CXC ENGLISH
Hello there! Today will be our final session on the English B short stories. As always, we have exercises to limber up your English A muscles.
Your next CXC English page will come out on January 7. Do enjoy your holidays.
Read on now, and enjoy your CXC page.
English B—SHORT STORIES
Narrative techniques. Of course, any good story will have a plot, suspense, a climax, interesting/believable characters, and will contain food for thought for the reader.
Here are some additional narrative techniques that you need to think about in relation to the stories you are studying:
● ● ● ●
Choice of narrator Choice of language Landscape/setting Use of letters (epistolary form)
Narrators. For Emma, Man of the House, The Day the World, Two Grandmothers, and Mom Luby, the author has chosen to use a child narrator, and for To Da-Duh, a grown woman relates her childhood visit to Barbados. These are all first person narratives, but, importantly, they all are told from a child’s point of view.
What effect does the child narrator have on the reader? We sense that Dory does not quite understand what is going on around her, so we feel sorry for her. We relate to Sullivan’s anxiety for his mother, his fear of the grown-ups he encounters, his delight that he can miss school, his imaginative games, his simple religious faith, his need to show off to the girl, the intensity of his despair when he comes home empty-handed, and his utter relief to find his mother well again. We see Mom Luby, the visit to the Welfare Office, and Miss Rushmore from Elijah’s point of view, so we feel his love for Mom Luby and his sense of belonging in her home, while we also feel his anxiety in the Welfare Office, and his feeling of rejection and distancing from Miss Rushmore; we sense his pride in the many good deeds Mom Luby is known for in the community.
Other stories are told by ‘third-person narrators’, and we get the impression of an onlooker telling us what they have seen. Notice that even these ‘objective’ reporters tend to get INSIDE the mind and feelings of one particular character, and make us relate more sympathetically to that individual.
Language You will notice the Irish brogue used by Sullivan, the Jamaican Creole used by Benjy’s sister and neighbours, the Barbadian dialect used by DaDuh, and the African-American lilt used by Berry. This use of language increases the realism, and sometimes adds humour. An important example of how language can be used creatively is in Two Grandmothers, where the grammar language in the girl’s letters to her mother improves and becomes more sophisticated as she grows.
Notice the setting/landscape for each story, since it creates a mood and/or helps us to better understand the action. Notice how Sullivan responds to the atmosphere in the public house, in the church, at the Dispensary and out in the open countryside. Notice how details of his home life let us know how poor his mother is. Landscape is important in The Day: the girl’s fear of the noise the plane makes is only possible because she lives in a rural area before planes were a common phenomenon. The setting in Blackout—the absence of light, the shadows, mention of roaming hooligans—prepares us for the tension in the meeting between the man and woman, but also symbolically suggests their (dark/light) racial difference.
Letters Some stories/novels are told entirely through letters: we call this the ‘epistolary’ style. It’s a clever way of showing the reader exactly what is in the narrator’s mind. Two Grandmothers uses this technique: letters from the girl to her mother as she relates her changing attitude to the two grandmothers she is sent to spend time with.
FAULTY COMPARISONS
It is not possible to compare, let’s say, a bicycle with a mango, or tiredness with a pencil. In order to compare, you need items that similar in some way: a mango and a peach, a tricycle and a scooter, tiredness and laziness. In grammar, too, you need to compare similar things. Look at this incorrect sentence:
A Unlike his brother, his room was very untidy. It looks as if the speaker is comparing “his brother” with “his room”. How do we correct that sentence? We ensure that the items on either side of that comma are indeed the items we wish to compare. Look at this corrected version:
B Unlike his brother, Kevin had an untidy room (“his brother” is now correctly being compared with “Kevin”).
Using sentence B to guide you, correct the following sentences: 1. Like cherries, there is lots of vitamin C in oranges. 2. Unlike Martin Carter, Derek Walcott’s poems are easy to
understand. 3. Like New Amsterdam, wooden buildings outnumber concrete ones
in Rose Hall. 4. Unlike Kaieteur Falls, you can swim and play in the falls at
Orinduik. 5. Like Guyanese cook-up, the Trinidadians have a dish called pilau
that has peas and meat cooked in the rice. 6. Unlike the blue waters around the Caribbean islands, the rivers in
Guyana deposit silt, making the coastal water dirty brown.
PARTICIPIAL PHRASES
Look at this sentence. The part in italics is called a participial phrase. Can you identify the participle?
After bathing the dog, Jason was free to go out and play. (Who did the bathing? Jason, of course.)
The rule here is that the person who did the action of the participle must be the subject of the main clause. It would be wrong to write this: After bathing the dog, the rest of the afternoon was free for Jason to play. (Why is this wrong? Because it wasn’t “the rest of the afternoon” that did the “bathing”.) How would you correct these two sentences? ● Watching the match on tv, it occurred to Daniel that the batsman
was not doing his best. ● Catching the ball as he fell, the joyful shouts of the crowd reached
the young cricketer.
ANSWERS Faulty Comparisons 1 Like cherries, oranges contain…, 2 Unlike Martin Carter’s poems, those by Derek Walcott…, 3 Like New Amsterdam, Rose Hall has more wooden…, 4 Unlike Kaieteur Falls, Orinduik falls are safe for you to swim, 5 Like Guyanese cook-up, Trinidadian pilau has peas…, 6 Unlike the blue waters around the Caribbean islands, Guyana’s dirty brown coastal water is full of silt deposited by the rivers.
Participial Phrases ● Watching the match on tv, Daniel sensed that the batsman was not doing his best. ● Catching the ball as he fell, the young cricketer heard the joyful shouts of the crowd.