Sample P1 Commentary (Literature) : Chocolat

During your two years of English A studies, you should make a point of reading through as many, and as wide a range of, sample commentaries as possible. Not only read them, but discuss them critically, and analytically with your teacher or tutor so that you can advance in your own writing and thinking.  

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Sample Commentary (Literature HL)

Excerpt (from "We came on the wind of the carnival" to "This time it may even be true.")

This extract, the opening of the novel Chocolat by Joanne Harris, tells how a mother and her young daughter, Anouk, arrive at a small rural town in France with a possibility that they might settle there.

In the town, Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, a carnival is taking place when the two arrive and it is interesting to see how some of the participants are described: “Rapunzel in a woollen wig, a mermaid with a Cellophane tail, a gingerbread house all icing and gilded cardboard ...” These descriptions are a mixture of the fantasy and the ordinary, even the carnival float is merely “A wooden cart, hastily decorated with gilt and crêpe”. They suggest a strong degree of transparency – perhaps a symbolic indication of what is to come further in the novel. Indeed, the carnival itself appears to be a weak attempt to impress when compared, by Anouk's mother, with other carnivals she and her daughter have seen: “a procession of two hundred and fifty of the decorated chars in Paris, a hundred and eighty in New York, two dozen marching bands in Vienna, clowns on stilts … drum majorettes with batons spinning and sparkling”.

 The small town itself is described in a less than favourable light. Some of the descriptions used, such as “a blip on the fast road ...”, “Blink once and it's gone”, rather than implying a quaint rural village appear to emphasize its insignificance. There is also the suggestion of something secretive and sinister about the place. For example, the “main street” is described as a “double row of dun-coloured houses leaning secretively together” and this is surrounded by “Farms scattered across the watchful land”. These descriptions are not only effective in portraying an isolated, tight-knit community but they also arouse a degree of curiosity in the reader as to why they might be considering settling there.

There is obviously a strong religious presence within the community, although from the way both the church and the priest are described, this appears to be a restricting, dominating force in the town. For instance, the church is described as being “aggressively whitewashed” and the priest himself a “black figure” who could be mistaken for a character from the procession, “the Plague Doctor”, appears to be not only a spoilsport but a dominant figure as he insists on making the playing children clean up carnival debris by just “a gesture”. Later in the piece the priest is described in greater detail, in a way that reinforces the idea that he is a dominant but unpleasant figure, with a “rigid stance”, “pale eyes”, and his “high cheekbones” suggest a degree of superciliousness, especially with his “fingers resting on the silver cross which hangs from his neck”. In addition, his look is described as “measuring”, which implies that he is somewhat judgemental in an unchristian way. 

The adult residents are also described in an unfavourable manner, which contrasts markedly with the descriptions of the children of the village. For instance, the adults are described as being somewhat insignificant: “They look much like all others we have known” and are “a little drab”, and the colours used to describe their clothing and hair project “dull” images: “brown, black or grey”. Their faces are described in an unfavourable manner, which contrasts markedly with the descriptions of the children of the village. For instance, the adults are described as being somewhat insignificant: “They look much like all others we have known” and are “a little drab”, and the colours used to describe their clothing and hair project “dull” images: “brown, black or grey”. Their faces are described as being “lined like last summer's apples”, which gives a wizened impression and suggests a sense of lifelessness which is also emphasized by their eyes being “pushed into wrinkled flesh like marbles into old dough”. The descriptions of the children, on the other hand, contain life and vivid colour: “A few children, flying colours of red and lime-green and yellow”. Indeed, they “seem like a different race” and they appear to inject a degree of energy in a town where even the dog is described as “sad”.

The residents seem to be quite insular and suspicious of “outsiders”, and although the mother in the story tells us that “No one looks at us” she gets the impression that “We are a curiosity to them”. This seems not to be surprising considering how the mother's appearance contrasts with that of the villagers, “her long silk scarf fluttering at her throat ...” and with her “exotic” clothes. However, it is interesting to see that the daughter's appearance, although she too wears “exotic” clothes, is as colourful as the other children in the village. Perhaps this is an indication that she will be accepted more easily than her mother. Indeed, the daughter appears to like the place: “I like it, I like it here. Are we staying?”

There is an indication that the unwelcoming fee of the place might alter later in the novel, in the line “Vines looking blighted and dead … but awaiting triumphant resurrection by March”. This appears to be supported by the sense of magic induced into the writing in the opening line “We came on the wind of the carnival”, the phrase being reminiscent of “the winds of change”. Indeed, it would appear that magic is needed if the rural town with its “strips of earth enclosed and regimented according to the strict apartheid of country farming” is to become anything else but “drab”.

