Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Your Questions Answered
Here is a powerpoint created to answer some of the questions we've come up with in class, focusing on responding to Other Cultures Poetry.
Workshop
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Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Some Thoughts on Stealing - Carol Ann Duffy
Stealing
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Thoughts on The Field Mouse - Gillian Clarke
Field Mouse
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Ten Top Tips for Planning Writing to Persuade
Plan your answer:
· make a list of ideas
· number them to give you a paragraph plan
· remember to add an introduction and a concluding paragraph
1. Define your audience
2. Make your purpose explicit
3. Choose the appropriate form: a letter
· greeting, opening, conclusion, farewell
4. Choose your language with care:
· formal but friendly
· avoid abbreviations, slang, clichés, common sayings
· choose words to influence your reader
5. Pay attention to sentences:
· vary length
· link complex sentences properly with connectives not commas
6. Use paragraphs to give a clear structure:
· make them short, one line to six lines
· leave a line between each paragraph
· one paragraph covers one idea
· link each paragraph to the previous one
· point direction of the paragraph with opening sentence
7. Spell simple and common words accurately
8. Look for opportunities to use different punctuation:
· full stops, commas, question marks, exclamation marks
· colons, semi-colons, speech marks, hyphens
9. Make your content interesting:
· give details
· provide examples, stories, evidence
10. Use deliberate devices to catch the reader’s attention:
· repetition and emphasis
· rhetorical questions
· a surprising opening or conclusion
· unusual images or comparison
· make a list of ideas
· number them to give you a paragraph plan
· remember to add an introduction and a concluding paragraph
1. Define your audience
2. Make your purpose explicit
3. Choose the appropriate form: a letter
· greeting, opening, conclusion, farewell
4. Choose your language with care:
· formal but friendly
· avoid abbreviations, slang, clichés, common sayings
· choose words to influence your reader
5. Pay attention to sentences:
· vary length
· link complex sentences properly with connectives not commas
6. Use paragraphs to give a clear structure:
· make them short, one line to six lines
· leave a line between each paragraph
· one paragraph covers one idea
· link each paragraph to the previous one
· point direction of the paragraph with opening sentence
7. Spell simple and common words accurately
8. Look for opportunities to use different punctuation:
· full stops, commas, question marks, exclamation marks
· colons, semi-colons, speech marks, hyphens
9. Make your content interesting:
· give details
· provide examples, stories, evidence
10. Use deliberate devices to catch the reader’s attention:
· repetition and emphasis
· rhetorical questions
· a surprising opening or conclusion
· unusual images or comparison
Writing to Persuade
Write a letter to a local celebrity inviting her/him to support your school in setting up a link with a school abroad.
Plan
1. Explain who celebrity is and why chosen him/her
2. Which school linked with and kind of school it is
3. What we’re trying to do to help students in Uganda
4. How our school can benefit from the link
5. What fundraising we’ve done so far
6. How celebrity can help
7. What we hope to achieve on the day
8. Thank celebrity for considering our invitation
9. Hope to hear from him/her soon
Our school is trying to set up a link with a school in Uganda to try to help them get better buildings and textbooks and so on. We have raised about £500 so far and want to get more money so they can get better teaching in future.
We thought it would help if we had a famous person supporting our fundraising, we’d like to invite you to come to a fundraising day we’re having in school in June. Their will be stalls and competitions and games for the kids and food and drink, we hope it will be a big event with loads of people there, they can spend lots of money and help us get more books so they can have better teaching in there school.
If you could open our day for us that would be really good as it would mean lots of people would come to see you and it would help us raise lots of money for the children in Uganda.
Please write and let us know if you can come.
Peter
Plan
1. Explain who celebrity is and why chosen him/her
2. Which school linked with and kind of school it is
3. What we’re trying to do to help students in Uganda
4. How our school can benefit from the link
5. What fundraising we’ve done so far
6. How celebrity can help
7. What we hope to achieve on the day
8. Thank celebrity for considering our invitation
9. Hope to hear from him/her soon
Our school is trying to set up a link with a school in Uganda to try to help them get better buildings and textbooks and so on. We have raised about £500 so far and want to get more money so they can get better teaching in future.
We thought it would help if we had a famous person supporting our fundraising, we’d like to invite you to come to a fundraising day we’re having in school in June. Their will be stalls and competitions and games for the kids and food and drink, we hope it will be a big event with loads of people there, they can spend lots of money and help us get more books so they can have better teaching in there school.
