CXC ENGLISH

Hello there! For those of you writing English B, we are currently working on Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat. And as always we have several exercises to help hone your English A skills. Read on now, and enjoy your CXC page.

ENGLISH B: Breath, Eyes, Memory (Chapters 28-35) Revision: Part 1 of this novel shows us Sophie, our protagonist, as a 12-year-old in Haiti. At the end of Part 1, Haiti travels to New York to join her mother, Martine. Part 2 shows us her teenage struggles, her friendship with an AfricanAmerican musician, Joseph, and the ‘testing’ her mother subjects Sophie to determine if the girl is still a virgin. The ‘testing’ by her mother proves to be so invasive and distressing for her that she deliberately ruptures her own hymen, is thrown out of the home by Martine, and turns to Joseph to marry her.

In Part 3, Sophie travels back to Haiti with her baby daughter, Brigitte. Unlike many who wish to forget, Sophie needs to remember her homeland. Although Joseph is infinitely loving and patient, the physical and psychological trauma Sophie has endured has left her unable to enjoy intimacy in the marriage. In Haiti she witnesses the violence of the TonTon Macoutes and the desperation of many who want to leave the island. Atie, she discovers, is embittered by her life, and has turned to alcohol. Grandmother Ife and Aunt Atie reveal much to Sophie about the practice of ‘testing’ and about the second-class status accorded to women. In response to Martine’s anxious questions about Sophie’s whereabouts, Ife invites her to Haiti. She arrives, and there is a measure of reconciliation between Sophie and her mother. Sophie sees again the beauties of Haitian culture, but also the horrors of the Duvalier regime. It is time for Sophie and Martine to return to New York.

Part Four

(chapter by chapter)

28 Sophie and Brigitte stay at Martine’s place overnight. Joseph phones. Martine wants to feed Sophie well, but Sophie confesses that she suffers from bulimia. There is still some tension between the two, but both are striving for reconciliation. 29 Martine confides that she is pregnant, but that she is desperately worried: she has had both breasts removed for cancer, and fears she cannot handle the pregnancy nor having a baby to raise. The nightmares have returned, and she says it’s like being raped every night. She seems very disturbed mentally and talks of aborting the baby. 30 Sophie’s experience is similar: when Joseph makes love to her, she escapes by ‘doubling’—removing herself mentally from the immediate experience. When the love-making is over, she goes to the bathroom and ‘purges’ herself of all she has eaten. The ‘testing’ has so caused her to reject her own body that she cannot enjoy food and she cannot enjoy sexual intimacy. 31 In her sex phobia therapy group, Sophie encounters women from other lands and other cultures who have also been damaged. Practices like incest and female genital mutilation have left other women traumatized and unable to enjoy their bodies or their lives. Sophie determines that such trauma must never hap pen to Brigitte. 32 and 34 Sophie meets with her therapist: we recognize the seriousness of her psychological problems 33 The two couples—Martine and Marc, Sophie and Joseph—meet for an evening together. Afterwards, Martine confides to Sophie that she has decided to have an abortion because the baby has started talking to her in the voice of the rapist. 35 In great distress, Marc phones to let Sophie know that Martine is dead. Unable to endure the rapist’s voice taunting her any longer, Martine has plunged a knife into her belly seventeen times to try to kill the demon inside her. Marc and Sophie take Martine’s body to Haiti to be buried in the hill country. Sophie dresses her in a red dress—contrary to custom, but in keeping with what she feels Martine would wish. Grandma Ife comforts her: “the daughter is never fully a woman until her mother has passed on before her,” she says. Now at last, she says, Sophie will know how to answer the question, “Ou libéré? Are you free, my daughter?”

WRITING A SUMMARY

While the intelligence of ants is limited—for example, they have no proper language, cannot be said to reason (to think things out), and do not, except in one case, use tools—their mental powers should not be underrated. Experiments have shown that the can learn the correct route in simple mazes which have six blind alleys, and individual ants vary in their ability to do this and in the speed (or number of runs through the maze) with which they learn their lesson. Just as in the maze, so it is in the world of work: some individuals learn to do jobs better and more quickly than other ants in the nest.