Harris uses language to great effect in this piece. The many sensory inclusions, such as “hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles”, helps us to share the carnival experience, and the simile used to describe the confetti falling is particularly effective here: “like an idiot antidote to winter”, especially considering the weak attempts made to dress up for the carnival. She also uses and abundance of adjectives in her similes, which add a richness to the narrative. For instance, she describes her daughter's eyes as being “the blue-green of the Earth seen from a great height, shining”. Harris also includes a degree of ambiguity which succeeds in arousing curiosity. For example, at the beginning of this piece, the line “but at six the world retains a special lustre” seems a little out of place and its meaning is unclear. A little later, the line “At six it is possible to perceive subtleties which a year later are already out of reach” also appears to be unconnected, but the meaning will become clear later in the novel. In addition, some of the words are written in French and their meaning can be tentatively assumed. For example, the word “char” is unusual, but, through the reading of the passage, can be assumed to be a carnival float. This technique adds a degree of interest and colour to the extract.

The piece is definitely an effective opening. The ambiguity created and the curiosity raised by Harris makes the reader want to find out whether such a well-travelled pair who have visited Paris, New York, and Vienna will stay in such a “drab” town – indeed, why they have ever gone there in the first place.




Teacher comments:
 This is a perceptive commentary in which the student pays attention to
 • the vocabulary used by the writer
 • the effects of imagery in conveying the atmosphere of the town
 • the sensual descriptions
 • the contrast between the visitors and the people of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes
 • the narrative technique which makes one wonder what will happen next
 • the hints of conflict – perhaps between the narrator and the priest.

P1 English A: Literature (SL) "Ballad of Birmingham"

Learning to do commentary is like riding a bike—even if someone repeatedly tells you how to ride, you will never manage it until you climb on and try to do it for yourself. This means that the primary method of learning commentary is through practice, discussion and feedback.

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Write a guided literary analysis on the passage below. In your answer you must address both of the guiding questions provided.

                Ballad of Birmingham

(On the Bombing of a Church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)

“Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”

“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jail
Aren’t good for a little child.”

“But, mother, I won’t be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.”

“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children’s choir.”

She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.

The mother smiled to know her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.

For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.

She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?”

                        Dudley Randall, The Ballad of Birmingham (1969)

      - Describe the irony of the situation in the poem.

      - How effectively do you see the form of the poem as heightening its meaning?

English A Literature (HL) (Square)

I used to watch the storm coming up over the baker's house. Not that the house was lower than all those which were crowded around the little square, but it stood on the west side and its roof of round, sun-bleached tiles mirrored the sky.
       On the calmest of days, when the wind scarcely swayed the smoke from the oven chimney, I saw, slowly rising above the top of the bakery, big white clouds which only darkened much later and stayed for a long time fringed with light. The storm anticipated the evening, growing heavy with the sunset shadows, and drawing a deeper night over the world.
       The baker's house, with its bakery looking out on the little square, withstood the daylight, at first constant, then slowly fading, then the darkening of the clouds, and finally the first gusts of the storm, which beat the smoke onto the roof and into the square in a fiery swirl.
        Batches of bread followed one another, the glow of the oven flickering at intervals in the room where two men were working, their bare backs white and emancipated from the fire. When the oven was red hot, they poured the embers to deaden them into large metal drums, as tall as the child of ten that I was then, and they put them outside the bakery door to cool.
        Then the square, in the blazing heat that goes before a storm, seemed to catch fire. It was a sultry heat, a stifling inferno, a sightless summer added to summer. When I went up to the drums I heard the crackling of wood charcoal being formed. Later in the bakery, which the two bakers had just left to have a drink, rows of hot bread were crackling too, like a sunny field with the sound of grasshoppers.
       When I closed my eyes, the smell of bread was like the sighing of a fire-ravaged land which was flaking in its wait for the rain. You would have said that with the oncoming storm some of the darkness, still glowing from the empty oven, now appeared in the sky. A draught from the open door of the bakery sent wood ash scurrying to the middle of the square, a little slack grey trail, soon lost in the dust where a black hen was scratching.
       The first drops of rain sometimes fell before the great drums filled with embers were cold, and sputtered on their lids where I vainly tried to cook little cakes made of bread dough stolen from the bakery.
       I went back to our house on the other side of the square and stayed under the porch watching the rain come down and the clouds scudding by. Opposite the bakery was glowing for a new batch of bread. The smoke from the oven struggled against the wind and sometimes loosed a handful of sparks into the storm-blue evening.

