Character Study Lesson Plan
High School Writing Curriculum with Recipes and Literary Devices
Students create books with recipes that reflect the personality and actions of literary characters in a tasty high school writing unit.
Laura Esquival's 1992 Doubleday title Like Water for Chocolate shows how very clearly human emotions are linked to food. Why not use a similar food connection as a way of engaging students in a character study?
Content Areas: Characterization, research, creative writing
Materials: Handout with literary terms dealing with character, Handout with examples from Like Water for Chocolate or Chocolat, Internet or Recipe books for research, computer, publishing software
Introducing Characterization:
Activities:
- Provide students with a handout with literary devices that describe character (Characterization, round, flat, dynamic, static, point-of-view, protagonist, antagonist, foil, conflict, dialogue, local color).
- Explain how these elemental terms provide a common vocabulary for readers to discuss literary characters.
- Distribute handouts with examples from Like Water for Chocolate or Chocolat which integrate taste imagery with character.
Example: In the third chapter of Like Water for Chocolate the tragic protagonist Tita is forced to make a meal in honor of her sister, Rosaura, who is marrying Pedro, the man of Tita's dreams. Pedro would rather marry Tita; however, Mama Elena will never allow her youngest daughter to marry. Tita decides to make an ancient recipe --pheasant in rose petal sauce -- with a bouquet of roses Pedro has given her. First, however, she must substitute quail for the pheasant.
No symbolism is lost here. The quail takes the place of pheasant just as Rosaura takes the place of Pedro. Unfortunately, for those who will eat the dish, Tita pricks her fingers on the thorny rose stems, and the blood saturates the rose petals. As a result, all who eat the dish fall into rapture (including her sister who then runs off with a soldier) because, in effect, they have ingested Tita's passion for Pedro.
- Engage in a class discussion about how food and feeling are related. For example, certain recipes evoke a feeling of comfort, guilt, love, etc.
- Break students into groups of two or three. Ask students to map the characteristics of three characters from a class unit (for example, students might choose characters from a novel, a time period, or thematic short stories) .
- Provide time for students to research recipes books or recipes online (remember cyber safety!). Ask students to find recipes that fit their chosen characters at various points of the book.
- Students will then craft three separate expository paragraphs, using textual support (quotations) to explain why the chosen recipes fit each character.
- Finally, students type up three separate pages -- one for each character -- that include the name of the character and the literary work, the expository paragraph, the recipe and MLA citations to provide credit for the quotations and recipes.
Finish off the activity with a literary feast. For fun, ask students to try to guess which characters might be reflected with each recipe. Make class copies of each group's recipes and create a literary recipe book or tackle technology curriculum standards with class recipe website. Don't forget to create an assessment rubric in advance of the lesson so that students and teachers will keep the unit objectives.
