Today we thought more about Close Reading and the absolutely standard questions that you really need to be able to get right. Please check out the “English Language Skills for Higher English” book: page 9 onwards for context questions, page 11 onwards for linking questions and page 36 onwards for imagery. You might as well get these frequently-occurring questions right and scoop up the marks that less-clued-up students get wrong. Believe me – most students waste marks by NOT doing these questions the SQA way.
In “A Patchwork Planet”, we mainly 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 It turns out that she has withdrawn her savings and put them in the flour bin to protect Barnaby.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”. We then looked at a bit of chapter 11, in which Opal’s birthday falls flat as far as Barnaby is concerned and he is left in the park, waiting for Sophia. He thinks about marriage and thinks that he should have stuck to Natalie, and, he thinks, she would have become “the right person” for him.
What do you think is the significance of this thought in the context of the story?
4 comments:
I think barnaby is relising no one is perfect we all have our faults and as cupples we tend to grew and change together.
I have read it, but am not entirely sure what the significance of the thought is....
A similar thing is happening to Barnaby and Sophia; he wasn't initially attracted to her, but as time went by he began to love her. She's becoming the right person for him, just as Natalie might have become had he stuck with her.
-Chris
i think barnaby is relising that he has changed and has become more grown up as he has discovered that not everything is simple, you've got to work at relationships to let them become the right relationship.
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