If you could open our day for us that would be really good as it would mean lots of people would come to see you and it would help us raise lots of money for the children in Uganda.
Please write and let us know if you can come.
Peter
Poetry Model Answer
In “My Last Duchess” Robert Browning’s Duke seems to have been jealous of his former wife. Compare Browning’s treatment of this idea with the same theme in one other pre-1914 poem and two poems by Carol Ann Duffy or Simon Armitage.
“My Last Duchess” opens with the speaker, the Duke, inviting his visitor to admire a painting of his ex-wife: “I call
That piece a wonder”
He seems to treasure
“The depth and passion of its earnest glance”
and we might expect in this early part of the poem that the painting helps him to recall the serious love of his (dead?) wife fondly.
The painting is so important to him that he rarely allows other people to view it – it is hidden by a curtain, and he is the only person permitted to reveal the painting. By now we may start to feel alarmed: why does he want to hide his ex-wife from view?
Gradually the reason emerges: he was, and still is, jealous of her, because her joy came not just from her husband’s company. She was “too easily impressed”, and “her looks went everywhere.” Her fault, in his eyes, was that she considered pleasing him no more important than enjoying the sunset, eating cherries or riding her horse.
She failed to give him the attention he craved, and worse still, she took no account of his breeding, his nine hundred years old family name. Yet he could not tell her of his displeasure because that would mean stooping to her level, “and I choose
never to stoop.”
His jealousy at her constant smiling grew and grew, until the sinister conclusion:
“I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.”
The Duke dismisses her fate, presumed dead, coldly, abruptly, as he admires instead a bronze statue which he has been able to bend to his will.
In “The Song of the Old Mother”, in contrast, we feel not horror but sympathy. Her envy is directed at the young. Her lament is brief, despairing, almost monosyllabic, which gives the poem a tone of slow, sad resignation.
She describes in simple language her chores: rising early, lighting the fire, cleaning, cooking. Her life holds no pleasures, unlike those of the young, whose only thoughts are of trivial matters:
“the matching of ribbons for bosom and head”
The poem ends in a bitter couplet which points up her passive resignation, with the powerful rhyming of “old” and “cold” to emphasise the burden of age and “the seed of the fire” of her life dying feebly away.
The protagonist of “Education for Leisure” seems younger, filled with envy of the whole world. He (his simple speech, the emphasis on “I”, and the tendency to violence sound more male than female) expresses his frustration at the outset:
“Today I am going to kill something. Anything.”
Because he is constantly ignored, he, like the Duke, is determined to take control, to play God with other creatures’ lives. His aggression increases in scale, from crushing a fly to flushing away a goldfish. At first his threats have a humorous edge, when the cat and the budgie try to escape him.
However, his self-delusion is growing rapidly. He believes he is a genius, and is desperate to be noticed by “them” as one:
“I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.”
When the people at the job centre and the radio presenter spurn his autograph and his “superstar” status, something snaps inside him.
The poem ends in four sudden, short sentences laden with danger:
“The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.”
The violent assault comes earlier in “Hitcher”, enabling the reader to feel the weight of the speaker’s callous indifference to the life he has ended. Bored by his job, and jealous of his hitch-hiker’s untroubled attitude to life,
“following the sun to west from east”
he attacks him, repeatedly, gratuitously, and ejects him from the moving car.
The speaker is proud of the skill with which he dispatched his victim – “didn’t even swerve” – rather than showing any remorse. On the contrary, having watched him
“bouncing off the kerb”
he concludes with a vengeful, harsh farewell, completely out of touch with reality, just like the killer in “Education for Leisure”:
“Stitch that, I remember thinking,
you can walk from there.”
In both poems, as in “My Last Duchess”, we find little to like or sympathise with in the central figure because he reveals no emotions other than naked envy or jealousy.
“My Last Duchess” opens with the speaker, the Duke, inviting his visitor to admire a painting of his ex-wife: “I call
That piece a wonder”
He seems to treasure
“The depth and passion of its earnest glance”
and we might expect in this early part of the poem that the painting helps him to recall the serious love of his (dead?) wife fondly.
The painting is so important to him that he rarely allows other people to view it – it is hidden by a curtain, and he is the only person permitted to reveal the painting. By now we may start to feel alarmed: why does he want to hide his ex-wife from view?
