EL P2 Literary Analysis Revision

Sec 4 Comprehension Revision Package Literary Device, Tone and Attitude Exercise 1: Monfort Sec Prelim 2015 Context: The abstract is taken from a text describing the difficulties faced by the famers in producing the biggest gooseberry for a local competition As July slowly ripens into August, a strange fever grips the necklace of villages which adorns the valley of the Esk. Curious arrangements of canvas and wire mesh, some hung with tiny bells, spring up in certain gardens. A great deal of furtive prodding around in the soil will be noticed. A sudden summer shower of rain will bring men racing from their cottages, carrying umbrellas, which they will hang over the bushes. A small squadron of wasps will create near panic. When a bush produces a promising youngster, the post-natal care it receives has to be seen to be believed. Sheets of polythene are stretched out to reflect more heat and tin lids full of water are balanced beneath the lusty young globe to encourage the absorption of more moisture. 1a. the writer describes the houses in the area as a ‘necklace of villages which adorns the valley of the Esk’ (lines 1-2). Why do you think the writer chooses to describe the villages as a ‘necklace’? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………………… 1b. When a bush produces a promising youngster, the post-natal care it receives has to be seen to be believed’ (lines 28-29). Suggest a reason why the writer describes the gooseberry bush as a ‘promising youngster’. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………………… 1c. Why is the expression ‘post-natal’ unusual and effective? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………..…………………………………………………………………………………

Exercise 2: Monfort Sec Prelim 2015 But perhaps the most majestic thing about the insects known romantically as scarabs and more descriptively as dung beetles is what they are willing and even delighted to do for a living. Dung beetles venture where many beasts refuse to tread; they descend on the waste matter of their fellow animals and swiftly bury it underground, where it then serves as a rich and leisurely meal for themselves or their off- spring. 2. The dung beetles were described as insects which ‘venture where many beasts refuse to tread’. What can you infer about the writer’s feeling towards them? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………………… Exercise 3: Zhonghua Sec School MYCT 2015 Pain at last forced itself upon his attention: a dull ache, with a slow warm trickle that ran down his face. Mechanically he put his hand up to his cheek, scarcely realising that he was injured. To his horror his finger went through and touched his teeth. In the river the mare's hoof had cut open his face as a knife slits an orange. 3a. What does the simile ‘as a knife slits an orange’ tell you about the way the mare’s hoof cut his face? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………………… Lynn had swum across the Wangong with a horse many a time, but never a Wangong such as this! He had crossed it before when it had been in flood, but on a good horse, and himself strong and fit. Now he was almost at breaking-point from weariness, and also he was only too conscious of the limitations of the mare. He thought again of how she had behaved back in the trees, swerving aside at everything and nothing, and his heart failed him for a moment. But what could he do? Things would be no better tomorrow; the river would not be normal again for a week. And on the other side was home, where they were waiting anxiously for news of him. 3b. What does the phrase ‘swerving aside at everything and nothing’ tell you about the horse’s state of mind? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………..…………………………………………………………………………………

Exercise 4: Commonwealth Sec School Prelim 2015 Then the storm came. When it hit, it had the impact of a runaway truck. It made walls balloon and totter, then threw the bricks about like confetti. It lifted roofs off schools, ripped power lines away from their pylons and let them blow free, lighting the night with flashes of St Elmo’s Fire. Along the edge of the sea, it rained boats and caravans; sixty miles inland, the wind pasted windows with a grey rime of salt from the Atlantic. No one dared to go outside. You couldn’t open the door against that wind, and who in his right mind would want to face the skirl of tiles, dustbins, garden furniture and plant pots? So people sat tight. Soon after dawn, the storm quit London, leaving a high wind blowing under a sky of bad milk. Light-headed from lack of sleep, people stared through their salt-caked windows to see cars crushed by trees and craters of muddy water in the pavements where the trees had been. Broken bricks. Bits of picket fencing. Garden shrubs. Upended tricycles. Glass, tarpaper, fish bones, cardboard boxes strewn all over. During what the radio news now called The Hurricane, everyone’s rubbish had mated with everyone else’s, and white house fronts were curiously decorated with dribbles of gravy, tomato ketchup and raspberry yogurt. 4a. ‘When it hit, it had the impact of a runaway truck. It made walls balloon and totter, then threw the bricks about like confetti’ (lines 12 and 13). What two ideas does it suggest about the wind? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………………… 4b. The writer says that after the storm ended in paragraph 5, ‘everyone’s rubbish had mated with everyone else’s, and white house fronts were curiously decorated with dribbles of gravy, tomato ketchup and raspberry yogurt’ (lines 30 - 32). i) With reference to the underlined words, what tone is the author trying to achieve? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………………… ii) What could his intention be for doing so? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………………… Exercise 5: Commonwealth Sec School Prelim 2015 (adapted) The sky had lifted. A paltry ration of diffused sunlight – the first for many days – lit the scene of an anarchic picnic. Children in coloured jackets swarmed in the branches of the humbled trees. Muddy dogs, tongues lolling, scrambled out of the craters. Whoever you were, the wrecked landscape had something in it for you personally. For some people, it was simply an enjoyable reminder of their grace – they’d got away with it; they were survivors. They strode across the skyline of the park like generals on a battlefield after a famous victory. Others stood still, gazing, hands in pockets. Exiles, from Beirut, Kampala, Prague, Budapest, felt a proud glow of kinship with the uprooted trees. Saturday fathers, borrowing children from their one-time wives, dwelled, with a pleasure

they couldn’t explain to themselves, on the ragged pits in the earth, the torn turf, the canopies of exposed roots; while their children saw the park as a territory at last made fit for all-out war, and zapped their fathers with death-ray guns from behind safe jungle cover. Everyone was irrationally happier that Saturday, even the people who’d lost their roofs, who saw themselves as heroes of the hurricane and came to the park to enjoy disaster on a scale grand enough to match their own. Isn’t it sad? They said, their voices drowned by shrilling gulls circling the trees that still survived. 5a. Explain the use of the metaphor ‘a paltry ration’ to describe the sunlight. ……………