The Devil Wears Prada paragraphs:
Setting:
Setting is the “when and where” of the story. The time can be very general, like a certain era, or might not even been mentioned. The place however is usually a lot more specific, but it can also easlily change. Without the setting the story wouldn’t happen, since there is no where for the story to develop.
Characters:
Characters the people, sometimes things, that make up the story. They are defined by the things that happen in the plot, but they also define or “shape” the plot themselves through interactions with eachother and their setting. Characters can be flat, which means they dont change, or round, which means they experience some type of change throughout the story.
Plot:
Plot is what happens in the story. It is a chain of events (separated into begging, middle, and end) that eventually makes the story clear. There are smaller parts, or categories in the plot (these parts are often unclear), like introduction, climax, rising action, dropping action, and resolution.
Setting:
The story the Devil Wears Prada is set in present-day New York City. Andy Sachs, the main character, is faced with two very different worlds within this one city. The first world is where she works, a strictly-run, super-posh fashion magazine located right in the center of New York’s most glamourous area. She often feels as an outcast whenever she’s at work, because all the girls and guys who work there are always impeccably dressed in the latest styles, with beautifully styled hair, makeup, and nails, as well as runway model-worthy bodies. However, the thing that makes her feel most like an outcast is how interested these girls are in fashion, how much they have sacrificed to be were they are with little payoff, and how much they admire their boss, Miranda, who Andy considers a complete lunatic. She often describes the cold, superficial, and generally unfriendly environment she has to work in as a place where everyone is clearly trying too hard to look perfect and hide the long, hard hours of work. Andy usually just tries feel “above it all”, but as the book continues, she finds herself more and more submerged into the world she tries so hard to hate. The second “world” Andy is exposed to is where she originally came from, the world of first-job college graduates who work too hard at things they generally don’t enjoy. This world includes her boyfriend, Nate, and her best friend, Lily. She often finds Nate complaining about his hard teaching job at low-income public school, while Lily is mostly trying to forget her long hours of studying Russian Literature at Columbia by getting drunk. They’re generally there to make each other and provide a bit of a parallel world to Andy’s job, since none of them care about fashion or generally anything materialistic or superficial. As hard as their lives may be, none of Andy’s friends ever understand why she is so committed to a job which she doesn’t even like, especially how much effort she puts into pleasing Miranda.
The problem. or dilema, in the story is Andy trying to fit into her new job at a place she doesn’t even fully understand. The reason why Andy takes the job at Runway is because she heard that if she could work for Miranda Priestly for a year, she could get a job in any magazine she wanted. At the beging of the book Andy is very ignorant to the world of fashion, and how much work actually goes into the industry. She is often labeled as an outcast because of her weight, the way she dresses, and the way she acts. However, Andy soon discovers that the hardest part of the job is pleasing Miranda’s every need. This includes ordering and delivering her meals, running errands, picking up her laundry, babysitting her twins whenever there’s nobody available, and most importantly, stay in the office until midnight then bring “the book” (a draft of the upcoming magazine issue) to Miranda’s penthouse. Everyday Andy gets more committed to Miranda, which bothers her friends because she often cancels plans to do some crazy job.
Some of the possible themes in the book are ignorance, loyalty, and sacrifice. When Andy first arrives at her office she is very ignorant to what the fashion industry is about, including what she herself should wear. She tries to act like she’s over it and it doesn’t concern her, when in reality, as she learns later in the book, it does. She learns how hard the people involved have to work and commit in order to make it anywhere in this career. Another theme could possibly be loyalty. Andy becomes very loyal to Miranda, doing everything humanly possible so that she is satisfied. However, as she becomes more and more attached to her boss, she drifts away from her friends. The more she cancels, rearranges, and forgets about special events because she is out pleasing Miranda, the less loyal she becomes to the people who were once so close to her, but dont seem to fit into this new world she lives in. Probably one of the biggest themes is sacrifice, both for Andy and for all the people in her industry. Her assistant, Emily, reveals many clues about the sacrifices she has had to make just to be senior assistant Many of these girls have starved themselves to fit into a size two or a size zero. Andy realizes few of them have friends outside the industry, for they are too exhausted to go out. Andy herself starts to commit many of these sacrifices for a job that is just “temporary”, and even worse, she’s not even conscious about it.
