Peg that tent

I was going to do some poetry yesterday but attendance was rather small, so I didn’t, but be ready for some on the first day back – and also we’ll start “A View from the Bridge”, so do have this with you.

In this week’s class we thought about that literature essay (please do hand it in if you haven’t yet…) and I gave out an exemplar essay (written by me, so obviously I think it’s quite good).

The essay question was:

Choose a novel in which a central character’s experiences lead to a deeper understanding not only of others but also of himself or herself.

Discuss the ways in which the character is made to attain self-knowledge and a better understanding of other people.

So it means:

Show HOW (ie talk about the writer’s techniques) the writer shows us that …

Barnaby comes to understand himself more (which involves saying what he thought of himself at the beginning, when this changes and what he thinks of himself by the end…)

and how she shows us that…

Barnaby comes to understand others (eg Sophia, his mother, Martine – not necessarily all of these)

The best way to do it, in my opinion, is simply to start at the beginning of the novel and stop at the end – not telling the story apart from when necessary - though some minimal storytelling will be helpful - but picking out ONLY the bits about not understanding (himself/others), beginning to understand (himself/others ) and then understanding (himself/others).

And you need to remember all the time to keep SECTing or something along these lines, and especially to keep pinning the essay down to the question.

I said yesterday – and it’s an analogy that I find quite helpful – that you might like to think of your essay as a tent that keeps trying to fly away (this is when you waffle off the subject).

Read over what you write as you write it, 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.

(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.

If you weren’t at class, email me and I’ll send you the sample essay.

Do some revision after New Year but have a good holiday and I’ll see you on January 7.