Tent pegs and Personal Study

This evening I gave you the tent analogy. As you write a critical (literature) essay, you’re answering the question (obviously) and you need to remember to do so by SECTing or something along these lines. But do also keep remembering to pin the essay down to the question. It’s a good idea to use the words of the question from time to time, to make it clear to the examiner that you’re doing so.

The tent? You might like to think of your essay as a tent that keeps trying to blow away (this is like when you waffle off the subject).

Read over what you write after each paragraph, and pin it down to the question by brief comments to MAKE it relevant, eg “Here we see another example of conflict… This shows vivid creation of character…. This shows a turning point…” – depending on what the question is, of course. Use the words of the question, or variations of them, as tent pegs! And these “pegs” can be added afterwards if you forget to put them in at the time - as long as you can squeeze them in to the space.

(You have no idea how hard it is to find pictures of tents flying away. For some strange reason, most people don't seem to stop to take photos of this. Presumably they're busy chasing the tent.)

Remember that you may know why you wrote something, but the marker isn’t a mind reader. Be very definite about making the relevance of what you’ve written very obvious to the dimmest examiner.

You have a new literature (“critical”) essay for homework:

Consider carefully the ending of a novel you know well.

Discuss in what ways the author has prepared for the ending in the earlier part of the novel.


You could write this essay by concentrating on the structure of the novel – the two station scenes – and how the theme of trust is seen very differently in each of them. You would obviously have to deal with some of the bits in between as you did this, but you would try to pick out the bits that are relevant to both, ie you’d need to discuss the characterisation of Barnaby and Sophia and some related matters.

You might also want to bring in other themes, eg change/families/etc.

You might like to bring in some symbols, eg the Twinform and the importance of money.

You would need, I think, to deal briefly with the Renascence School, so that you could bring in the earlier mention of the sonnet (“When in disgrace”) and then the importance of the sonnet on the last page. This could also be seen as part of the structure – preparing the reader to understand his sudden realisation that he may love Martine.

Remember to SECT! Critical essays should be about 700 words.

We then went over the 2005 passage 1 Close Reading and students wrote the answers to some of these in class while I discussed people’s Personal Study choices with them. If you haven’t yet read your book, this it’s now MORE than urgent that you do so!!!

We then read pages 1-25 of "A View from the Bridge" and noticed the themes of justice and honour; also the fact that the narrator/lawyer, Alfieri, notes the connection between the way things turn out in this play and the way people behaved back in the times of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

Most people just seemed to get to question 2 or 3 in the Close Reading, so if you were off, maybe you could do these questions for next week? and also read the bits of the play that you missed.

No parties or other important life events should be scheduled in the next few weeks. Your spare time should be dedicated to English!

This is how NOT to study.

CRUCIALLY - I FORGOT TO REMIND YOU THAT NEXT WEEK IS THE ESSAY ASSESSMENT (WHICH YOU ALL KNOW ANYWAY) - ARGUMENTATIVE OR REFLECTIVE OR PERSUASIVE.

THIS MEANS THAT IF YOU ALREADY HAVE THE ASSESSMENTS, YOU DON'T NEED TO COME TILL 7.30. IF YOU'RE DOING THE ASSESSMENT, YOU NEED TO BRING ALONG A MARKED DRAFT - MARKED BY ME - AND THE ASSESSMENT CONSISTS OF REDRAFTING IT - WITH THE ESSAY IN FRONT OF YOU. If you don't have a draft with you, you can't do the assessment.

If you need to contact me about this, please email.

(Now I'll find out who doesn't read the blog...).

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!