first try/ characterisation Jess February 25, 2007
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Jess is a eighteen-years old teenager. She is desribed as a very tactless, staright forward girl. Her biggest problem is, that she has no
Jess – Part One February 25, 2007
Posted by martn in Jess.3 comments
A little characterization of Jess:
Jess is an eighteen-year-old, very tactless and straight forward girl.
In her family were some problems and she doest’n have got real friends, maybe because she say things before she thought about it. Before New Years Eve she had a boyfriend called Chas, who left her without some kind of explanation and called her a stalker since she phoned him, rang more than one time on his door. Because of this not so brudent boy, she wants to commit suicide.
She talks very slangy, there you can see her social origin. The other characters dislike Jess, cause she always says what comes on her mind. Her favorite word is “f*ck”, which she uses in any paragraph. Sometimes she has some mental chunkings, in this situations she’s highly aggresive and angry and yell at the persons around her. I think Jess know herself, she know, that she’s hurting other people with her speech, with her diction.
First assignment to characterize Jess February 25, 2007
Posted by resel in Jess.1 comment so far
Probably the most unlikeable and in that way most complicated character of Nick Hornby’s novel: A long way down. Jess is eighteen years old and apparently naive and so are her reasons to commit suicide: Her not very brainy boyfriend Chas left her without any explanation, which Jess thinks she is owed. In one part of the book, she describes what this unrequited love makes her feel in an unexpectedly emotional and poignant way – only one paragraph that tells you that you need to have a closer look at this person to understand her.
Jess uses rude language to express herself and hates the fact that Martin’s vocabulary includes more than just the four-letter-word. She prefers the easy and straightforward mode – a mode that the other characters of the book have to learn to cope with. That is why – especially at the beginning – many conflicts break out. With Martin in particular. He seems to be exactly that kind of person she does not like: Educated, (partly) distinguished and rather arrogant. Features that obviously refer to her father, with whom she has got serious problems as well, as the reader finds out later on.
In general, arguments are what Jess is used to:”People do get sick of me, I’ve noticed.” This quotation definitely asks for analysis: Throughout the novel she consults her relationships to others again and again, tries to find out why most of them ended up being a total disaster and finally states that probably she herself is the reason. You can take that as a proof of her longing for stability within her interpersonal relations: She lost many friends before (“I make friends easily enough, but then I piss them off […]”), her sister Jen, who obviously means very much to her, and eventually Chas. Her parents and also others do not understand the way she is and feels and are not capable of respecting her foibles. In the end you see that the actual reason for Jess’ intent to jump off a tower block is not really Chas but her loneliness and innermost conflict with herself. Chas represented rather a transition that helped her find out the following: “[…] Something had happened to [Martin, JJ, Maureen and me], which seperated us from lots of other people. […] The Chas I knew was now on a different planet.” Unexpectedly, Jess found somebody she can identify with, people as desperate as she is, although the differences between them are tremendous. Clearly, one of the reasons for her to change her mind on suicide. Martin, JJ and Maureen are the first people in her life who wouldn’t let her down or leave alone although they got to know her. They find a way to handle her, to “stop” her – once that she is angry, for example – because, in her words: “I need stopping a lot.”
Therefore it is not surprising that the four of them – the way she sees it – form a gang. She even compares themselves with the Beatles, which you probably understand when you include the given thoughts. But not only that she feels extremely connected with the other ones, she also believes in improvement – even though her present situation is quite solemn. It is her suggestion to “give it another six weeks.” So clearly, she must be a very optimistic person too. Now that she met the others she feels like she could move on with her life. And the initial antipathy towards her in terms of egotism contradicts the hidden sympathy, that is easily missunderstood because of her way of expression, as already mentioned.
Hornby must have been spending a good deal of time thinking about this character: a conflicting person, indeed, whose actual feeling and intents are deliberately masked – above all by language. Only those few little paragraphs point out the complexity and peculiarity of Jess.
