CXC ENGLISH

Hello there! We hope you have been enjoying our discussion of the short stories on the 2018-2020 English B syllabus. Even if you are not writing the English B exam, you should read these stories because they will help you with your own writing—and they’re really good! Of course we have our regular set of exercises to help brush up your skills for English A. Read on, and enjoy your CXC English page! of belonging. The ice cream is a symbol for (it represents) these other desires. Sadly, Benjy never gets to enjoy happiness, security and love.

● The absence of punctuation in the final paragraph. Read the final paragraph of the story again, and you will discover that it goes on and on, breathlessly, without any punctuation. Your teacher would make you correct your work if you wrote like that!! But Senior does it on purpose to suggest how breathless Benjy is as his father hurries him across the field, how everything seems to have gone crazy around him, how out of control everything is. The series of ‘ands’ give a sense of a whirl of activity that has caught him up and spun him around, making him confused.

STORY WRITING

Sometimes you can build a good story from an incident in your own life. Here’s something that happened to me years ago. Read it, and see how it can be turned into a story.

Some time ago, before we had traffic lights in Georgetown, my car was stuck in the intersection at Camp Street and Brickdam. As I waited for the car ahead of me to move, a dray cart came rapidly from my right. The driver was unable to slow down in time, and the next thing I knew was that his horse was actually lying across the bonnet of my car. The poor animal was unhurt, but clearly terrified. And as for the driver, well he managed to convince himself that it was all my fault. He was clearly working out how much compensation he would demand when the car ahead of me moved off, and thankfully I was able to escape from a situation in which I had been an innocent victim. Of course, I had to pay the bill myself to straighten out the bonnet of the car!

There are the bones of the story—but instead of letting ME report it, why not let the HORSE become the narrator? Here we go!

Mike isn’t a bad fellow. Some horses I know have owners who are much more bad-tempered than he is. He’s pretty good about remembering my feed—and he’s quite generous with the molasses too. Once or twice he’s forgotten about giving me water on hot afternoons, and that’s the pits! When he does that I truly feel like biting him—hard. If he’s been drinking too much, he can be a bit heavy-handed with the whip, but I guess that’s life. Most of the time, though, he’s pretty content to let me go at my own sweet speed, and the two of us make a good team.

Pulling the cart in town can be nerve-wracking, though. One of the older horses told me there’s a law saying that we cart-horses shouldn’t be on the roads during rush hour traffic, but Mike and his buddies either don’t know about that law, or they don’t care. Rush hour or no, rain or shine, I have to get between those traces and pull that cart. We horses were chatting about reincarnation the other day down at the lumber yard, and I’ve decided that when I come back for another go around at life, I’m going to be a cart-man instead of being a horse! In fact, while I’m dreaming, why don’t I come back as a driver of one of those fancy cars? That’s the life for me!

If I were driving a car, I wouldn’t have had the fright that I had just the other day. Let me tell you about it. We were heading along Camp Street on our way home. Mike was vexed about something, and he gave me a couple of hot lashes across the rump. I tried to oblige, and speeded up, but I realized too late that there was a traffic jam ahead, and we were not going to make it through the intersection.

I tried desperately to slow down, but the weight of the cart kept pushing me forward, and the next thing I knew, there I was, splat!—All over the bonnet of some woman’s car. She was looking at me through the window, and I was looking right back at her! I don’t know who was more scared and surprised: her or me!

Mike got off the cart and helped me get back on my feet again. I was all atremble, and I could feel the sweat rolling off me. It was pretty embarrassing, I can tell you, for a strong old cart-horse like me to be in that predicament. I was glad enough when the traffic started to move, and the car got out of the way so that I could continue on down Camp Street, and hurry home.

Not Mike, though. He wasn’t glad. It was funny, I thought. The woman’s car had a big dent in it, and I had a few bruises, but nothing had happened to Mike, yet he was the one making all the fuss. All the way home he was cussing away up there on his seat. Still, it was a good experience. I notice now that Mike avoids the rush hour traffic, and for some reason he seems to be taking better care of me. So I guess it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. What do you say?

Over to you. Think of an incident in YOUR life. Now turn it into a short story (maybe using a different narrator as we did here). Remember to use this outline: ● Introduce the characters and the situation (How it all started) ● Show how things started to get complicated. ● Get to the climax (the main thing that happened) ● Briefly show how everything turned out in the end.

Re-read our story, and observe how the author has used this same outline. Now you are ready to write your own story. Have fun!