look as his hand nervously doodles stars, jagged shapes, writes 3.45, Belushi’s three times in his diary as if he hasn’t already memorized it, as if they haven’t met there every Thursday before every play rehearsal since third form. Look at his index finger, nail chewed to ruins, as it glides over his lines as Prospero, his license to be as self-assured, as responsible as everyone else already thinks he is. Look as his foot taps a tattoo on the floor, as his knee jiggles impatiently.
Watch as he casually strolls towards the side door as the final bell rings, the tension visible in every muscle belying his hidden eagerness. Watch as he slips inconspicuously down the side of the science block to smoke a quick cigarette as he waits for Lizi to primp and preen and switch her uniform for something less schoolgirl chic.
Watch as he swallows and breathes deeply once, twice and walks into Belushi’s, greets “Luciano” (though the man is English born and raised) and slides into their favourite corner. Watch as he shreds a napkin, pulls out a biro and scrawls half a line of Prospero onto one of the larger corners, ears pricked to the sound of the door. Watch as he turns fearfully and joyfully when Lizi, (“Elizabeth”) finally flies through the door in a flurry of hair (“Jamesie!”) and plants a kiss on his cheek, a punch on his arm, calls out for two lattes and plonks herself at the other end of the sofa. Watch his relief as the woman who torments his dreams, who steals his mind every other waking moment, his perfect tormentor melts away and reveals his oldest friend Liz, bouncy and sparkling and unaware of the milk froth on the tip of her nose.
Author's Note: Authors, in case it wasn't particularly clear: James on Lizi, Will on James. Bonus points will be given if anyone can name the authors these are written in homage to. Please feel free to drop me constructive feedback in the comments