CSEC ENGLISH

We are aware that your lives have been very much turned upside-down by events that you have no control over. We want to encourage you, though, to make every effort to use your time wisely. Eventually the coronavirus will go on its way; soon, we hope, peace and order will return to Guyana.

Meanwhile, keep your eyes on the goal. You have been studying for your CSEC exams, so don’t stop! Now that you are unable to go to school, you can get out your books and re-read the material you know you should be familiar with. With exams perhaps postponed, you will have extra time to get prepared, and a better chance of gaining good grades!

Read on now, and enjoy your

CSEC English

page.

ENGLISH B—Writing about literary devices

Over the past weeks, we have given you examples of how to discuss the EFFECTIVENESS of allusion and metaphor. Today we’ll look at the effective use of SIMILE. A simile, remember, is a comparison of two things where the words LIKE or AS are used.

Reread the poem Orchids, by Hazel Simmons-McDonald. You will see that the speaker in the poem tells us how she is packing up her things to move house when she comes across a spray of orchids someone gave her from a bouquet. She is about to throw them out, but then hesitates. Although the orchids “have no fragrance”, she notices that the “purple petals draw you to look at the purple heart”. She is not excited about the orchids, and indeed has tried to kill them by overwatering them or by “starving” them, but somehow they are “stubborn” and refuse to die. She finally decides to pluck the blossoms and “press them between pages of memory”.

Look closely, and you’ll see that in line 14, the speaker says her orchids are “like polished poems” and at the end of the poem she speaks of their “peculiar poetry”. That simile comparing orchids and poems makes the reader think about their similarities.

Quite possibly, when your English B teacher introduces you to new poems, you feel like the speaker in the poem felt about the orchids: you just want to throw them out with the rubbish! But then maybe, as you discussed a poem, you discovered something about it that drew you “to look at the purple heart”—to take a closer look. And then, just as the speaker noticed how “the bud at the stalk’s tip unfurled”, maybe you found that the poem was opening up a wee bit, and offering you its meaning. The speaker decides to put her orchid blossom “between the pages of memory” and maybe you now like your poem enough to learn it by heart. As it lies there in your mind, you find that you understand it better: it becomes transparent for you.

In fact, although the poem is called “Orchids” it was really talking about poems all the time!! The simile is effective because quite often a poem does not appeal to the reader at first, but only reveals its beauty gradually—just as the orchid slowly unfurls its tip. Sometimes it has to be stored in the “pages of memory” for a while so that it can be appreciated and understood. The simile makes the reader realize that poems are, like orchids, rare and precious—to be treasured and anthologized just as flowers are lovingly arranged in a “bouquet” to set off their beauty to perfection. This last section in italics is our model paragraph for this week, showing the effectiveness of the simile used in the poem Orchids.

PARALLELISM

Sometimes in a sentence, two or three items all depend on the same introduction:

She complained about

● the bad service

● the rude waiters and ● the cold food

When we do this, all three items must be grammatically similar. In this example each item has an adjective and a noun.

Sometimes, instead of adjective and noun, we may use infinitives:

Dawn was hoping

● to get a job

● to save up enough to travel to Spain and

● to spend six weeks immersing herself in the Spanish language

Sometimes the parallel items are all gerunds:

Jamal was passionate about

● owning a motor-cycle

● fixing car engines and

● improving the tree-house he had built.

The important thing is to ensure that all items depending on that introductory part of the sentence are grammatically parallel as in these examples. Following the rule you have just learnt, spot the item in these sentences that is not parallel with the others, and correct it.

1.

Marva enjoys roller-blading, watching movies, drawing cartoons and she plays the piano too.

Stephen found it difficult to sit still, to listen attentively, note-taking, and to get his assignments finished on time.

She had just enough money to have her hair done, to buy some nail polish, to invest in a lottery ticket and her bus fare home.

Saving the money is hard enough, but to spend it wisely is some thing else.

On Saturday evenings, Sam and I like walking on the sea wall, sipping coconut water that we buy from a vendor, meeting our friends at the club and sometimes we dance until the wee hours of the morning.

To read good books is one way of developing your mind, and listening to good televised documentaries is another.

We watched her leave the airport, get into a taxi, ordering the taxi driver to drive fast and disappeared out of sight.

In our office the supervisor put in a request for some blinds, a new desk and to get a fan.

The headmaster asked the parents to construct bleachers on the playing field, to make costumes for the school presentation of Julius Caesar, and he wanted their assistance in supervising preparations for the school fair.

To hear the applause, to receive the fan mail, reading your name in the headlines—those are the rewards of fame.

Ron announced that as soon as he graduated, he planned on taking a trip to France, remodeling his boat and also to buy his mum a new car.

To speak your mind is easier than eating your words.