Gradually the reason emerges: he was, and still is, jealous of her, because her joy came not just from her husband’s company. She was “too easily impressed”, and “her looks went everywhere.” Her fault, in his eyes, was that she considered pleasing him no more important than enjoying the sunset, eating cherries or riding her horse.
She failed to give him the attention he craved, and worse still, she took no account of his breeding, his nine hundred years old family name. Yet he could not tell her of his displeasure because that would mean stooping to her level, “and I choose
never to stoop.”
His jealousy at her constant smiling grew and grew, until the sinister conclusion:
“I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.”
The Duke dismisses her fate, presumed dead, coldly, abruptly, as he admires instead a bronze statue which he has been able to bend to his will.
In “The Song of the Old Mother”, in contrast, we feel not horror but sympathy. Her envy is directed at the young. Her lament is brief, despairing, almost monosyllabic, which gives the poem a tone of slow, sad resignation.
She describes in simple language her chores: rising early, lighting the fire, cleaning, cooking. Her life holds no pleasures, unlike those of the young, whose only thoughts are of trivial matters:
“the matching of ribbons for bosom and head”
The poem ends in a bitter couplet which points up her passive resignation, with the powerful rhyming of “old” and “cold” to emphasise the burden of age and “the seed of the fire” of her life dying feebly away.
The protagonist of “Education for Leisure” seems younger, filled with envy of the whole world. He (his simple speech, the emphasis on “I”, and the tendency to violence sound more male than female) expresses his frustration at the outset:
“Today I am going to kill something. Anything.”
Because he is constantly ignored, he, like the Duke, is determined to take control, to play God with other creatures’ lives. His aggression increases in scale, from crushing a fly to flushing away a goldfish. At first his threats have a humorous edge, when the cat and the budgie try to escape him.
However, his self-delusion is growing rapidly. He believes he is a genius, and is desperate to be noticed by “them” as one:
“I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.”
When the people at the job centre and the radio presenter spurn his autograph and his “superstar” status, something snaps inside him.
The poem ends in four sudden, short sentences laden with danger:
“The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.”
The violent assault comes earlier in “Hitcher”, enabling the reader to feel the weight of the speaker’s callous indifference to the life he has ended. Bored by his job, and jealous of his hitch-hiker’s untroubled attitude to life,
“following the sun to west from east”
he attacks him, repeatedly, gratuitously, and ejects him from the moving car.
The speaker is proud of the skill with which he dispatched his victim – “didn’t even swerve” – rather than showing any remorse. On the contrary, having watched him
“bouncing off the kerb”
he concludes with a vengeful, harsh farewell, completely out of touch with reality, just like the killer in “Education for Leisure”:
“Stitch that, I remember thinking,
you can walk from there.”
In both poems, as in “My Last Duchess”, we find little to like or sympathise with in the central figure because he reveals no emotions other than naked envy or jealousy.
GCSE English Literature - Of Mice and Men
Model Theme-Based Answer
Do you agree that all the characters in “Of Mice and Men” are seeking companionship more than anything else?
It is human nature to seek companionship, and Steinbeck is keen to emphasise that his characters are ordinary human beings, many of them on the lower rungs of society. They have little status, few possessions, no savings, no home, and little control over their own destinies. It is this ordinariness which makes us sympathise with most of Steinbeck’s characters.
These are mostly men who travel from place to place seeking work. They have no job security, and no real prospects of securing a long-term job or a place to call their own. As a result most are lonely, but unwilling to admit that they are, and unable to express their sense of loneliness in an articulate manner.
Their lives are also complicated by the presence of one woman, Curley’s wife, who is attractive, unhappy, and desperate to find somebody to talk to. She expresses her loneliness in anger when on Saturday evening she is forced to seek the company of Crooks, Lennie and Candy,
“ ‘ a nigger an’ a dum-dum and a lousy ol’ sheep – an’ likin’ it because they ain’t nobody else.’ “
She insults all three at the same time as she is willing to accept their companionship, even if it is only temporary and short-lived.
Candy finds companionship in his old dog, although it is now smelly and unable to work, rather like Candy himself.
“ ‘I been around him so much I never notice how he stinks.’ “
He resists the pressure from the other men to have the dog shot, and turns sadly to the wall when it is shot.
He is quick to listen in to George’s and Lennie’s dream, and grasps a way to become part of it, offering the only thing he has, his savings. For a brief period of optimism, he believes they can fulfil the dream together and he can once again find purpose, friendship and independence.
