Characterisation (about a boy) < Korrekturlesen < Englisch < Sprachen < Vorhilfe
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(Frage) überfällig  | | Datum: | 13:39 Sa 04.12.2010 | | Autor: | a-c |
| Aufgabe | | Write a caracterisation of Will Freeman (About a Boy by Nick Hornby) |
Characterisation of Will
Will Freeman is one of the protagonists of the novel ’About a boy’ by Nick Hornby.
Through the novel Will experiences a change from a carefree, selfish and superficial single guy behaving like a teenager to a sensitive, understanding and loving man in a relationship.
In the beginning of the novel Will is 36 years old and lives alone in a luxury flat in one of the better districts of London.
He is a single, lives alone, has no family left and does not have real friends. His social contacts are earmarked (zweckgebunden) and he only meets people for different free time activities like Squash. Besides that Will uses to have various short-term girlfriends and he thinks that there is no sense in building up a family and settle down.
The famous Christmas Song ‘Santa’s Super Sleigh’ is written by his father. Therefore he never had to worry about money. But actually Will hates this song and blames it for his father’s misery because his dad could not handle the success.
Will lives for material comfort, consumption and fun. He drives a roadster and loves cruising around with it. Furthermore he is vain and really minds his good looks and wears fancy clothes.
His life is empty, superficial and useless. He has no job, no family and therefore no real life but Will is happy with it and is proud of the way he has divided the time when other people are normally at work into half-hour units. He spends his days watching different TV shows, listening to music, shopping, dating women and several other unimportant things.
Will thinks of ideals when it comes to women and lifestyle. He suspects that lifestyles that are different from his end up in chaos and unhappiness.
However he does not want to be seen as a loser because he has not really achieved anything in life yet. Sometimes Will is really bothered when he thinks of his uninteresting and more or less boring life.
Fiona calls him a ‘selfish bastard’because he just cares about himself and does not want to get involved in any sorts of serious problems. He refuses this argument because he thinks that he is not putting himself first, because there isn’t anybody else. (p. 126, l.8)
Will’s attitude towards life lets him keep any sorts of emotions, commitment and problems out of his everyday life and he thinks that you could shut life out ‘if you didn’t answer the door to it.’ (p.126, l.12)
Besides that Will does not really care about the feelings of his fellow men and therefore he is not ashamed of lying. With his fictitious son Ned he wants to get to know single mothers to have a more entertaining life. He takes advantage of the depressed and lonely women and does not care about the possible consequences of his actions.
At a SPAT meeting Will meets Marcus and with the development of a friendship between them Will starts changing more and more.
In the beginning Will is really bothered by Marcus’s visits and does not really know how to handle them. But he begins to realize that he might be useful for the first time in his life because ‘he might be serving some purpose in that kid’s life.’
Will begins to identify with Marcus and his situation and he decides to support him as well as possible.
The more effort he puts in the friendship with Marcus the more Will becomes honest, compassionate and humane.
So far, the point of Will’s life is to keep his head above water but Marcus brings a reason and a goal to his life.
When Will meets Rachel he starts to betray his ideals. Realizing that he starts to fall in love with her he begins to imagine how it would be to settle down and have a family. He wants to spend the rest of his life with her and he is finally ready to commit himself to a woman.
Normally Will would not talk about his feelings and his problems but he opens up to Rachel and talks with her about his worries with Marcus and Fiona.
Rachel lets him realize that it is sometimes enough just to listen to a person to make her feel better, to comfort her and to help her.
The death of Kurt Cobain and the worries about Marcus let Will discover that ‘he had never had any kind of intuition or empathy or connection in his life before, but he had it now’ (p.225, l.1).
In the end Will is finally aware of the fact that you cannot shut life down because ‘life was, after all, like air’ (p. 234,l. 1). The neutrality in his life is gone now and ‘ Will couldn’t recall ever having been caught up in this sort of messy, sprawling, chaotiy web before; it was almost as if he had been given a glimpse of what it was like to be human. It wasn’t too bad really; he wouldn’t even mind being human on a full-time basis.’ (p. 242, l.6)
‘Will had lost his shell and his cool and his distance, and he felt scared and vulnerable, but he got to be with Rachel’ (p.253, l.56)
The friendship with Marcus and the relationship with Rachel have changed Will’s life forever. He now cares about other people and for the first time he takes responsibility for his actions. His life is not uniteresting and useless anymore and he feels that he actually serves some prupose in people’s life.
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(Mitteilung) Reaktion unnötig  | | Datum: | 18:22 Sa 04.12.2010 | | Autor: | matux |
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