      Pierre Gascar: The Little Square (transl. by Val Cohen)

English A: Lang&Lit (SL) - Campbell Soup

Write an analysis on the following text. Include comments on the significance of context, audience, purpose, and formal stylistic features.

- What elements of persuasion are being employed in this advertisement?

- To what effect are parallels between image and text and image being developed?

English A: Lang&Lit (SL) - Hunting

In each session, you will get to see and discuss a wide variety of exam passages and poems with your tutor, who will also give you plenty of criterion-based feedback on your own writing.

Try your hand at the sample below, then contact us for your first session.

Write an analysis on the following text. Include comments on the significance of context, audience, purpose, and formal stylistic features.

Text 1

• Comment on the writer's use of structure and layout in this text.

• How does the writer combine image and language here to create a persuasive effect?

English A: Lang&Lit (HL) - Caribbean

Analyse, compare and contrast the two texts. Include comments on the similarities and differences between the texts and the significance of context, audience, purpose, and formal and stylistic features.

Text 1

A United Fruit Company travel poster from 1922.



Text 2

SQUATTERS TAKE ON DEVELOPERS
October 15, 2007 Miami Herald, The (FL) Edition: Final
Section: Business Monday
Page: 12G
Author: BENJAMIN SHORS

ISLA CARENERO, PANAMA -- In the late 1980s, Nicasio Jiménez built two listing shacks with mangrove beams, a roof of scavenged tin, and rough floor planks that allowed Caribbean breezes and tsetse flies to flit through the cracks. Jiménez, a 61-year-old retired banana pruner who earned $1 an hour, did not own the waterfront land. Like hundreds of other low-income people living in Bocas del Toro, a stunning archipelago once relegated to some of Panamas poorest residents, he instead relied on "squatter rights" written into the countrys law.

Now, as foreign investment transforms these languid islands, Jiménez family faces eviction from a Naples developer who claims he bought the property from a third party. "Before, nobody wanted this land," said Feliciano Santos, Jiménezs 36-year-old son-in-law. "You didnt need documents. This was a garbage disposal area. We are the ones who cut our feet and got dirty working the land."

For centuries, this Caribbean island has been a beautiful place to be dirt poor. But in recent years, a booming real estate market has brought American entrepreneurs into direct conflict with AfroCaribbean and indigenous Indians who occupy these once-isolated isles.

Now, developers have targeted an emerging demographic: retirees from America and Europe. Although American expatriates have been a part of the funky vibe in Bocas since the 1990s, they remained a relatively minor note in the Caribbean town. But as development in Panama City boomed -- construction permits last year topped $1 billion -- investors pushed into more remote reaches of the country.

Now, critics say, the size of the new developments threaten to displace hundreds of low-income island residents, many of whom live on prime oceanfront real estate.

In the past year, the conflict has spiraled. Armed private security guards patrol disputed beaches. A powerful union of construction workers has leveled charges of "colonialism" against several developers. Homes have mysteriously burned and been torn to the ground.

"There is this tremendous lust for the coastline," said Osvaldo Jordan, executive director of the Alliance for Conservation and Development, a Panamanian nonprofit based in Panama City. "Developers and speculators will use any means necessary to get the land from the people."

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English A: Lang&Lit (HL) - Craft Master

Analyse, compare and contrast the two texts. Include comments on the similarities and differences between the texts and the significance of context, audience, purpose, and formal and stylistic features.

Text 1

Text 2

so you want to be a writer?

if it doesn't come bursting out of you 

in spite of everything, 

don't do it. 

unless it comes unasked out of your 

heart and your mind and your mouth 

and your gut, 

don't do it. 

if you have to sit for hours 

staring at your computer screen 

or hunched over your 

typewriter searching for words, don't do it. 

if you're doing it for money or 

fame, 

don't do it. 

if you're doing it because you want 

women in your bed, 

don't do it. 

if you have to sit there and 

rewrite it again and again, 

don't do it. 

if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, 

don't do it. 

if you're trying to write like somebody 

else, 

forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of 

you, 

then wait patiently. 

if it never does roar out of you, 

do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife 

or your girlfriend or your boyfriend 

or your parents or to anybody at all, 

you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers, 

don't be like so many thousands of 

people who call themselves writers,

don't be dull and boring and

pretentious,

don't be consumed with self- 

love.

the libraries of the world have 

yawned themselves to 

sleep over your kind. 

don't add to that. 

don't do it.

unless it comes out of

your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would

drive you to madness or suicide or murder,

don't do it.

unless the sun inside you is burning your gut,

don't do it. 

when it is truly time, 

and if you have been chosen, 

it will do it by 

itself and it will keep on doing it 

until you die or it dies in you. 

there is no other way. 

 and there never was.