Crooks has become so accustomed to his loneliness that he appears to resent an intrusion into his private space, even if it offers companionship.
“He kept his distance and demanded that other people kept theirs.”
He is an outsider even more than the other characters because of his colour. He lives with constant physical pain, which Steinbeck intends us to interpret as an emotional pain as well.
Given the chance of companionship with Lennie, he cannot resist the opportunity to inflict pain on Lennie when he senses Lennie’s vulnerability.
“ ‘S’pose he gets killed or hurt so he can’t come back.’ “
If he has to remain lonely, he is jealous of Lennie’s friendship and tries to wish it away, if only to let Lennie see how fortunate he is to have a good companion.
Slim comes closest to accepting and making the best of being single. He is more independent than the other men by virtue of his skill and status as a jerkline skinner. He invites and earns their trust, for example encouraging George to tell the story of his relationship with Lennie. In this way he gains a kind of detached companionship.
George and Lennie have found a kind of companionship which is not entirely one-sided. It gives George a sense of authority over Lennie, but also teaches him to care for and protect Lennie because of all the troubles Lennie has caused them both.
“ ‘Made me seem God damn smart alongside of him.’ “
Although to begin with George enjoyed playing jokes on Lennie, he has learnt a sense of humility from Lennie’s gentle reactions to being outsmarted.
In return, Lennie, although a constant burden to George –
“ ‘ if I was alone I could live so easy’ “ –
is extremely loyal, as Crooks nearly finds to his cost when he threatens their friendship. Lennie also recognises deep down that he complicates George’s life, and that he has done things wrong.
“ ‘I done another bad thing.’ “
even if he is incapable of anticipating when things will go wrong.
Steinbeck uses the ending of his novel to emphasise just how alone his characters are. Those with most to lose, because they have a relationship which has stood the test of time, are bought to a tragic end. Lennie dies with his dream ahead of him over the river, while George is left to mourn his companion in the knowledge that he took the impossible decision to end Lennie’s life for Lennie’s own sake. The only character who understands what George has lost, and why he had to execute Lennie, is Slim, the one person who is at least in part happy in his singleness.
Do you agree that all the characters in “Of Mice and Men” are seeking companionship more than anything else?
It is human nature to seek companionship, and Steinbeck is keen to emphasise that his characters are ordinary human beings, many of them on the lower rungs of society. They have little status, few possessions, no savings, no home, and little control over their own destinies. It is this ordinariness which makes us sympathise with most of Steinbeck’s characters.
These are mostly men who travel from place to place seeking work. They have no job security, and no real prospects of securing a long-term job or a place to call their own. As a result most are lonely, but unwilling to admit that they are, and unable to express their sense of loneliness in an articulate manner.
Their lives are also complicated by the presence of one woman, Curley’s wife, who is attractive, unhappy, and desperate to find somebody to talk to. She expresses her loneliness in anger when on Saturday evening she is forced to seek the company of Crooks, Lennie and Candy,
“ ‘ a nigger an’ a dum-dum and a lousy ol’ sheep – an’ likin’ it because they ain’t nobody else.’ “
She insults all three at the same time as she is willing to accept their companionship, even if it is only temporary and short-lived.
Candy finds companionship in his old dog, although it is now smelly and unable to work, rather like Candy himself.
“ ‘I been around him so much I never notice how he stinks.’ “
He resists the pressure from the other men to have the dog shot, and turns sadly to the wall when it is shot.
He is quick to listen in to George’s and Lennie’s dream, and grasps a way to become part of it, offering the only thing he has, his savings. For a brief period of optimism, he believes they can fulfil the dream together and he can once again find purpose, friendship and independence.
Crooks has become so accustomed to his loneliness that he appears to resent an intrusion into his private space, even if it offers companionship.
“He kept his distance and demanded that other people kept theirs.”
He is an outsider even more than the other characters because of his colour. He lives with constant physical pain, which Steinbeck intends us to interpret as an emotional pain as well.
Given the chance of companionship with Lennie, he cannot resist the opportunity to inflict pain on Lennie when he senses Lennie’s vulnerability.
“ ‘S’pose he gets killed or hurt so he can’t come back.’ “
If he has to remain lonely, he is jealous of Lennie’s friendship and tries to wish it away, if only to let Lennie see how fortunate he is to have a good companion.
