Supporting Characters from "The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner"

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For an in-class point-of-view exercise on Alan Sillitoe's "The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner," I gave students the following instructions:

You already know protagonist Smith's take on life, but what about supporting characters? We are about to find out, for each group will assume a first-person ("I") character point-of-view of a supporting character and write a one-page passage.

Your first-person passage must be supported by textual clues; thus, you can't just write any old thing and claim success. Your "guess" must have a basis in fact. Also, don't quote original dialogue from the novella; the idea is to understand the nuances of the text by creating LIKELY opinions of and ORIGINAL text from your character. Besides, nabbing existing text is the lazy way out, and I want you to stretch your intellectual capabilities.

----------Group 1: Smith's father

----------Group 2: Governor at Borstal

----------Group 3: The copper

----------Group 4: Mam

----------Group 5: Mam's "fancy-man"

Students read their passages in class.

Also, they were asked to designate a representative from their groups to post their passages in the comment section of this blog.