-- From sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way
by Charles Bukowski.
 Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Charles Bukowski.

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English A: Lang&Lit (SL) "What is Poverty?"

In each session you can look forward to detailed, analytical discussion of a Paper 1 passage or extract and solid guidance on commentary writing from an experienced tutor. You also receive criterion-based feedback on your drafts.

Try your hand at this Paper 1. Then contact us for a session.

Write an analysis on the following text. Comment on the significance of context (if appropriate), audience, purpose and formal and stylistic features.

From the essay "What is poverty?"
Jo Goodwin Parker
1971

You ask me what is poverty? Listen to me. Here I am, dirty, smelly, and with no "proper" underwear on and with the stench of my rotting teeth near you. I will tell you. Listen to me. Listen without pity. I cannot use your pity. Listen with understanding. Put yourself in my dirty, worn out, ill-fitting shoes, and hear me.

Poverty is getting up every morning from a dirt- and illness-stained mattress. The sheets have long since been used for diapers. Poverty is living in a smell that never leaves. This is a smell of urine, sour milk and spoiling food sometimes joined with the strong smell of long-cooked onions. [...] It is the smell of the mattresses where years of "accidents" have happened. It is the smell of milk which has gone sour because the refrigerator long has not worked, and it costs money to get it fixed. It is the smell of rotting garbage. I could bury it, but where is the shovel? Shovels cost money. [...]

Poverty is dirt. You can say in your clean clothes coming from your clean house, "Anybody can be clean." Let me explain about housekeeping with no money. For breakfast I give my children grits [1] with no oleo [2] or cornbread without eggs and oleo. This does not use up many dishes. What dishes there are, I wash in cold water with no soap. Even the cheapest soap has to be saved for the baby's diapers. Look at my hands, so cracked and red. Once I saved for two months to buy a jar of Vaseline for my hands and the baby's diaper rash. When I had saved enough, I went to buy it and the price had gone up two cents. The baby and I suffered on. [...]

Poverty is staying up all night on cold nights to watch the fire knowing one spark on the newspapers covering the walls means your sleeping child dies in flames. In summer, poverty is watching gnats and flies devour your baby's tears when he cries. The screens are torn and you pay so little rent you know they will never be fixed. Poverty means insects in your food, in your nose, in your eyes, and crawling over you when you sleep. Poverty is hoping it never rains because diapers won't dry when it rains and soon you are using newspapers. Poverty is seeing your children forever with runny noses. Paper handkerchiefs cost money and all your rags you need for other things. Even more costly are antihistamines. Poverty is cooking without food and cleaning without soap.

Poverty is asking for help. Have you ever had to ask for help, knowing your children will suffer unless you get it? Think about asking for a loan from a relative, if this is the only way you can imagine asking for help. I will tell you how it feels. You find out where the office is that you are supposed to visit. You circle that block four of five times. Thinking of your children, you go in. Everyone is very busy. Finally, someone comes out and you tell her that you need help. That never is the person that you need to see. You go see another person, and after spilling the whole shame of your poverty all over the desk between you, you find that this isn't the right office after all - you must repeat the whole process, and it never is any easier at the next place. [...]

I have to come out of my despair to tell you this. Remember I did not come from another place or another time. Others like me are all around you. Look at us with an angry heart, anger that will help you help me.

Guiding questions

• Comment on the use and effect of stylistic devices, such as sensory details and the first and second person 

• How do you understand the purpose and provocative nature of this essay? 

[1] Grits: coarsely ground corn commonly served in the American south

[2] Oleo: a vegetable oil spread used as an alternative to butter

P1 English A: Literature (HL) - Cider With Rosie

For Paper 1 at Higher Level, you will be given the choice of two texts. One will be a passage from prose (fiction or non-fiction) and the other a poem. There are no guiding questions.

Try your hand at the prose (non-fiction) passage below. Then ask us for detailed discussion and feedback.

