Through the visual arrangement of image and writing on screen in the ‘Novel as CD-
ROM’ the entity character (through resources such as framing, and spatial relations)
indicates the intensity of emotion, to suggest viewer identification with George, and
to emphasise the agency∕passivity of the characters in the novel.
The multimodal resources of the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ also serve to emphasise
particular characters and moments of the story. First, characters were literally given
appearance and voice. Second, they appeared in the repetition of moments in the
three different forms video, still image, and writing. The pace and thematic emphasis
of the structure of the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ is transformed by the placement (and
repetition) of what are effectively concluding ‘moments’ at the start of each chapter
via the video clips. These clips serve to immediately foreground the entity character
rather than other aspects of the narrative in a way that shifts the focus of reading the
text from the social to the individual. Further, the use of visual links and objects in
the Dossier part of the CD-ROM also served to re-position, make central, the
marginal character Curly’s Wife.
Practices of Learners
The work of the students was to interpret this multimodal representation of character.
‘Reading’ or perhaps more aptly ‘watching’ the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ introduced new
resources and practices for constructing and understanding the entity character. The
multimodal organisation of the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ offered students a range of
modes with which to engage with it including, video, image, or image and writing.
This enabled the students to engage with character and narrative at different levels of
reading. The video clips provide a multimodal construction of character and the
realisation of the themes friendship and loneliness. These are atomised from the
context of the novel and centred on affect and emotion. The screen images
throughout the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ enabled a deeper exploration of character in the
context of the sequential unfolding of the events, changing relationships, and
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