Thinking

We did a little exercise on context, linking and imagery questions and on the whole this was well done. Splendid! If you’re still not sure, check the Language Skills book (see last week’s post).

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. (Why do you think she doesn't?)

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 (on what occasion 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 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.

Then we looked at various types of Close Reading questions from a handout which we’ll look further at next week.

Getting it right

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?

Ballet show and the Butte de Warlencourt

Photo by Megyarsh

Yesterday we looked at chapters 5 and 6 of “A Patchwork Planet” and noticed in chapter 5 the various signs given by Anne Tyler that Sophia has designs on Barnaby. Please add a comment quoting one of these signs – find something to say that’s different from any previous comment.

We also find out a couple of things about how Barnaby looks – what?

We see that Barnaby seems genuinely to want to pay back his aunt. Consider what theme(s) this illustrates.

In chapter 6, Barnaby accompanies his mother to Opal’s ballet show and shows some signs of regressing to his usual self. Can you spot one? – please comment. We also learn a bit about the end of his marriage to Natalie. The next day, he goes to the station to meet Sophia off the train. Why?

Read this interview with Anne Tyler in which she’s talking about “A Patchwork Planet”.

http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=313

Interestingly – well, I think it’s interesting – she says she doesn’t think about themes when writing a novel. She just tries to tell a story. But it’s clear that because she makes it all hang together, there are themes, and, usefully for you, this gives you something to write about.

We then read and discussed the old Close Reading about the Butte de Warlencourt. Read the background to this here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butte_de_Warlencourt

In reading this passage, we learned about the use of the transferred epithet (epithet = description) – transferring a description from one thing to another, eg

I lay on my sleepless pillow.
He went up to his lonely room.

In the passage we have “outraged flesh” – suggesting that even the soldiers’ dead and dismembered bodies were horrified (outraged) at the terrible things (outrages) that had happened to them.

What do the words below mean? Pick one and give me the meaning in a comment.

Radical

Rhetoric

Chivalry

Cheval

Conditioned

Propaganda

Homework for Wednesday 29 October.

Answer blog questions and say anything else that occurs to you (I won’t put the comments up on the board).

And do the following questions from the “Butte”:

Section 1
Ai

Section 2
A, b, c, di and dii

Section 4
A, b, c.

Happy holiday!