Write a literary commentary on the following:

I was set down from the carrier’s cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.
     The June grass among which I stood was was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never been so close to grass before. It towered above me and all around me, each blade tattoed with tiger skins of sunlight. It was knife-edged, dark, and a wicked green, thick as a forest and alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chattered and leapt through the air like monkeys.
      I was lost and did not know where to move. A tropic heat oozed from the ground, rank with sharp odours of roots and nettles. Snow-clouds of elder blossom banked in the sky, showering upon me the fumes and flakes of their sweet and giddy suffocation. High overhead ran frenzied larks, screaming, as though the sky were tearing apart.
      For the first time in my life, I was out of the sight of humans. For the first time in my life I was alone in a world whose behaviour I could neither predict nor fathom: a world of birds that squealed, of plants that stank, of insects that sprang about without warning. I was lost and did not expect to be found again. I put my head back and howled, and the sun hit me smartly on the face, like a bully.
      From this daylight nightmare I was awoken, as from many another, by the appearance of my sisters. They came scrambling and calling up the steep rough bank and parting the long grass found me. Faces of rose, familiar, living; huge shining faces hung up like shields between me and the sky; faces with grins and white teeth (some broken) to be conjured up like genii with a howl, brushing off terror with their broad scoldings and affection. They leaned over me – one, two, three – their mouths smeared with red currants and their hands dripping with juice.
      “There, there, it's all right, don't you wail anymore. Come down 'ome and we'll stuff you with currants.”
      And Marjorie, the eldest, lifted me into her long brown hair, and ran me jogging down the path and through the steep, rose-filled garden, and set me down on the cottage doorstep, which was our home, though I couldn't believe it.
      That was the day we came to the village, in the summer of the last year of the First World War. To a cottage that stood in a half-acre of garden on a steep bank above a lake; a cottage with three floors and a cellar and a treasure in the walls, with a pump and apple trees, syringa and strawberries, rooks in the chimneys, frogs in the cellar, mushrooms on the ceiling, and all for three and sixpence a week.
      I don't know where I lived before then. My life began on the carrier's cart which brought me up the long slow hills to the village, and dumped me in the high grass, and lost me. I had ridden wrapped up in a Union Jack to protect me from the sun, and when I rolled out of it, and stood piping loud among the buzzing jungle of that summer bank, then, I feel, was I born. And to all the rest of us, the whole family of eight, it was the beginning of a life.

                                                     


-- Cider with Rosie by Lauri Lee (1959 Chatto and Windus)

Commentary Notes for "Jaguar" by Ted Hughes

Good, detailed notes are a vital starting point to oral or written commentary. Examiners urge candidates to spend at least a quarter of exam time creating notes and planning their commentaries or responses. This is time well-spent. In this article, we show what form these notes might take for a poem by Ted Hughes.

Note: This is not a model of how you would approach and conduct an interactive oral commentary! You can ask us for more details.

Jaguar

The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion

Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.

But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes

On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him

More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.




Subject: 

• The poem dwells on a particular animal, the jaguar, whose power is registered largely through making comparison with other, 'inferior' creatures. 

Important aspects of content:

• The opening two stanzas of the poem focus on animals other than the jaguar, which are depicted as lazy, disengaged or conceited. The apes seem to spend their time picking fleas and tiger and lion “Lie still as the sun,” in a passive, nonchalant state. The parrots are compared to “cheap tarts” in their rather desperate attempts to attract the attention of “the stroller with the nut” and the comparison of the boa constrictor's coil to “a fossil” seems to represent the seemingly empty, shallow existence of all these creatures. They seem reduced to a purely biological condition, uninspiring, without energy and without any sense of character.

• The introduction of the jaguar in stanza three represents a dramatic point of contrast. The crowd is “mesmerised,” compared to a “child at a dream” as the people watch a creature that seems everything the aforementioned animals are not. The phrases “hurrying enraged / Through prison darkness” and “He spins from the bars” convey the jaguar's energy and restlessness, as well as providing him with an emotional life in “the drills of his eyes / On a short fierce fuse.” The jaguar is portrayed with a kind of vitality and spirit that the cage it is in almost fails to contain. Hughes writes, “his stride is a wilderness of freedom” and in the line “The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel” his power is presented such that he seems almost to have dominion over the whole world.

• The poem makes use of the setting of the zoo and its cages, as well as the anonymous human crowd to reinforce the individuality of the jaguar. In all respects the creature is set apart. The poem becomes an attempt on the part of the narrator to write himself into the 'life' of the jaguar, to imaginatively interact with its physical, almost metaphysical presence. In this way, the poem is both objective description and more subjective, imaginative celebration. 

• The language of the poem is rich and detailed. Diction is chosen carefully to communicate the physical characteristics of each creature. Verbs such as “yawn”, “shriek” , “hurrying” and “spins” actively depict the essential character of each animal, and these are reinforced with adjectives such as “breathing”, ”fierce” and “blind”. Both human and animal worlds are described in very tangible ways, so that we can feel, hear and see them. 

