Where are you, missing students?

This was quite a short class since those who already have the Textual Analysis assessment left at 8 so that I could do some revision with the others for the assessment next week. Remember that the class proper doesn’t start till 7.30 next week because of the reassessment. Attendance is a bit patchy these days, which is a worry (for me). Also there have been no blog comments! I shall not go on doing this for my own entertainment only, people. I could be watching “Coronation Street”.

We talked about persuasive essays: how the purpose of them is (surprise!) to persuade the reader. They therefore DO have to display logical arguments in a structured way but DON’T (unlike argumentative essays) have to be balanced. They may, or may not, produce some arguments on the other side but if they do, they should do so only to demolish these. The language of a persuasive essay may sometimes be less formal than that of an argumentative one – you’re speaking directly to the reader, appealing with him/her to agree with you – and it may be appropriate therefore to use the word “you”.

Unlike in an argumentative essay, when you shouldn’t harangue the reader (“You shouldn’t get pregnant at eighteen” – this is not going to apply to anyone who’s likely to mark it) you may wish in your persuasive essay to make the reader feel that he/she is being addressed (“You can make a difference to global warming”).

We then looked at chapters 11 and 12 of “A Patchwork Planet”. In chapter 11, Barnaby visits Opal for her birthday, but the present (chosen by Sophia) falls flat and Opal is cold in the park in her party dress, so she goes home again. He has to wait for Sophia to give him a lift home, which gives him time to think about his marriage. He wonders if perhaps he should have stayed with Natalie and she might have “become the right person”. On the way home in the car, he and Sophia have an argument: she wants him to apply for a job at her bank and is clearly unhappy that he doesn’t earn much; especially since she has “lost” her money in her aunt’s flour bin and for some reason won’t go and retrieve it.

In chapter 12, he thinks a lot about the problems brought by old age. Then at Mrs Cartwright’s, he and Martine are turning a mattress and end up standing very close to each other. He hears the clink of her overall clasp (when did he last mention this? – p. 186) and she asks him “How do you get your mouth to turn up at the corners that way?” (How does she feel about mouths? – p. 27). He replies flippantly and changes the subject quickly to not wanting to be late for lunch with Sophia. Martine picks a fight with him on the way home and he – apparently – doesn’t know why.

Of course, Anne Tyler knows why. Never forget that this is a novel. Anne Tyler pulls all the strings.

We then discussed “Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen, in which the poet compares death on the battlefield (nothing changes, the guns keep firing, but the dead soldiers’ comrades are sad) to death at home (bells, candles, a white pall cloth over the coffin).

He does this all the way through the sonnet, at first in alternate lines and then both in one line, in a very compressed way. There’s metaphor, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme, regular rhythm, interesting word choice and a very clear structure.

Critical essays and Barnaby again

First of all, I gave back the Textual Analysis assessments, which most people passed. I’ve now decided to delay the reassessment for one week, so it’ll be on 2 December. Next week, therefore, I’m going to finish the class at 8 for those who passed and spend the later part of the lesson doing some intensive revision with those who didn’t quite pass. Then on 2 December, class will begin at 7.30 pm for those who don’t need to resit.

We then considered poetry as a subject for a critical ( ie literature) essay in the exam. I said – because it’s certainly true for me – that it’s easier to learn a poem and (more or less) everything there is to say about it than it is to do the same for a novel. To that extent, it’s easier to write about a poem in the exam than about a novel or a play. For novels and plays, you must – while sitting in the exam room - select extracts and aspects to write about which are relevant to the question. For poems, assuming that the poem is relevant to the question, you’re writing about the whole poem – or most of it – so the selection process is largely avoided.

The downside of this is that while the novel and play questions are usually fairly general (“Choose a novel where the main character learns something about himself” – this is the case in almost all novels), the poetry questions are much more specific (“Choose a poem about an animal” or “Choose a poem with a sinister tone”). This means that you’re very likely indeed to get a novel and play question that you can answer but you're much less likely to get a poetry question that’s appropriate to any one poem.

