Welcome to English Literature A-Level

What did you most enjoy about English lit GCSE? Be honest!

What happens in English Lit?

• Exams at the end of Y12 and Y13
• Studying a range of texts
• All exams, no coursework
• An excellent foundation for other subjects

A tale of two parts

The Kite Runner

Analysing 'Chainsaw vs the Pampas Grass'

The story of mankind is the story of man vs nature.

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

The Chainsaw vs the Pampas Grass

It seemed an unlikely match. All winter unplugged,
grinding its teeth in a plastic sleeve, the chainsaw swung
nose-down from a hook in the darkroom
under the hatch in the floor. When offered the can
it knocked back a quarter-pint of engine oil
and juices ran from its joints and threads,
oozed across the guide-bar and the maker’s name,
into the dry links.

From the summerhouse, still holding one last gulp
of last year’s heat behind its double doors, and hung
with the weightless wreckage of wasps and flies,
moth-balled in spider’s wool…
from there, I trailed the day-glo orange power-line
the length of the lawn and the garden path,
fed it out like powder from a keg, then walked
back to the socket and flicked the switch, then walked again
and coupled the saw to the flex – clipped them together.
Then dropped the safety catch and gunned the trigger.

No gearing up or getting to speeds, just an instant rage,
the rush of metal lashing out at air, connected to the main.
The chainsaw with its perfect disregard, its mood
to tangle with cloth, or jewellery, or hair.
The chainsaw with its bloody desire, its sweet tooth
for the flesh of the face and the bones underneath,
its grand plan to kick back against nail or knot
and rear up into the brain.

I let it flare, lifted it into the sun
and felt the hundred beats per second drumming in its heart,
and felt the drive-wheel gargle in its throat.
The pampas grass with its ludicrous feathers
and plumes. The pampas grass, taking the warmth and light
from cuttings and bulbs, sunning itself,
stealing the show with its footstools, cushions and tufts
and its twelve-foot spears.

This was the sledgehammer taken to crack the nut.
Probably all that was needed here was a good pull or shove
or a pitchfork to lever it out at its base.
Overkill. I touched the blur of the blade
against the near-most tip of a reed – it didn’t exist.
I dabbed at a stalk that swooned, docked a couple of heads,
dismissed the top third of its canes with a sideways sweep
at shoulder height – this was a game.
I lifted the fringe of undergrowth, carved at the trunk –
plant-juice spat from the pipes and tubes
and dust flew out as I ripped into pockets of dark, secret
warmth.

To clear a space to work
I raked whatever was severed or felled or torn
towards the dead zone under the outhouse wall, to be fired.
Then cut and raked, cut and raked, till what was left
was a flat stump the size of a manhole cover or barrel lid
that wouldn’t be dug with a spade or prized from the earth.
Wanting to finish things off I took up the saw
and drove it vertically downwards into the upper roots,
but the blade became choked with soil or fouled with weeds,
or what was sliced or split somehow closed and mended
behind, like cutting at water or air with a knife.

I poured barbecue fluid into the patch
and threw in a match – it flamed for a minute, smoked for a minute more, and went out.
I left it at that.
In the weeks that came new shoots like asparagus tips
sprang up from its nest and by June
it was riding high in its saddle, wearing a new crown.
Corn in Egypt. I looked on
from the upstairs window like the midday moon.
_
Back below stairs on its hook, the chainsaw seethed.
I left it a year, to work back through its man-made dreams,
to try to forget.
The seamless urge to persist was as far as it got.

The Natural Reading

Select 5 quotations that would be useful for a question on the topic of 'Man Vs Nature'

are there any structural features that support this reading?

Making interpretations

LO: To consider how to develop our personal interpretations of the texts

Write another alternative explanation

Assessment criteria

Articulate informed, personal and creative responses to texts

Seeing through critical lenses

• 'Filters' on cameras change the way we see a place
• Just like using 'filters' to change the way a picture appears, we can use different critical theories to shape the way we view a text
• Different things can stand out, and other aspects fade into the background

Our first theory: The Freudian Mind

The Freudian Mind

1. ID - our base, animal instincts and desires
2. EGO - Our 'self', balancing the competing id/superego
3. SUPEREGO - our socialised morality

Applying the Freudian Lens

Unnatural Nature

“Creation's final law:
Nature [is] red in tooth and claw”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson - 'In Memoriam A.H.H.'

“A knowledge, a dim earnest, of the calm
That Nature breathes among the hills and groves.”

William Wordsworth - The Prelude

Reading The Gun

As we read, we'll use the reflection grid to keep track of our ideas

The Gun

Bringing a gun into a house
changes it.

You lay it on the kitchen table,
stretched out like something dead
itself: the grainy polished wood stock
jutting over the edge,
the long metal barrel
casting a grey shadow
on the green-checked cloth.

At first it’s just practice: perforating tins
dangling on orange string
from trees in the garden.
Then a rabbit shot
clean through the head.

Soon the fridge fills with creatures that have run and flown.
Your hands reek of gun oil.
And entrails. You trample
fur and feathers. There’s a spring
in your step; your eyes gleam
like when sex was fresh.
A gun brings a house alive.
I join in the cooking: jointing
and slicing, stirring and tasting –
excited as if the King of Death
had arrived to feast, stalking
out of winters woods,
his black mouth
sprouting golden crocuses.

What examiners want

The assessment criteria

A real question

Compare the ways in which poets explore violence in ‘The Gun’ by Vicki Feaver and one other poem of your choice from Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry 2002–2011.
In your answer, you should consider the following:

• the poets’ development of themes
• the poets’ use of language and imagery
• the use of other poetic techniques.

[25 Marks]
June 2022

Brainstorming ideas

 ________
|VIOLENCE|
----------

Zooming in on Rhythm and Metre

Copy down these sentences

Jack and Jill went up the hill

I went across the road and bought a pair of shoes

Whenever we speak, we have a rhythm, stressing some syllables and unstressing others.

It’s useful to learn how to record this:

• / is used to indicate a stressed syllable
• x to indicate an unstressed syllable.

Pairs (or triplets) of syllables for units called ‘feet’. E.g.

Forgot --> = iamb (unstressed, then stressed)
Mountain --> trochee (stressed, then unstressed)

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.