Jess part one February 25, 2007
Posted by benchi in Characters, Jess.add a comment
Jess is an eighteen-year-old girl with family problems. She doesn’t have real friends. Jess makes friends very easily but then she pisses them off. She is also a person, who doesn’t think too much about that what other people think about her and she says everything that comes to her mind. Jess speaks very slangy and uses the f… word very often. Before New Years Eve she had split up with a guy called Chas. He broke her heart, because he didn’t say anything, he just went and Jess didn’t manage that he left her and because of that, she talks badly about him. Chas called Jess a stalker, because she phones him very often and writes him letters and emails. Because of that Jess got hurt, because she doesn’t think that you can call it stalking.
On New Years Eve she went to a party, because anybody said that Chas was there and she said that he owed her an explanation and she would feel better, if he gave her one. Before she got to Toppers-House, she never had any intention to commit suicide. She decided it very spontaneously. Jess is the most individual and outsidish caracter, but she seas the four people as a group at first. The other three caracters don’t want that Jess commit suicide, because she is too young. Jess has a sort of plan. She wants that they help her to find Chas and he and she would get back together and Jess would feel better. If Martin, Maureen and JJ would help her, she doesn’t want to commit suicide. That also shows that Chas played an important role in her life and it is very important for her to see him again and that he tells her why he left her.
Jess doesn’t have a very close relationship to one of the other three caracters, maybe because she doesn’t have respect of their feelings everytime and she talks in an aggressive way. The closest relationship, she has to Martin, because he hugged her one time. She is very grateful to JJ, because he found Chas and so Jess could speak with him. To Maureen, Jess doesn’t have a real relationship. At the beginning of the story, she was more aggressive than later. She can talk more sensible with the others, now.
Jess is a person, who is often very aggressive, angry and impolite and she express these feelings very strongly, but she has also a sensitive side, especially if somebody talks about Chas or her sister Jen, who is gone and nobody knows where she is and whether she still lives.
Characterisation Jess – Part one by Marlen February 23, 2007
Posted by lenchen in Characters, Jess.add a comment
Jess is an 18-year-old girl, who is a punk. When we get to know her she attended a party in Toppers House where she is searching for her ex-boyfriend called Chas but he does not want to meet her because in his eyes she is a stalker. Contrary to his impression she said that you can not call it stalking “when it’s just phone calls and letter and emails and knocking at the door.”. That is a good example for her manner of expressing her emotions because everytime her mood shows very strongly. Jess is a person who does not think too much. In my view we can see that in her way of reacting and talking with other people. So it is obvious that it is a coincidence for her to jump off Toppers house. To commit suicide was not planned because she decided it spontaneously. That is the reason why she made the noise when she arrived on the roof. She said “it was [her] mistake if the idea was to kill [herself].” which means that she does not really wanted to jump. That serves to illustrate that jumping was just a game for her. Jess is really cheeky. For instance she asked JJ provoking questions when he brought the pizza. Furthermore she is extremely rough and curses all the time. About herself she says that she is not religious or shy. Another quality is that it does not matter to her what other poeple think about her. So she offended Maureen very hard when she asked her if her ex-boyfriend preferred to “shag” her in “doggy style” so that he does not have to look at her. But I remain unconvinced by all those qualities, because after that she shows “the real Jess”, I think, since she felt sorry for what she had done and at this moment she wanted to change herself. She knows that that she sometimes loses control when somebody laughs at her. That is why she is too fast and too direct and the reason why people are scared about her and “pissed her off” so quickly. First we could think that she is selfish because she wants the others to help her to find Chas but truly she gots a link to them and does not want them to jump because she thinks that they could help each other. That is the reason why she compares them with a band like “The Beatles” or named them as a group. Moreover she got sympathy and empathy in high gear. That is why she wanted to kill Matty for Maureen because she noticed that Maureen want him to die. Jess made that out of sympathy. Another striking example for that is that she knows that JJ wanted to kill himself too just because he has said that he wanted to share experiences.
So all in all I can say that Jess is just being disagreeable and offensive because deep in her inside she is very depressed and hurt, but there are only some little moments where we could find her showing her real emotions and feelings. So it remains to be seen if Jess opens herself up later or if she plays the cool one until the end of the book. I hope not.
Reading Hornby's "A long way down" 