These quicker learners are the primitive leaders of the community, the “excitement centres”. They are called “excitement centres” because, although they determine what activities are carried out and when, they do not do so by sitting down and thinking about it and then giving directions to the other ants, but they excite the ants into doing the different jobs by starting to do them themselves. The excitement centre ants are in effect the first individuals in each colony to respond to the stimulus of jobs needing to be done. The settling down to work of the twenty or thirty excitement centre ants soon arouses in the other ants feelings of their own hunger and need to go out foraging, or of their own instincts to repair a broken part of the nest or to build new chambers to provide accommodation for a rapidly expanding brood.

Thanks to this leadership, the seemingly complex round of jobs of the ant community is fairly economically and successfully achieved. Food-getting is the most important task. It is no light one to get in food enough for from 40,000 to half-amillion individuals each day. A colony of 40,000 carnivorous ants will eat a quart of insect food (equivalent to over 20,000 insects) every day during the active summer months. Yet there are always several times more ants in the nest than there are out foraging. Inside the nest, the queens must be carefully tended and guarded, and the eggs they lay carried off to the appropriate chamber. The brood require constant attention, for the larvae (grubs) must be fed and unceasingly licked, so that their skins are kept moist, and the cocoons must be watched so that ants ready to hatch out can be helped to emerge. Few ants can escape from their cocoons or pupal skins unaided. The nest structure also requires continual care and must be kept scrupulously clean, properly drained and proof against enemy invasion. Then there are the aphid cows (greenflies, blackflies and whiteflies), both inside and outside the nest, to be milked, or other guests to be tended or kept from prowling too near the queens or brood. For in each ants nest there are many such insect guests, especially of the beetle kind. Some five thousand species of insects and spiders are found only in the nests of ants, living there permanently as either welcome or tolerated lodgers.

Look closely at the passage on ANTS. Identify the TOPIC SENTENCE in each of the three paragraphs.

Check to see if the rest of each paragraph actually DEVELOPS the point made in its topic sentence. Now you are ready to summarize the passage given above. Remember these rules for writing a summary:

● Identify the topic sentences to help you find the general theme. ● Don’t copy from the passage. Instead, use your own words and phrases. ● Leave out details, illustrations and examples. ● Don’t repeat points. ● Don’t add information or comment on the passage. ● Write your summary in fluent, grammatical English. ● Keep to the word limit.

Now write a summary of the passage in 95-110 words.

When you have finished, compare your summary with the one we have given at the bottom of the page. Did you put in the main ideas? Did you leave out any thing important? Ask your teacher to check your work and show you how you could improve.

LET’S AGREE

Making the verb agree with the subject is not always easy. Here are some teasers to set you thinking!

1

The club’s president, along with several senior members, was/were at the air port to welcome their counterparts from Barbados. Colin is one of the technicians who was/were dissatisfied with the proposals made for upgrading the laboratory facilities. Cherille is the only member of the group of sixth-form students who objects/object to making Caribbean Studies compulsory. The local doctor, who consulted with nurses and pharmacists in the three villages, recognizes/recognize that a health education programme is needed. This newspaper has made several reports about the increasing number of violent crimes that threatens/threaten our peace of mind. Residents in the area report that the number of stray animals has/have increased, as too, has/have the incidence of rabies. The deaf is/are to benefit from this new programme, but the rich in the society has/have to pitch in to keep the programme running. As soon as the alarm went off, the police was/were called in, and the army was/were put on alert. The committee is/are unable to agree among themselves on one of the details of the case. 10 Quite a number of corrections needs/need to be made in your letter to the

editor before you send it off. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

ANSWERS

Summarizing Ants have limited intelligence, but research has shown that they are surprisingly clever, and are capable of learning. Some learn more quickly than others, and become the natural leaders. The quick learners (called “excitement centres”) prompt the others to perform the various activities that are necessary in the hive. Because of their leadership, the many chores of the colony are carried out efficiently. These chores include the gathering of food, tending and guarding the queen, caring for the eggs and developing larvae, assisting the hatching of new ants, repairing the nest, keeping it clean and guarding it from invasion.

Let’s Agree 1 The president WAS (“along with” does not affect the verb. Compare: The president AND several members WERE…) 2 Technicians who WERE, 3 only member who OBJECTS, 4 local doctor RECOGNIZES, 5 crimes that THREATEN. 6 the number HAS increased; the incidence HAS increased. 7 The deaf ARE; the rich HAVE. 8 The police WERE; the army WAS. 9 The committee ARE (because “themselves” shows that we are thinking of the committee as a PLURAL entity. 10 Corrections NEED to be made.