• The structure is regular in its four line stanzas, and as we move through the poem so we move from one cage to the next until, like the crowd, we are asked to stop in front of the jaguar. Lines are a mixture of end-stopped and run-on so that there is a sense of organization, as well as fluidity in the lines. The speaker comments with an almost scientific precision on what he sees, and yet allows himself moments of more spontaneous expression in response, for instance, to more unpredictable traits of the animals.

• There is a host of literary elements to the poem. Hughes makes use of figurative language and imagery throughout. The “shriek” of the parrots is compared to “fire”, tiger and lion “Lie still as the sun” and the crowd stands “As a child at a dream”. The similes reveal the speaker's imaginative operation as he seeks to find a language through which to describe these animals. This sense of empathy really takes off when he comes to the jaguar. The “drills of his eyes” in the “prison darkness”, for example, use metaphor to capture the the creature's sinister, determined nature. A the end of the poem, the phrase “Over the cage floor the horizons come” suggests that the cage no longer exists, and the jaguar becomes one with the wilderness. There is considerable visual and aural imagery in the poem's exploration of the physicality of each animal.

• Other literary features worthy of comment might include the use of features of sound. There is alliteration in the phrases “bang of blood in the brain” and “Stinks of sleepers”, and in “prison … drills” and “world rolls ...long”. These examples each illustrate the way the poem seeks to describe the animals as vividly and as 'real' as possible, and thereby once again convey the speaker's imaginative connection with the creatures. 

• Finally, the tone of the poem varies as the speaker moves from one animal to the next. Monosyllabic diction in the earlier part of the poem conveys the speaker's sense of boredom and lack of interest in the first group of animals, but by the time he gets to the jaguar the rhythm of the lines picks up and more complex, polysyllabic diction gives expression to the vitality of the jaguar. He seems to regard the animal with wonder and admiration, as well as almost a sense of fear in response to the jaguar's power and potential. The superlative expressions in the last stanza, where he is “More than “ the cell that seeks to contain him, elevate the jaguar's status to the point where the speaker's imagination and the jaguar itself are almost united at the end of the poem. It is as if the rest of the world has ceased to exist. 

From these notes, some thoughts of a possible commentary thesis might be emerging. See if you can complete the two below and offer a third:

a. This poem elevates the status of the jaguar above all other creatures, including humans. Its central concern is ...

b. The poem's main strength is its use of imagery and figurative diction to communicate ...

c. (your thesis) ...

Now use these notes to create an effective, high-scoring commentary!

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English A: Lang&Lit (SL) "Smoking Kills"

In each session, you will get to see and discuss a wide variety of exam passages and poems with your tutor, who will also give you plenty of criterion-based feedback on your own writing.

Try your hand at the sample below, then contact us for your first session.

Write an analysis on one of the following texts. Include comments on the significance of context, audience, purpose, and formal and stylistic features.


Text 2

https://www.geckoandfly.com/1859/

creative-guerrilla-quit-smoking-advertisement/  accessed 12.5.2018

• Comment on how form contributes to meaning.

• How effective is this campaign ad? 

Eng A: Lang&Lit (SL) "Cleaning Products 101"

At Standard Level, students of English A: Language and Literature  are presented with two texts. One will be a passage/extract; the other an image -- or a combination of image and text.

An example of the first is shown below. The second can be found here. Practice with these first, then ask us for feedback.

Write an analysis on one of the following texts. Include comments on the significance of context, audience, purpose, and formal stylistic features.

Cleaning Products 101 

As you go down the aisles of your grocery store, you may have a hard time imagining that people once cared for their floors, windows, and clothes without the aid of commercial products. They made soap from tallow and ashes, and cleaners from lemon juice, borax, vinegar, and baking soda. Before the advent of the myriad products we take for granted today, a homemaker had to have a basic understanding of the chemistry of cleaning in order to keep a tidy house. She would have been familiar with the bleaching properties of lemon juice, the disinfecting power of vinegar, and the grease-cutting abilities of baking soda. She would have known that a tablecloth stained with blueberries would require very different treatment than one marred by gravy. Homekeeping generations ago was as much a science as an art.

Because of the convenience offered by many new products, much of that knowledge has faded. But it's just as important today as it was a century ago to understand how cleaning products work. Because there are so many products to choose from, cupboards can quickly become cluttered, and confusion about which products to use can abound. A little knowledge about ingredients and their individual properties can help remedy that. Armed with a few facts, you can confidently choose the cleansers, polishes, and detergents that will allow you to clean more effectively and efficiently.

                     From Homekeeping Handbook by Martha Stewart (2006)

• What kind of audience is targeted by this text?


• How does the text create a particular effect on the reader?

