GO COMPARE

EITHER
4 1 Writers draw upon the conventions of different genres when constructing their narratives: 
for example, ballads, monologues, elegies, fictive biographies, thrillers, romances.
 Write about the significance of generic conventions in the narratives of the three writers 
you have studied. (42 marks)
OR
4 2 A key choice writers make is how they name or refer to characters in their stories.
 Write about the significance of the choices writers have made in naming or referring to 
their characters in the three texts you have studied. (42 marks)


EITHER
3 7 “In narratives, what we are not told is just as important as what we are told.”
 Write about the significance of the gaps or of the untold stories in the narratives of the 
three writers you have studied. (42 marks)
OR
3 8 Write about the significance of descriptive language as it is used by each of the three
writers you have studied. (42 marks)


EITHER
3 7 Write about the significance of the ways the three writers you have studied have 
structured their narratives. (42 marks)
OR
3 8 Write about the significance of the ways the three writers you have studied have used 
places in their narratives. (42 marks)


EITHER
Question 19
3 7 Write about the significance of the ways writers end their narratives in the work of the 
three writers you have studied. (42 marks)
OR
Question 20
3 8 Write about the significance of narrators in the work of the three writers you have 
studied.


EITHER 19 Many narratives have one or more significant moments of crisis.
    Write about the significance of crises in the work of the three writers you have 
studied. (42 marks)
OR    20 How do writers use repetition to create meanings in their texts?
    In your answer, refer to the work of the three writers you have studied.
(42 marks)


EITHER 19 Write about some of the ways characters are created in the three texts you 
have studied. (42 marks)
OR    20 Write about the ways authors use time to shape the order of events in the 
three texts you have studied. (42 marks)


EITHER 19 Writers often choose their titles carefully to allow for different potential 
meanings.
    Write about some potential meanings of titles in the three texts you have studied.
(42 marks)
OR    20 Write about the significance of one or two key events in each of the three texts 
you have studied. (42 marks)

Essays On The Road

If you click on the image below and go to page 39 (a bit dull and about the geographical locations) , 48 (this one is really useful), 55 (this one discusses the end), 69 (some really interesting ideas linked to key episodes from page 78 onwards), 87 (introduces post-postmodernism so you'll need a few cups of tea and a lot of patience), 98 (this deals with compassion in the novel) you'll find essays on The Road

If you click on this next image you'll be taken to an excellent essay on The Road which is essential reading for anyone aspiring for an A

The End - Monday's Lesson

The End
Arriving at the End of The Road
Where do you think the end of The Road begins? Is it when the man and the boy arrive at the sea? Or is it after the man dies? With the welcoming of the boy by the woman? Or only with the final paragraph?

1. Share your thoughts about where you feel the end begins. (You might want to look back at the work you did on the structure and development of the novel, particularly the structure line on page 13.)

Here are some of the ways in which a writer can bring a narrative to a close, and the functions he or she might want it to fulfil:

1. tie up all the loose ends
2. solve a mystery
3. look forward into the future lives of the characters
4. underline the moral or message of the narrative
5. return to the chronological beginning of the story
6. prepare for a sequel
7. shock or disorientate the reader
8. allow characters (or the narrative/authorial voice) to reflect on all that has gone before
9. stop abruptly, in the middle of the action
10. round off the action satisfactorily for all the characters
11. raise further questions in the minds of the reader
12. undermine what has gone before
13. produce a ‘twist in the tale’
14. provide an explanation.

2. Which of these types of ending do you think best describes the end of The Road? Responding to the End
The end of The Road has divided both readers and critics, provoking some very strong responses. For some readers, it is an optimistic ending, while for others it is an ending filled with despair. For some readers it is an ending exactly appropriate for the novel, bringing the story to a powerful climax; for some it is a ‘cop out’, a ‘Hollywood’ ending.

1. On your own, and in no more than 25 words, write your response to the end of the novel. 

Symbolism in the Novel

A symbol is an image that comes to represent something else, a big idea or emotion or theme. For instance, the heart is often used as a symbol for love, or the dove as a symbol for peace, or green as the symbolic colour for envy.
In The Road,there are a few important symbols, that recur throughout the text. They have a literal meaning in the text but they also come to represent something much bigger. The symbols are not always as straightforward as the heart example above. They may have all kinds of meanings and connotations and be open to interpretation.
The Road as a Symbol
Probably the most important symbol in the novel is the road. It functions literally and symbolically, as well as structuring the narrative.
Use the approach below to explore the importance of the road in the book.
1. Read these ideas about how the road figures in literature more generally, to put McCarthy’s use of it into a cultural and literary context. Then think about how McCarthy’s use of the road connects with this tradition.