There are three main characters in this novel. Andy, Miranda, and Emily. Andy is the main character. She was raised in long island and went to school in Brown, where she got a journalism mayor. Freshly graduated from college, Andy finds herself jobless, until, by a strike of luck, she gets a job at Runway magazine. Knowing nothing about fashion, Andy tries to take it like a temporary job, but by the end she is completely consumed in the thing she tried hardest to stay out of. Miranda Priestly is the editor in chief of Runway. She is very strict about her likes and shows no affection or gratitude towards the people that sacrifice everything for her. She doesn’t even bother to learn Andy’s name for several months, even though she sees her several times a day. Andy, or “Andreah” as she calls her, is the only one in the whole office who dares to badmouth her, because everyone else has too much respect for her work. Emily is Andy’s senior assistant. She symbolizes all the people who work at Runway. She is a very flat character, because she is exactly the same throughout the whole story.
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Project:
For my final project, I made a blog with pictures of Andrea (the main character’s) “texts”. These texts show Andrea’s negative personality, how much she complains about her job, her ambition to work at the New Yorker, and her struggles between her work environment and her personal life. You can also see Miranda’s unreasonable behavior as well as Emily backing her up. This is meant to symbolize how different Andrea was from the rest of the girls who would “kill” for her job. It shows the plot because the whole book is basically a repletion of events like this, and it also shows setting because you can see the difference between Andrea’s two worlds: Her friends/ boyfriend, and her coworkers/ boss.
Here is the link to the blog which contains the pictures:
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http://andreasachsphone.blogspot.com/
Peer Feedback:
Gabriela (Copello):
I liked your character development because I really think you understand the subject, and you can definitely identify them in your book. Your dilemmas could be a little bit better but I liked that you were brief and specific so I didn’t get bored. I also really liked the way you phrased sentences and this really made a difference when bringing the story alive.
Isabel (Serna):
I think that your elements were very clear, simple, and brief. I had no trouble understanding them and I definitely learned (or clarified) some things. Your writing is also very good which I thinks makes it pleasant to read, and you have a great word choice.
Catalina (Trillos):
I really like the flow of your work, it makes it so simple to keep going! You were pretty direct which I liked but not so brief that you left important details out. Maybe you could focus more on the main character because I felt that you kind of left him to the end but didn’t really concentrate. I’m a little bit confused about the best friend but she doesn’t seem very important to the plot.
How It Helped Me:
As I viewed other people projects, I learned new, creative ways to arrange information. I liked Gabriela’s twitter and Isabel’s tumblr because they were very original and the format was fun to read. Their information was very clear, they included a few unnecessary details but I realized this was done to make the project seem more real and complete. I think they did a good job and being specific without being too direct, as I often get lost trying to get a point across but often put too much words in.
Reading Log:
Monday Jan. 28: Page 34- 45
Wednesday Jan 30: Page 60- 70
Friday Feb. 1: Page 70- 81
Notes:
Rare: “My dad gave my sister a rare kiss on the forhead”.
I think its interesting how they use the word rare here because i always use it to describe something different or weird, rather a something that doesnt happen often.
“The film — a little over nine minutes in length— focuses on an actual door on the modernist house of a main character (Union) who just went through a break- up. ”
I like how they use the word “modern” in a different tense, modernist, because it makes the writing sound more sophisticated.
I think Charlie is goign to have trouble making friends, because when he tells his teacher that if hes the onlydriend he makes that day it would be a little depresive, it seems like foreshadowing.
The author qrites in avery si,pleway so its believable that he’s in high school, but he uses a lot of symolism to give the book a deeper meening, like how his friend Matt represents Charlie’s troubled past and Patrick represents new hope.
Twisted: I like howthey use this to describe a person’s personality and actions, it seems to describe the way their mind works inside rather than saying something like “terrible”.
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