Slim comes closest to accepting and making the best of being single. He is more independent than the other men by virtue of his skill and status as a jerkline skinner. He invites and earns their trust, for example encouraging George to tell the story of his relationship with Lennie. In this way he gains a kind of detached companionship.
George and Lennie have found a kind of companionship which is not entirely one-sided. It gives George a sense of authority over Lennie, but also teaches him to care for and protect Lennie because of all the troubles Lennie has caused them both.
“ ‘Made me seem God damn smart alongside of him.’ “
Although to begin with George enjoyed playing jokes on Lennie, he has learnt a sense of humility from Lennie’s gentle reactions to being outsmarted.
In return, Lennie, although a constant burden to George –
“ ‘ if I was alone I could live so easy’ “ –
is extremely loyal, as Crooks nearly finds to his cost when he threatens their friendship. Lennie also recognises deep down that he complicates George’s life, and that he has done things wrong.
“ ‘I done another bad thing.’ “
even if he is incapable of anticipating when things will go wrong.
Steinbeck uses the ending of his novel to emphasise just how alone his characters are. Those with most to lose, because they have a relationship which has stood the test of time, are bought to a tragic end. Lennie dies with his dream ahead of him over the river, while George is left to mourn his companion in the knowledge that he took the impossible decision to end Lennie’s life for Lennie’s own sake. The only character who understands what George has lost, and why he had to execute Lennie, is Slim, the one person who is at least in part happy in his singleness.
GCSE English Literature - Of Mice and Men
Model Text-Based Answer
Re-read pages 90-91, where Lennie crushes Curley’s hand. What does this extract tell you about a) Lennie b) Curley c) the way the story might develop?
The extract begins with Curley, uneasy about his wife’s loyalty and suspicious of Slim in particular, pestering Slim with repeated ill-judged questions. When Slim rejects his questions, Carlson is quick to join the attack, openly insulting Curley:
“ ‘You’re yella as a frog belly.’ “
The way Candy “joined the attack with joy” emphasises just how unpopular Curley is with the ranch hands, something Curley must sense. In a place of work where all the men see themselves as equals, in status and poverty, someone who assumes a superior status as Curley does is quickly resented.
Suspiciously jealous of his wife, and belittled by the treatment he has just received from three of the ranch-hands, Curley sights an easier target in Lennie. He reacts to the taunt of cowardice,
“ ‘I’ll show ya who’s yella.’ “
and sees an opportunity to prove his toughness by tackling the biggest man on the ranch. His response is typical of these working men, for whom words do not come easily, whereas actions are a natural part of the hard life they lead outdoors.
Lennie, on the other hand, is only a man of action when he is directed closely in what to do, for example bucking bags of grain, at which he excels. He is completely oblivious to the tension around him, for in his idealised world people and animals live in harmony and peace. He is remembering details of the ranch he and George dream of owning, “smiling with delight.”
Curley, typically insensitive, misinterprets Lennie’s smile as a further attempt to humiliate him in front of the other men. His attack is brutal and calculated, “balanced and poised”, in much the same way as he hunts Lennie down at the end of the novel. Hurting Lennie becomes a way to prove himself when he has been unable to scare Slim, Carlson or even the old man, Candy.
Lennie’s response to the attack shows how right George is when he claims, at several points in the novel, that Lennie doesn’t act out of meanness, a desire to hurt others. Lennie is terrified by the violence of Curley’s assault: he is “too frightened to defend himself,” his hands useless at his sides. He is not a natural fighter like Curley.
Lennie is entirely dependent upon George to guide him, repeating George’s name and appealing
“ ‘Make ‘um let me alone, George.’ “
He is compared with a frightened animal, his hands like “paws” and his voice a lamb’s – “bleated”. Having few words to express himself, Lennie simply repeats his plea,
“ ‘Make ‘um stop, George.’ “
Lennie’s reactions are slow too. George has to yell his instruction twice. The way in which he looks about him, and his big face, add to the sense of Lennie’s helplessness to act independently. Having been given the instruction, Lennie has no notion of acting on his own, so merely holds on tight, crushing Curley’s hand.
George is fully aware of the danger Lennie presents, and rushes over to free Curley. Lennie’s strength is such that, intensified by his terror of Curley, he instantly crushes Curley’s hand. He is so strong that George is compelled to slap Lennie repeatedly in the face to force him to release Curley.