1. The road or journey has often been used as a metaphor for life itself – the journey from birth to death.
   
2. In American culture, the road is an important symbol. America is a large country and crossing the continent has been seen symbolically as representing a pioneering spirit – striking out into the unknown – or searching for oneself. Many classic American novels (and films) make a journey by road the focus for the narrative, for instance John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road or the film Thelma and Louise.
   
3. The epic journey has a much longer literary and cultural history. Going back to Greek literature, in Homer’s The Odyssey, Ulysses goes on a long journey and encounters many tests and trials, both physical and mental, before returning to his homeland. The epic work The Divine Comedy by the Italian medieval poet Dante shows the poet on a journey in the afterlife, to Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, shows the pilgrim Christian leaving his home in this world and travelling to the ‘Celestial City’. Gulliver’s Travels is a fantastical journey to other worlds, in which the main character discovers more about his own world by contrast with the societies he encounters.
   
4. The journey as a structure for a novel implies a particular kind of pattern, where there are episodes along the way. The journey involves meeting new challenges and dangers, the chance of luck to bring fortune or difficulties, and is often structured around a struggle for survival, away from the routine and security of a home environment. 
   

Other Symbols and Metaphors in the Novel Wednesday's starter

1. Look at this list and for each one, first explore its literal importance in the text and then its possible symbolic meanings. Do the meanings vary or change in the course of the book?
Water, cleaning and washing
The mountain
The sea
The colour grey (gray American spelling) Ash
Fire
Sight/sightlessness
Seeds
Music/musical instruments Animal imagery
Religious imagery
The Coca Cola can
2. Add any other metaphors or symbols that you have noticed during your reading. 

Voice and Point of View

The Road is written in the third person, in the voice of an omniscient narrator, with the characters referred to as ‘he’ or ‘the boy’. However, within this, McCarthy manipulates and plays with the narrative voice and the point of view from which the story is seen. Here are some of the things you might find interesting to explore in relation to the narrative voice of The Road:

• –  3rd person voice, omniscient point of view
• –  3rd person voice, from the point of view of the man
• –  3rd person voice, from the point of view of the boy
• –  unattributed dialogue (i.e. without ‘he said’)
• –  decontextualised dialogue (without commentary from the narrator)
• –  unattributed thoughts (i.e. without ‘he thought’)
• –  not signalling where the narrative ends and dialogue or the thoughts of a character in the first person begin
• –  dream sequences related without a clear sense of whether it is in the third or first person
• –  3rd person free indirect style where the reader not only feels he/she is seeing events from a character’s perspective but that it is in the character’s own words, not those of the narrative voice.
  To explore the narrative voice of The Road you will need photocopies of the extracts suggested on page 28.

After Reading – Voice and Point of View
Extract 1: page 32
On this road there are no godspoke men. ... By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.
Extract 2: page 87
They never heard the dog again. ... The dog that he remembers followed us for two days.
Extract 3: page 122
He’d no idea what direction they might have taken and his fear was that they might circle and return to the house. ... He held the child and after a while the child stopped shaking and after a while he slept.
Extract 4: page 298
If I’m not here you can still talk to me. You can talk to me and I’ll talk to you. You’ll see. ... He went down the road as far as he dared and then he came back.
Extract 5: page 306
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. ... In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

1. In pairs, look closely at these extracts and talk about what you notice about the voice and point of view, exploring which of the possible techniques listed on page 27 are being used, and to what effect.
2. Next look at each extract in the context it appears in the novel. Is the voice characteristic of this section of the novel, or is it noticeably different? What is the effect of the choices McCarthy has made at that particular moment in the novel?
3. Skim read through the novel, selecting three short extracts of your own where the voice or point of view strikes you as being particularly interesting, illuminating or challenging.
4. Share your extracts as a class. 

