What do you learn about the character of Carmel in part one of the text? Consider her thoughts and her relationships with others, and one or two events which highlight an aspect of her character. You must include short and frequent quotations. .
Throughout part one of Carmel's chapter in the book Queen Kat Carmel & St Jude Get a Life it becomes quite apparent that Carmel has unusually low self-esteem and she seems to feel atypically nervous on the subject of socially interacting with unfamiliar people. Just one of many examples of this behaviour is when Carmel is at her University, "There was a large courtyard filled with young people laughing and chatting. My first instinct was to flee." This quotation suggests that she has an inclination towards becoming overwhelmed by crowds of people resembling her age. As soon as the first paragraph, Carmel displays evidence of her anxiety, for instance when she arrives at Katerina's house in Melbourne she recalls thinking, "The crushing sense of doom that filled me when our car pulled into the kerb was not a new feeling." The reader slowly develops a sense of Carmel's self-hate as she constantly puts herself down and is negative towards new experiences. Her behaviour when she begins University may be seen as devoid of good sense or judgement because while other new University students make an effort to make the best of everything by socialising and making friends, Carmel is avoiding everyone because she is too afraid of making a bad impression on them by embarrassing herself. From this we can gather that Carmel is, of an unusually high degree, aware of how she appears to others. .
Readers are able to gather that Carmel is often very conscious of everything about herself including her family. This is evident on page 42 of the text when Carmel quotes, "I was so aware of how dad and I looked in front of this beautiful creature (Katerina)," and also on page 44: " I couldn't bear it, I had to turn away.