Reading the question

Reading the Question

In the lesson we took a look at English Literature Unit 3 June 2010’s exam paper, and focused on what the question is asking you do - as well as identify the key assessment objective (AO2, AO3 AND AO4).

We looked at a section A question for The Pardoners Tale;

• “In spite of the fact that both the Pardoner himself and the Tale are sinister, they are also comic.” Consider The Pardoner’s Tale in the light of this comment.

The AO2 focuses on the terms; "sinister" and "comic". Basically these two terms are the hint for what kind of A02 analysis you should be doing.

The phrase "Consider" and “In spite” focuses on AO3 in the sense that when you see these style of words you should recognise that it’s for you to start an argument. The “In spite” part hints that there are both sinister and comic elements in the Pardoner and Tale. The “consider” or another synonym of it suggests other interpretations of the comment.

Finally the A04 is a bit tricky, but from looking at past exam papers we deduced that it is usually a term that could have different meanings across a time period. For example the terms “comic” and “sinister” have a different meaning to Chaucer’s contemporary audience, compared to a post modern. For example sinister for Chaucer revolved around God, sin, Death and Afterlife; in fact all of these notions link to religion – thus hence we can deduce that “sinister” was a lot to do with religion. However, Carter who is surrounded by a post modern society could value sinister in criminals. Hence the element of “sinister” varies in different time periods.

This analysis is common to every question. You can do the same for all of them, so I recommend analysing two each for section A, and two for section B. I realise this blog is short, but this activity will help you be more specific when answering questions. The only way to be specific and detailed when answering questions is by first understanding what the question is exactly asking you to do. Eventually understanding what the question is asking us will become nature, with lots of practise.

Homely Gothic
We discussed how the Gothic in the Victorian time represented a longing for a more unified and spiritual way of life. The Gothic achieved this by the use of nostalgic ghost (for those drama monkeys that missed the lesson nostalgic means having a feeling of reminisce about something you once had. Like a car you once loved but then you get a new car but there is a feeling of something missing, maybe the clutch is not as good as the old one).
We read an article called ‘Homely Gothic’ this article discussed how in the industrial revolution there came about a movement to a more factual way of life where everything would happen for a reason. This meant that people started to find the answers to questions that religion could not answer in science. This time was close to the time of the book by Darwin ‘The Origin of Species’ which was published in 1859 this was the time when the phrase ‘death of religion arose’ as people where given the assurance that science provided. But this lead to a sense of disunity among the people that where left torn between the blind belief in religion or a factual scientific way of life. But people started to feel a certain void that once was filled by the believe in the supernatural and the unknown. The Gothic provided this by exploring feeling that there are things which are greater than us and don’t always happen in a result to a cause but because they just do. We then said how the Gothic was seen as an escape from this boring way of living where everything was black and white; this meant the Gothic took people on excursions beyond the everyday world.
We then read the bit on ‘Sins of The Father’ which dealt with how in the time of the Victorian society the home was seen as the last place where one could refuge from a sense of loss of unity. Bronte uses this as her setting where she shows the home is not as perfect as people thought it was, Bronte shows that instead of being a place where the heart is, she takes the view that it is the heart of where all pain and oppression begins. ‘Wuthering Heights’ goes against the idea of ‘The angel of the house’ where Catherine refuses to remain as this angelic creature but carries out escapades with Heathcliff.
We then had to do an essay thesis statement for the essay that was due on Monday. So if you haven’t done it yet and have been praying for the question; your prayers have been answered as hear it is:
How far do you agree ‘Wuthering Heights challenges social norms and is therefore a Gothic text?
We did a good example of how a good introduction and first paragraph should be like; it’s on learning recourses under Mr Sadgrove English.