Structure and the Handling of Time

The overall movement of time in The Road is chronological, as McCarthy describes both the passing of the seasons and the passing of individual days. Within this structure he plays with the relationship between chronological and narrative time. He expands or contracts time, integrating flashbacks, memories and dreams. The narrative is both unspecific about when it is taking place and very detailed in its references to ‘night’, ‘morning’, ‘evening’ and so on.

1. Skim through the novel, looking for examples of any of the following types of reference to time:
   
   • –  references to the passage of the days (look for ‘in the morning’, ‘in the evening’)
   • –  markers in the year (for example October, Winter)
   • –  passages in which narrative time is telescoped (for example ‘three days later’)
   • –  points at which narrative time expands (several pages devoted to a few minutes)
   • –  references to ‘before’ (and flashbacks)
   • –  points at which time seems to be suspended
   • –  more abstract references to time.
2. In groups of four, share your examples.
3. Together draft a short statement on McCarthy’s handling of time to feed back to the class, focusing on anything that seems:
   
   • –  particularly interesting
   • –  unusual or surprising
   • –  central to the themes or overall impact and so on.
   1. Structural repetition
   2. Make a note of two or three key phrases that you find particularly illuminating or interesting in what he says.
   3. Practise integrating these into a short piece of critical writing to explore the ways in which his insights have made you think differently about the handling of time or have extended or challenged your views.

Easter Work

Below are questions from a past paper. I would like you to attempt BOTH the 1b and COMPARE question. This should take no longer than 1 hour 30 minutes

RULES

Answer ONE 1b question and ONE BIG COMPARE QUESTION
Spend 30 mins on 1b and 1hr on the BIG COMPARE
Whatever text you choose for 1b CANNOT be used in your response to the BIG COMPARE QUESTION
You MUST have your books with you to help

HELP

For the BIG COMPARE QUESTION you are simply required to write 3 mini essays (so roughly 20 minutes on each), there is no need to compare.

Section 1b 30 mins 21 marks answer ONE of the following

How far do you agree that the Patriot and the Pied Piper are heroes?


It has been said that a fault of the poem is the over-emphasised moral at the end.
 How satisfying do you find the poem's moral that "He prayeth well, who loveth well/
Both man and bird and beast"?


"Illusory as it is, Gatsby's dream gives meaning and value to human experience."
 How do you respond to this view?


THE BIG COMPARE QUESTIONS 42 marks use your remaining THREE texts to answer this question

EITHER 19

Many narratives have one or more significant moments of crisis.

Write about the significance of crises in the work of the three writers you have

studied. (42 marks)

OR 20

How do writers use repetition to create meanings in their texts?

In your answer, refer to the work of the three writers you have studied.

(42 marks)

 

The Road Rat - Updated

The Road - Clip 1 by dreadcentral



This homework needs to be on your blog by NEXT WEDNESDAY 1st APRIL

UPDATE

Some questions to consider and answer

• What element of forshadowing is employed in this section and why? (pg 62)
• What does the description of the men teach us about them? (Characterisation pg 62-3)
• McCarthy uses a simile when describing the truck 'Lumbering and creaking like a ship'. Why does he do this?
• Why does Mccarthy describe the Road Rat in such detail? (Characterisation pg 65)
• Why is the Road Rats character so explicit whilst the man is so implicit?
• What do we learn about the man through his exchanges with the Road Rat? (Pg 68. Consider the Man's impressive medical knowledge, look at the description of the grabbing of the boy and the shooting of the Road Rat)
• "A single round left in the revolver. You will not face the truth. You will not" Who is the man echoing here? How do you believe these words are uttered?
• Why don't the other men chase after the boy and the man following the shooting? (there are clues on pg 73-4).
• It is not until page 77 that the man finally cleans the "gore" and "dead mans brains" from the boys face. Why? (Be aware that in the intervening pages he has kept him warm with blankets, fed him etc yet not cleaned his face)

A Limited Palette

Cormac McCarthy writes with a limited palette in The Road, like a painter choosing a restricted range of colours. Certain adjectives crop up repeatedly, for instance, ‘gray’ and ‘ashen’. The dialogue often follows a similar pattern, ending with the father asking the boy if he’s ‘okay’ and the boy responding ‘okay.’ The sentence structures are also often highly repetitive, with simple and compound sentences being used rather than complex ones.
Here are some possible literary analyses of why this limited palette might have been chosen by the writer.