The episode is concluded when Steinbeck emphasises Lennie’s naturally gentle disposition by having him say to George
“ ‘I didn’t wanta, I didn’t wanta hurt him.’ “
This extract describes both the comradeship which exists among the working men on the ranch, and the threat to harmony which an outsider like Curley can pose. It prepares us for the hatred which Curley nurtures for Lennie as a result of his public humiliation, being robbed of the one attribute he felt he had, his capabilities as a fighter.
It demonstrates just how much Lennie depends upon George to rescue him from the troubles he finds himself in, and warns us that Lennie will always be liable to do unintentional damage to those he meets.
It gives George a reminder, if he needed one, that he will constantly have to rescue Lennie from scrapes, that Lennie’s dependence upon him will always hold him back, and that, as he finally admits at the end of the novel, all their dreams will be destroyed by Lennie’s inability to think or act for himself.
Re-read pages 90-91, where Lennie crushes Curley’s hand. What does this extract tell you about a) Lennie b) Curley c) the way the story might develop?
The extract begins with Curley, uneasy about his wife’s loyalty and suspicious of Slim in particular, pestering Slim with repeated ill-judged questions. When Slim rejects his questions, Carlson is quick to join the attack, openly insulting Curley:
“ ‘You’re yella as a frog belly.’ “
The way Candy “joined the attack with joy” emphasises just how unpopular Curley is with the ranch hands, something Curley must sense. In a place of work where all the men see themselves as equals, in status and poverty, someone who assumes a superior status as Curley does is quickly resented.
Suspiciously jealous of his wife, and belittled by the treatment he has just received from three of the ranch-hands, Curley sights an easier target in Lennie. He reacts to the taunt of cowardice,
“ ‘I’ll show ya who’s yella.’ “
and sees an opportunity to prove his toughness by tackling the biggest man on the ranch. His response is typical of these working men, for whom words do not come easily, whereas actions are a natural part of the hard life they lead outdoors.
Lennie, on the other hand, is only a man of action when he is directed closely in what to do, for example bucking bags of grain, at which he excels. He is completely oblivious to the tension around him, for in his idealised world people and animals live in harmony and peace. He is remembering details of the ranch he and George dream of owning, “smiling with delight.”
Curley, typically insensitive, misinterprets Lennie’s smile as a further attempt to humiliate him in front of the other men. His attack is brutal and calculated, “balanced and poised”, in much the same way as he hunts Lennie down at the end of the novel. Hurting Lennie becomes a way to prove himself when he has been unable to scare Slim, Carlson or even the old man, Candy.
Lennie’s response to the attack shows how right George is when he claims, at several points in the novel, that Lennie doesn’t act out of meanness, a desire to hurt others. Lennie is terrified by the violence of Curley’s assault: he is “too frightened to defend himself,” his hands useless at his sides. He is not a natural fighter like Curley.
Lennie is entirely dependent upon George to guide him, repeating George’s name and appealing
“ ‘Make ‘um let me alone, George.’ “
He is compared with a frightened animal, his hands like “paws” and his voice a lamb’s – “bleated”. Having few words to express himself, Lennie simply repeats his plea,
“ ‘Make ‘um stop, George.’ “
Lennie’s reactions are slow too. George has to yell his instruction twice. The way in which he looks about him, and his big face, add to the sense of Lennie’s helplessness to act independently. Having been given the instruction, Lennie has no notion of acting on his own, so merely holds on tight, crushing Curley’s hand.
George is fully aware of the danger Lennie presents, and rushes over to free Curley. Lennie’s strength is such that, intensified by his terror of Curley, he instantly crushes Curley’s hand. He is so strong that George is compelled to slap Lennie repeatedly in the face to force him to release Curley.
The episode is concluded when Steinbeck emphasises Lennie’s naturally gentle disposition by having him say to George
“ ‘I didn’t wanta, I didn’t wanta hurt him.’ “
This extract describes both the comradeship which exists among the working men on the ranch, and the threat to harmony which an outsider like Curley can pose. It prepares us for the hatred which Curley nurtures for Lennie as a result of his public humiliation, being robbed of the one attribute he felt he had, his capabilities as a fighter.
It demonstrates just how much Lennie depends upon George to rescue him from the troubles he finds himself in, and warns us that Lennie will always be liable to do unintentional damage to those he meets.
