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.