1. Choose those you most agree with and find examples from the text to illustrate the analysis being made.

1. The limited linguistic palette and repetitive techniques echo the monotony of the post-apocalyptic world that is described.
   
2. The repetitive language echoes the idea of being on a road, constantly travelling.
   
3. The death of everything living – plants, trees, creatures and most other human beings – is evoked through the bleakness and ‘deadness’ of the language.
   
4. There is a powerfully poetic effect in the simplicity of the language. By avoiding rhetorical flourishes and elaborate language the writer makes a stronger impact.
   
5. The pared down language of the narrative reflects the pared down life the characters have to live – essentials only.
   
6. Avoiding emotional language and keeping it simple makes the narrative all the more emotionally engaging.
   
7. The limited palette makes the story more universal, a fable for all time, rather than pinning it down with lots of elaborate details describing specific places.
   
8. There’s something rather dulling about the style that makes it hard to read and difficult to distinguish one part of the book from the next. All the events seem to merge together.
   
9. Lack of hyperbolic language highlights the extremity of the situation.
   

A Limited Palette?


It’s easy to oversimplify when talking about a writer’s style and although Cormac McCarthy is known for the spareness of his prose, there are also moments of rich lyricism in The Road.

1. Have a look again at the opening page of the novel, where the man is described waking from a dream. Phrases like the following are full of figurative language and poetic vocabulary: ‘Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast.’ Dreams and moments of waking seem to be evoked in this more lush language.
   
2. Find other examples of this in the novel.
   
3. Can you think of other instances where the language is of a different kind? Find examples and explain what the qualities of the language are and why you think language is being used in this way.
   
4. Look again at the literary analysis statements above. Either re-write one of these analytical statements or draft your own to reflect your discoveries about the variations in McCarthy’s prose style.

The ‘Woman’

Both critics and readers have commented on the small part the woman plays in the novel, particularly in comparison with the 2009 film adaptation. Looking at the bald statistics of word occurrences appears to confirm the marginal role of the woman:
1. As a class, brainstorm as many ideas as possible about why this might be. The woman is mentioned in the following passages:
p.17: From daydreams on the road there was no waking .... Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.
p.54: The clocks stopped at 1:17. ... What is happening?
p.56: He thought about the picture in the road ... You mean you wish that you were dead.
p.57: What in God’s name are you talking about? We’re not survivors. We’re the walking dead in a horror film ... The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself.
p.60: She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift ... wrapped his son in a towel.

Woman: 14

Mother: 2

Mom: 1

Wife: 1

Man: 184

Father: 23

Papa: 135

After Reading – The ‘Woman’
2. Look back at the extracts in the context in which they appear in the novel. Use a mindmap to develop your analysis and speculative thoughts about the presence (and absence) of the woman in the novel. Headings you might use include:

• –  The context in which the woman is mentioned
  
• –  Representation
  
• –  Thematic functions
  
• –  Symbolic functions
  
• –  Structural functions
  
• –  Possible reasons for absence.
  In his interview, Adam Roberts, talking about the handling of time, goes on to explore the possible reasons for McCarthy’s ‘sparing’ use of the woman.
  [In the film] his wife appears in dream sequences, memory and flashback much more frequently than she does in the book. In the book he uses her very sparingly. I think that’s because he doesn’t want to mess up the very carefully denuded sense of time passing that things have come to an end, are at a standstill by giving too strong a sense that there’s a before and after, too strong a sense of chronological contiguity.
  Rather than assume her absence is a mistake or failing on McCarthy’s part, Roberts develops an interpretation which sees the woman’s presence (and absence) as a fundamental aspect of the novel. The statements below suggest six further interpretations of the mother and the function she fulfils.
  

3. In pairs, take each of the statements below and test it out. Does it chime with your own view? Or does it open up a new interpretation to you? Does it stand up to scrutiny? Or can you see flaws in the reading of the novel on which it depends?
   