English A: Lang&Lit (HL) The Stolen Generation

With every session, you get precise, criterion-based feedback on your writing and plenty of detailed analytical discussion of each passage with one of our tutors.

Try this Higher-Level, Paper 1 specimen. Then contact us for your free trial session.

Analyse, compare and contrast the following two texts. Include comments on the similarities and differences between the texts and the significance of context, audience, purpose, and formal stylistic features.

Text 1

Family's fifth generation in care of state
The Australian, February 20th, 2009
Caroline Overington

State Welfare workers have begun removing the fifth generation of Aboriginal children from their parents, meaning some indigenous families have an 80-year history with child protection services.
      There are few signs the cycle will be broken, as more Aboriginal children are being separated from their parents than at any time in Australian history.
      The Australian spoke yesterday to an Aboriginal woman whose daughter became the family's fifth generation to be raised by the state, when she was taken from her home in June 2007 and placed with white foster parents on the NSW central coast.
      The NSW Department of Community Services removed the girl after an older sister, aged 14, tried to hang herself.
      The girl's mother told The Australian: 'After the Stolen Generation Report, they said it would never happen again but it's happening. You don't want to tell child welfare that you need help, because they will come and take your children.'
      'My daughter was seven years old when they came for her. My husband fell down on his knees on the lawn. She was screaming. The last memory I have of her is of her hand against the glass, (and her) saying, "Please let me stay."
      The mother, who was born in 1967, was left on a railway line when she was three days old. She was sent to live with white foster parents until she ran away at the age of 12. When caught, she went to a Brisbane institution known as Wilson, where she stayed until she was 18. Her mother was raised at the Parramatta Girl's Home in Sydney in the 1950s.
      Her father was born in 1940 on the Woorabinda mission, which was established inland of Rockhampton, in Central Queensland, in 1927. At the age of eight, he was taken by Childrens Services, Queensland (now Department of Child Safety) to live at the Nudgee Orphanage, in Brisbane's north.
      His mother was also a state ward, taken into servitude on Palm Island at 15. His grandmother was raised at Woorabinda, under the care of the Aboriginal Commissioner.
      The Australian revealed last year that there were between six and 10 times as many Aboriginal children in state care today than at the height of the Stolen Generations era. The most recent data, from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, shows 9074 Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander children in out-of-home care.

Text 2

Then all eyes turned to the cause of the commotion. A tall, rugged white man stood on the bank above them. He could easily have been mistaken for a pastoralist or a grazier with his tanned complexion except that he was wearing kakhi clothing. Fear and anxiety swept over them when they realized that the fateful day they had been dreading had come at last. They always knew that it would be only a matter of time before the government would track them down. When Constaple Riggs, Protector of Aborigines, finally spoke his voice was full of authority and purpose. They knew without a doubt that he was the one who took their children in broad daylight -- not like the evil spirits who came into their camps in the night.
      'I've come to take Molly, Gracie and Daisy, the three half-caste girls, with me to go to school to the Moore River Native Settlement,' he informed the family.
      The old man nodded to show that he understood what Riggs was saying. The rest of the family just hung their heads refusing to face the man who was taking their daughters away from them. Silent tears welled in their eyes and trickled down their cheeks.
      'Come on you girls,' he ordered. 'Don't worry about taking anything. We'll pick up what you need later.'
      When the two girls stood up, he noticed that the third girl was missing.
      'Where's the other one, Daisy?' he asked anxiously.
      'She's with her mummy and daddy at Murra Munda Station,' the old man informed him.
      'She's not at Murra Munda or at Jimbalbar goldfields. I called into those places before I came here,' said the constable. 'Hurry up then, I want to get started. We've got a long way to go yet. You girls can ride this horse back to the depot,' he said, handing the reins over to Molly. Riggs was annoyed that he had to go miles out of his way to find these girls.
      Molly and Gracie sat silently on the horse, tears streaming down their cheeks, as Constable Riggs turned the big bay stallion and led the way back to the depot. A high-pitched wail broke out. The cries of agonised mothers and the women, and the deep sobs of grandfathers, uncles and cousins filled the air. Molly and Gracie looked back just once before they disappeared through the river gums. Behind them, those remaining in the camp found strong sharp objects and gashed themselves and inflicted wounds to their heads and bodies as an expression of their sorrow.

                                        From Rabbit Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington (1996)

P1 (HL) English A Lang&Lit (Glasgow)

At Higher Level, English A: Lang&Lit candidates write a comparative commentary on two unseen texts.

This is quite challenging for many students: it requires identifying themes and features that are similar and different to both texts, and then working these into a coherently-structured response.

