Having read the Novel, Of Mice and Men, but prior to using the CD-ROM, the
majority of the students chose the characters George or Lennie as the focus for their
course work ‘ a day in the life of’. After using the CD-ROM the students chose a
broader range of characters for their course work including, the Boss, Crooks, Slim,
Curly, Curly’s wife, George and Lennie.
When exploring the CD-ROM Dossier, one student, Dave, repeatedly selected and
viewed the file of Crooks. He spontaneously commented on Crook’s character file as
his ‘favourite bit’ several times. Dave changed his choice of character for the course
work from Lennie to Crooks. When asked why by the teacher he said it was because
he was the only Black character and that the CD-ROM had given him more
information about the character (transcript 4.2):
Transcript 4.2: Excerpt from the discussion in the classroom after using the CD-ROM
Dave: I changed my character to Crooks, cos he’s like the only Black man there and he’s very
lonely.
Teacher: you knew Crooks was the only Black man in the novel when we read it, so what
made you change your mind after looking at Crooks on the CD-ROM then?
Dave: the dossier give me more information about him, because the book don’t really talk
about him, it, as being a shy man, and um the description of his room as a ...Dung
Heap.
The Dossier files represent each character ‘decontextualised’ from the original novel.
While on the one hand it can be problematic to separate character from narrative, on
the other hand it provides a new opportunity for students to engage with the novel
and with the characters. The multimodal re-presentation of the character Crooks in
the Dossier and in the video clips included in the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ re-present him
as a person removed the character from the racist animal-like context of ‘nigger’ and
‘stable Buck’. The re-shaping of this character provided Dave, a young Black man,
with a new potential to identify with the character. That is, the resources of the
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