It gives George a reminder, if he needed one, that he will constantly have to rescue Lennie from scrapes, that Lennie’s dependence upon him will always hold him back, and that, as he finally admits at the end of the novel, all their dreams will be destroyed by Lennie’s inability to think or act for himself.
Thursday, 27 November 2008
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
Not My Business
Everything You Need to Know About: Not My Business
Niyi Osundare: Not My Business
This poem is about shared responsibility and the way that tyranny grows if no one opposes it. It is composed, simply, of three stories about victims of the oppressors, followed by the experience of the speaker in the poem. The poet is Nigerian but the situation in the poem could be from many countries. It echoes, in its four parts, a statement by Pastor Martin Niemöller, who opposed the Nazis. Speaking later to many audiences he would conclude with these words, more or less:
“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”
The oppressors are not specified, only identified by the pronoun “they” - but we suppose them to be the agents of the state, perhaps soldiers or police officers. The first story is Akanni's - he is seized in the morning, beaten then taken away in a jeep. We do not know if he ever returned.
The second victim is Danladi - whose family is awoken at night. Danladi is away for a long time (though there is a hint that this person eventually comes back). Last comes Chinwe, who has been an exemplary worker (she has a “stainless record”) but finds that she has been given the sack without any warning or reason.
After each of these three accounts, the speaker in the poem asks what business it is of his (or hers) - with the implication that these people's experiences are not connected to him. The speaker's only concern is for the next meal (“the yam” in “my savouring mouth”).
The poem ends with a knock on the door, and the oppressors' jeep parked outside. There seems some justice in the timing of the appearance of the jeep: “As I sat down to eat my yam”.
The poet makes it clear that the oppressors thrive when their victims act only for themselves - if they organize, then they can be stronger. Niyi Osundare also criticizes the character in the poem for thinking only of food - or perhaps understands that, in a poor country, hunger is a powerful weapon of the tyrant.
It is easy to take for granted the freedoms some of us enjoy in liberal democracies. But these are not found everywhere. There are housing estates, places of work and even schools where these basic liberties may be lost for some reason - anywhere where bullies find that their victims do not stand up for themselves or resist their power. Osundare makes it clear that it is always our business.
The poem has a very clear structure - we are told the time of each of the episodes and what happened, followed by the refrain: “What business of mine is it...?” Except for the last occasion - because it is obvious now that it (the state terror) is everyone's business. And now it is more obviously the speaker's business. We do not yet know what “they” have in store for this next victim, but we do not suppose it to be pleasant. And it turns out that merely to keep quiet and try not to be noticed is no guarantee of safety. Why not? Because the oppressors are not reasonable people who pick only on the troublemakers - they sustain a reign of terror by the randomness of their persecution of harmless or innocent people.
The names and the reference to the “yam” tell us that the poem has an African setting but apart from these details the scenes could happen in any place where the people suffer under tyranny.
How does the poet show that we are always wrong to say that bad things are not our business, so long as they happen to other people?
Do you think that the speaker in this poem is meant to be the poet? Give reasons for your answer.
In the west it may be easy to take our freedom for granted. Does this poem make you think more seriously about it?
How does the poet use the chorus in the first three verses to make his point?
He has always been a vehement champion of the right to free speech and is a strong believer in the power of words, saying, "to utter is to alter". Osundare is renowned for his commitment to socially relevant art and artistic activism and has written several open letters to the President of Nigeria (Olusegun Obasanjo), whom Osundare has often publicly criticised.
Osundare believes that there is no choice for the African poet but to be political:
"You cannot keep quiet about the situation in the kind of countries we find ourselves in, in Africa. When you wake up and there is no running water, when you have a massive power outage for days and nights, no food on the table, no hospital for the sick, no peace of mind; when the image of the ruler you see everywhere is that of a dictator with a gun in his hand; and, on the international level, when you live in a world in which your continent is consigned to the margin, a world in which the colour of your skin is a constant disadvantage, everywhere you go - then there is no other way than to write about this, in an attempt to change the situation for the better."
Under the rule of the dictator General Abacha (1993-1998), Osundare regularly contributed poems to a Nigerian national newspaper (now part of the collection Songs of the Season) that criticised the regime and commented upon the lives of people in Nigeria. As a result he was frequently visited by Security Agents and asked to explain his poems and to whom they referred.
"By that time I realized that the Nigerian security apparatus had become quite 'sophisticated', quite 'literate' indeed!
