10/7 and 10/8 Notes on Fratek's Pyramid

Agenda:

Attendance
Prayer-in our prayer today, we focused on seeing trials and difficulty as a chance to prove ourselves rather than using difficulties as an excuse for poor behavior.

materials check

Vocab Quiz

New Vocab

Reading List: In order to keep track of what we've read for English, I am requiring you to use a reading list. At this point, you should have the following on your reading list:
The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling
Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson
"The Most Dangerous Game" Richard Connell
"The Lady or the Tiger?" Frank R. Stockton
"The Cask of Amontillado" Edgar Allan Poe

Fratek's Pyramid

The Fratek's Pyramid is a scalene triangle used as a visual representation of the important parts of a story.

Part 1, the long incline of the scalene triangle symbolizes the Exposition, or Rising Action. The exposition of a story is the part that gets us interested. It tells us about the characters, setting, and conflict.

Characters are not always human, but of course, we generally think of characters as humans. They are the subjects of the story, and it's our relationship with the characters that makes us care about the outcome of the story.

Characters can be thought of as protagonists or antagonists. Protagonists are main characters. A protagonist is the character whose story we follow, it's the protagonists quest that we care about. A protagonist is not always a "good" guy. For instance, in "The Cask of Amontillado," Montresor does something evil, but he is the protagonist of the story.

Antagonists are any characters who clash with the protagonist or get in the way of the protagonist's efforts to complete his or her quest.

Other characters may not be protagonists or antagonists; they are simply supporting characters.

Characters can be seen as round or flat. A round character has clearly developed personality. Positive or negative, we know a lot about the character, and he or she seems to come alive from the page. Examples would include Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver, Zaroff, Rainsford, and Montresor.

A flat character is not a clearly developed personality. They are based on stereotypes or generalities. Ivan would be an example of a flat character, as would Israel Hands.

Otherwise, characters can be thought of as dynamic or static. A dynamic character experiences a change in his or her core personality. Jim Hawkins, for instance, starts Treasure Island as a young, innocent, immature boy, but by the end of the novel, he has become a grown man. He has been attacked, killed a man, stole a ship, and found a buried treasure. Long John Silver, on the other, behaves in different ways, but he remains the same basic person. At first, he is nice and earns the admiration of Jim Hawkins, but then he becomes evil and threatens Jim. Later, Long John Silver seems respectful and cooperative with Dr. Livesey. His behavior changes, but at the root of his personality, Long John Silver is still the same; he's an opportunist. He will do whatever it takes to take care of his own hide.

So, Jim is a Dynamic, Round, Protagonist, but Long John Silver is a Static, Round, Antagonist.

Ivan is a Static, Flat, Antagonist, but Rainsford is a Dynamic, Round, Protagonist.

Setting is where and when a story takes place. Novels and short stories can explore many settings, but you can usually locate one general location for a short story. Setting could be as general as "earth" or as specific as "room 16 in Crespi Carmelite High School." Sometimes setting is very important to a story, and it can have a real effect on a character. In some other stories, setting is simply a background. Setting can refer to century, year, month, day or hour. Think of how each might have an impact on the action of a story.

Conflict is what drives a story forward and keeps your interest. In most stories, the protagonist has a problem that needs to be solved, and it's that quest to solve the problem that keeps your interest. Think how boring it would be to read a story about somebody who sits on a couch and eats Cheetohs. The story might get better when they run out of Cheetohs and need to visit the store.

Conflicts can be classified as man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. self, man vs. technology, man vs. society, or man vs. supernatural. Some classes reduce this classification system to only three, while other scholars choose to use an expanded, more specific list. For our purposes, think of how the confilicts in the stories we read fit into one of those six.

The high point of the Fratek's Pyramid is the Climax. That is the point of most interest in a story. That is the point where the central conflict comes to head and is either solved or proven insoluble.

The last part of the Fratek's Pyramid is the Denouement, Falling Action, or Resolution. Either of those three names can be used to discuss the point in the story where the loose ends are tied up. In a fairy tale, that's when the narrator says, "They all lived happily ever after." Some of our stories have very abrupt denouements. These stories leave your imagine to wander in concluding how things ended up for the characters.