How to read like an English teacher - Part 2

This is the second blog post in my ‘How to read like an English teacher’ series. The first offered the strategy to try something else. For the next one, all your students need is a little empathy. It’s called put yourself in the character’s shoes.

Put yourself in the character’s shoes

Your students are likely to know that the idiom ‘put yourself in someone else’s shoes’ means to imagine things from another person’s perspective. This can be done with characters in works of fiction, so that we can better understand how their thoughts, actions, and dialogue have been represented by the author.

This can be demonstrated with a text that is included on an AQA GCSE English Language specimen paper: Alex Cold. In the extract, Alex Cold’s mother is seriously unwell, and he is eating breakfast with his father and siblings. Question 4 on this exam paper asks the following:

A student said ‘This part of the story, set during breakfast time, shows that Alex is struggling to cope with his mother’s illness.’

To what extent do you agree?

When writing responses to questions like this, your students must always select evidence from the text. Look at the following quotation from Alex Cold:

‘You two are just kids. You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Alex exclaimed.

Whilst it might not be particularly pleasant to do so, due to the upsetting subject matter, let’s put ourselves in Alex’s shoes. Imagine that one of your parents was unwell, and that you also had some younger siblings. If those younger siblings suggested that your parent was so unwell that they were going to die, would you shout at them?

Personally, I don’t think that I would. Young children can get very upset when discussing serious subjects like death and illness. Instead, I would try and say something to comfort them (even if I didn’t believe it was true), such as: “Don’t worry – I’m sure that Momma will get better.” In the extract, Alex does not react in this way. The use of the exclamation mark, the speech tag ‘exclaimed’, and the dismissive comment that he makes, suggests that he is shouting at his sisters aggressively. Why does he do this? If I had to suggest a reason, it would be that it is because he is struggling to cope. He is not able to consider his sisters’ feelings, because he is so upset and stressed himself.

To figure this out, we first put ourselves in Alex’s shoes and then considered how we would react in the same scenario. It helps to contextualise why the character reacts the way that he does.

This approach can also be used for Literature texts, as long as they include characters. Look at this part from An Inspector Calls:

Sheila: What do you mean by that? You talk as if we were responsible-

Mr Birling: (cutting in) Just a minute, Sheila. Now, Inspector, perhaps you and I had better go and talk this over quietly in a corner-

Why does Mr Birling interrupt his daughter? If an inspector had come to my house to discuss the death of a girl who had worked for me, and my daughter mentioned the possibility that myself or anyone else in the family was responsible, I would be really panicked and cross. I would want to shut her up as soon as possible, before she landed the whole family in hot water!

In an exam, we’d likely be asked a question relating to how characters are presented, so the previous idea could lead us to saying things like:

• Mr Birling is presented as controlling. This is achieved when...
• Mr Birling is presented as wanting to protect his family’s reputation at all costs. This is achieved when...
• Mr Birling is shown to dislike it when women speak their mind. This is shown when...

Any of these points would work for the quotation above, and we were able to get to this point by putting ourselves in Mr Birling’s shoes. 

The views in this blog are not necessarily shared or endorsed by the centre that I currently work at.

Photo at the top of the page by Alfons Morales on Unsplash