4. Draw on the readings to draft your own exploratory analysis of the woman.
   

1	This is a novel less about survival than about the relationship between a father and his son.
2	McCarthy needed something that is no longer present to represent life as it used to be in the time before.
3	The man and woman represent the different ways in which humanity might react to such a situation.
4	This is a novel about minute by minute survival. Showing the man resisting the temptation of his memories brings this home to the reader.
5	The woman has a powerful and ambiguous symbolic function in the novel: she represents both the giving of life and the temptation of death.
6	There is no space in this pared back narrative of survival for a third main character.
7	The vulnerability of the boy would seem far less evident if his mother were there as well.
8	For the man, the woman’s absence is a constant reminder of the alternative to struggling to survive.

The Road 30 minute homework

Due in Wednesday March 25

How does McCarthy tell the story in pages 1-28 of The Road?

You can choose to type directly onto your blog or handwrite and upload an image to your blog.

Post-Apocalyptic Literature

This work needs to be added to your blog by Wednesday March 26th


The Road belongs to a tradition known as post-apocalyptic literature. Post-apocalyptic narratives are set after some devastating event has occurred which has destroyed the fabric of society. This might be anything from nuclear war, terrorism, biological warfare or industrial disaster to disease, climate change or technological meltdown. In some cases the event which has brought about such devastation might never be specified. In some examples,
the whole of the narrative takes place after the apocalyptic event; in others, the narrative recounts the time before the disaster, the event itself and the period which follows.
Here are 10 observations on the features, themes and functions of post-apocalyptic fiction.

1. In pairs, read the observations in relation to your interpretation of The Road, ticking those which seem particularly to apply to, or in some way illuminate, McCarthy’s novel. Mark any which do not seem to be relevant with a cross. In each case, make a few notes explaining your decisions.
   
2. Share your ideas in class discussion.
   

1.	Protected bastions of humanity in a sea of inhospitable waste or wilderness or danger, such as enclosed cities, underground caverns, and bunkers.
2.	Marauding gangs of bandits.
3.	‘Apocalypse’ derives from the Greek word for ‘revelation’.
4.	Fall of civilization.
5.	Mythologizing of the past.
6.	The thoughts and actions of the survivors are what counts.
7.	Humanity has always imagined its own destruction. Each generation believes the end is somewhere round the corner, and our catastrophic fantasies are a good barometer of what’s currently troubling us.
8.	Post-apocalyptic novels are a dark, bleak and often illuminating genre.
9.	Punishment for our wicked overreaching.
10.	A chaotic dark age, in which robber bands, bizarre millenarian religious sects, nomads, hunters and foragers of all sorts are found. The remains of the industrial society – its rotting industrial plants, its collapsed cities – litter the landscape, archaeology rather than evidence of recent catastrophe.

The Good Guys

Jaz and Ellie are the good guys. Look at their blogs, they carry the fire.

They squatted in the road and ate cold rice and cold beans that they'd cooked days ago. Already beginning to ferment. No place to make a fire that would not be seen. They slept huddled together in the rank quilts in the dark and the cold. He held their work close to him. So thin. My heart, he said. My heart. But he knew that if he were a good teacher still it might well be as she had said. That the two blogs were all that stood between him and death. (44.1)

Some existentialism for you

What does it mean to be alive in a dead world?

The Beginning and the End HOMEWORK DUE WEDNESDAY 18th (on blogs)

The Beginning
In an article on novel beginnings, the novelist Blake Morrison writes: 

‘Gabriel Garcia Marquez has said that he sometimes spends months on a first paragraph, since it’s there that the theme, style and tone of a book are defined – solve that and the rest comes easily.’ 

In In pairs, talk about how far the opening paragraph of The Road (from ‘When he woke in the woods in the dark’ to ‘loped soundlessly into the dark.’) defines the novel it introduces.

The Opening Section – a Homework Task
1. On your own, re-read the first 28 pages, pulling out anything you think is a key feature of the novel, for example aspects of sentence structure, imagery, the handling of narrative and chronological time, the pattern of a conversation and so on. 

Key features of pages 1-28	Example

2. Choose two or three of these features that you think are developed interestingly throughout the rest of the novel. Explore the ways in which McCarthy uses the particular feature and the significance it takes on.

Your blogs and those students to be given obsidian

On the right hand side of this blog are links to your classmates work

The following students have not completed their homework or set up their blogs, they will not be permitted to lessons until they have.

THE BAD GUYS

Cameron

Lucy

William

 Eleanor

Erin

Lilika

Bryani

Charlotte