If you do get such a question, however, then (in my opinion) poetry questions are easier - for the above reasons.

We looked at the poem “Museé des Beaux Arts” (the Museum of Beautiful Arts) by W H Auden, which is partly about the painting of Icarus by Brueghel,/Bruegel / Breughel (variously spelt) in this museum in Paris. I then gave you an exemplar of an essay on the subject of a poem which showed contrast.

In “A Patchwork Planet”, we just had time to look at chapter 10, in which Barnaby sells the car to Len Parrish and hands over the money to his mother. He’s very reluctant in the end to let the car go, which shows us its importance to him. To his disappointment, the handover of the money falls flat: his mother is suspicious as to where he got it and his father is shocked that he has sold the Corvette.

Then the reader finds out that Mrs Glynn has found the money that she thought was stolen – she’s just misplaced it. Barnaby is very forgiving, but Sophia seems surprisingly upset. It turns out that she has withdrawn her savings and put them in the flour bin to protect Barnaby.

He immediately realises that this seems to be proof that she really thought he’d stolen the money, but he’s disarmed by Sophia’s reference to the O Henry (above) story in which a young married couple each secretly sell their most prized possessions (the girl’s long, beautiful hair and the man’s pocket watch) to buy presents for each other (a clasp for her hair and a chain for his watch). Sophia likens this to her pointless sacrifice of her savings, and Barnaby is distracted from her obvious lack of trust in him by the romantic way she puts this: “You are your gift to me, Barnaby”.

Is anybody reading this, by the way? Comments would be good, as proof!

The first blog entry

It’s impossible to make a brief blog entry which covers the past 10 weeks, but if I had to sum up in four words the advice I’ve been trying to give you about passing Higher English, these would be the words: you need to ANALYSE.

Paste this up on the ceiling above your bed, write it in plastic letters on the fridge and if necessary tattoo it on the back of your writing hand. (You may do this metaphorically if you prefer.)

Waffling is out. It’s a myth that this is what English teachers want their students to do. Analysing is in, giving evidence from the text to justify what you say.

This goes both for the language and for the literature parts of the exam (and for the assessments, apart from the expressive essay). You’ve got to show HOW the writers do what they’re doing: HOW they show character, make their writing emotive, structure their novel/play/poem and so on.

This week we looked at argumentative essays and particularly at their structure. Fairly obviously, you should move logically from one stage in your argument to the next, sometimes using linking words and phrases such as “similarly… furthermore…. however….” to show the connection between one paragraph and the next. Your homework is to write an argumentative essay, which by SQA definition shows both sides of an argument in a fairly balanced way.

At the beginning of chapter 9 of "A Patchwork Planet" there's an abrupt turning point in Barnaby's fortunes when Sophia's aunt accuses him of theft.He's terrified when a policeman comes to interview him - he presumably thinks that his past record may count against him.We noticed his childish reactions to this unfair accusation. (What are they?)

However, Martine persuades him to come out to work and tells him her plan that he should sell the Corvette and buy Everett's truck with her.

And then, apparently to Barnaby's surprise, they start kissing and end up in bed together.

Afterwards, Barnaby remembers an occasion when he was married to Natalie and she was angry at him for being late home when - for once - it wasn't his fault. His attitude then was, "If you think I'm such a villain, just watch: I'll act worse than you ever dreamed of." (What is the relevance to his current situation?)

The chapter ends wonderfully well, with Mrs Dibble telling him that all his clients support him and that she wants him to buy the business from her when she retires. He then contacts Sophia to apologise for... not returning her calls. At the end of the chapter, rather like at the end of the previous one, he feels that "I really might have moved on in my life". So this turning point in the structure seems to have been reversed and he's on course again.

In a big rush as usual at the end, we looked at the rest of the first “Paranoid Parenting” Close Reading and will tackle the remaining questions next week in class.

Do look at this website, which has an interview with Anne Tyler about "A Patchwork Planet": http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=313

(Sorry that some of these paragraphs have no space between them. I can't persuade these spaces to occur. Please imagine them.)