"A couple of my students at the University of Ibadan had become informers; a few even came to my classes wired. And when I was reading abroad, someone trailed me from city to city. At home, my letters were frequently intercepted."
In 1997, he accepted a teaching and research post at the University of New Orleans.
He is a holder of numerous awards for his poetry, as well as the Fonlon/Nichols award for "excellence in literary creativity combined with significant contributions to Human Rights in Africa".
The Man He Killed
Everything You Need To Know About: The Man He Killed
About the poet:
Hardy lived from 1840 to 1928. He was the son of a mason, from Dorset, in the s.w. of England. He studied to be an architect, and worked as one for many years. He also began to write prose fiction. Hardy eventually published many novels, such as Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
When Hardy no longer needed to write prose fiction for a living - the royalties from his work gave him plenty of money – he started writing poetry. He had always preferred poetry and believed that he was better as a poet. He wrote verse throughout his life, but did not publish until 1898. Hardy certainly made up for lost time, eventually publishing six collections of verse.
Hardy died in 1928, aged 87. He had asked to be laid beside his first wife, Emma, but his body was buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Only his heart was placed in Emma's grave.
About the poem:
This poem was written at the time of the Boer War, but there is nothing in it that refers to any particular conflict - it could refer to any war. The poem appears as one half of a conversation. The speaker tells about how he killed another man in battle, and reflects on how much he and his victim had in common, and how little reason they had to fight each other.
The title is slightly odd, as Hardy uses the third-person pronoun "He", though the poem is narrated in the first person. The "He" of the title (the "I" of the poem) is the soldier who tries to explain (and perhaps justify) his killing of another man in battle.
The poem in detail:
In the 1st stanza the narrator establishes the common ground between himself and his victim: the two could have shared a lot with each other. This idea is in striking contrast to that in the 2nd stanza: the circumstances in which the men did meet. "Ranged as infantry" suggests that the men are not natural foes but have been "ranged", e.g. set against each other. The phrase "as he at me" indicates the shared circumstance.
In the 3rd stanza the narrator gives his reason for shooting the man. The conversational style of the poem enables Hardy to repeat the word "because", which gives the impression of hesitation and doubt, on the part of the narrator. He cannot think of a reason to kill him, but when he does ("because he was my foe") it is utterly unbelievable. "Of course" and "That's clear enough" are blatantly ironic: it is not "clear" to the reader, and the pretence of assurance on the narrator's is destroyed by his admission beginning "although..."
The real reason for the victim's enlistment in the army, like the narrator's, is far from being connected with patriotic idealism and belief in his country's cause. The soldier's joining was "Off-hand like" and possibly the result of economic necessity: he was unemployed and had already sold off his possessions. He did not enlist for any other reason.
The narrator concludes with a repetition of the contrast between his treatment of the man he killed and how he might have shared his time with him. He says war is "quaint and curious", as if to say, a funny old thing. This tends to show war as more acceptable, but the events narrated in the poem, as well as the reader's general knowledge of war, make it clear that conflict is far from "quaint and curious". Hardy uses the words with heavy irony, knowing full well how inaccurate the description is.
This is a rather bitter poem showing the stupidity of war, and demolishing belief in the patriotic motives of those who confront one another in battle. The narrator finds no good reason for his action. The short lines, simple rhyme scheme, and everyday language make the piece almost nursery rhyme like in simplicity, again in ironic contrast to its subject.
The first thing to note about the poem is that it is written as is spoken - like Browning's My Last Duchess, it is a monologue. It is not just colloquial (like speech) in style and vocabulary. It even has inverted commas (speech marks) to show that it is meant to be spoken.
The vocabulary is very simple - most of the words are familiar or everyday terms, apart from dialect expressions, like "sat us down", "nipperkin" (a small measure of drink) or "traps" (possessions), and the abbreviation "'list" for "enlist" (join up, become a soldier in the army).
The poem is written in a simple metre and a tight ABAB rhyme scheme. Most of the lines are end stopped - but Hardy suggests the soldier's doubt at one point by using "although" to run on to the next line.
The structure of the poem is clever - the speaker ends up with the same comment he makes at the start: that war makes people fight when their natural behaviour would be to share a drink together.
Responding to the poem:
Does Hardy share the views of the speaker in the poem? Why does the soldier say that war is "quaint and curious"? Does Hardy want the reader to agree with this view?
How different and how similar are the two men in the poem? What do they have in common?
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