Learn how to write high-scoring comparative commentaries. Ask for a free trial session.



Analyse, compare and contrast the two texts. Include comments on the similarities and differences between the texts and the significance of context, audience, purpose, and formal and stylistic features.

Text 1

I shall begin with my earliest impressions of Glasgow, for they are still the most vivid and reproduce, I imagine, the first instinctive response to Industrialism of anyone who has been brought up quite beyond the reach of it. Later in life we become used to things which shocked us at first, and it is impossible for an industrial town-dweller born in an industrial town to realize the full squalor of his surroundings; he could not live in them if he did, for there is in everyone a necessity to form an attachment to the patch of earth and stone around him. Yet that necessity signifies nothing more than a fundamental human impulse which has existed ever since man settled down in one place and made a home and friends; it is no argument for the goodness of any place; even some slum-dwellers have it. As I continued to live in Glasgow I therefore acquired a liking for it, and that very much influenced my later impressions of it, making me reject, partly out of gratitude, partly out of an unconscious desire to spare my own feelings, the more unpleasant ones. I shall try, for the sake of truth, to correct that bias now.

But at the beginning, when I arrived in Glasgow straight from Orkney, I had no self-protective apparatus for selecting my impressions, and was stunned by a succession of sights which I frantically strove not to see. The main problem which puzzled me at the time was how all these people could live in such places without feeling ashamed.

                                                        Edwin Muir, Scottish Journey (1935)



____________________________________________________
- Glasgow: The largest city in Scotland.
- Orkney: A group of remote and little inhabited islands in the North East of Scotland.

Text 2

From his vantage point in Ruchill Park, Laidlaw looked out over the city. He could see so much of it from here and it still baffled him. ‘What is this place?’ he thought.
      A small and great city his mind answered. A city with its face against the wind. That made it grimace. But did it have to be so hard? Sometimes it felt so hard. Well. That was some wind and it had never stopped blowing. Even when this place was the second city of the British Empire, affluence had never softened it because the wealth of the few had become the poverty of the many. The many had survived, however harshly, and made the spirit of the place theirs. Having survived affluence, they could survive anything. Now that the money was tight, they hardly noticed the difference. If you had it, all you did was spend it. The money had always been tight. Tell us something we don’t know. That was Glasgow. It was a place so kind it would batter cruelty into the ground. No wonder he loved it. It danced among it’s own debris. When Glasgow gave up, the world would call it a day.
      Standing so high, Laidlaw felt the bleakness of summer on his face and understood a small truth. Even the climate here offered no favours. Standing at a bus-stop, you talked out of the side of your mouth, in case your lips got chapped. Maybe that was why Glasgow was where people put the head on one another – it was too cold to take your hands out your pockets. But it did have compensations.


                                    William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch (1983)

8 Commentary-Goldies

1. To obtain maximum marks you have to present a clearly focused, well developed and persuasive argument which gives a purposeful and effective structure to the commentary.



2. A good commentary has two structural principles: it is planned around the central meaning of the text and presents a coherent argument relating to that meaning and/or its presentation.



3. The introduction sets out the central meaning and the argument relating to it.




4. The core of the commentary is argued paragraphs in a continuous and structured manner.



5. The arguments are supported with close reference to the text.




6. The conclusion brings a sense of completeness and closure.




7. The commentary must include a considered personal response.




8. At Standard Level Guiding Questions are offered as prompts. They do not have to be answered but if they are, answers must be integrated into the body of the commentary.

English A: Literature (HL) "Grand Banks"

In each session, you can look forward to criterion-based feedback on your writing and detailed discussion of an exam passage with your tutor.

Try this Higher-Level, Paper 1 specimen. Then contact us for your free trial session.

'But when do we see life, Captain?'

'Not long to go now, Mrs Meek. Not long now.'

Everyone was impatient for land. We had picked up the scent of North America and it was suddenly real enough to plan on.

Sometime in the small hours, we had crossed on to the Grand Banks, an enormous apron of sandy flats out south and east from the coasts of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Here the cold water of the south-going Labrador Current collides with the warm water of the Gulf Stream as it bends east towards Europe. This sudden mixing of warm and cold produces the chilly steam in which the area is almost continuously enshrouded. It also produces the kind of busy, circulating aerated water in which krill and zooplankton breed, and the food chain that starts with krill and zooplankton ends with cod, whales and man.

John Cabot discovered the Grand Banks in 1497, on the return voyage from his search for the North-West passage to Cathay. Over the banks, his men (aboard the tiny ship, the Mathew) found cod shoaling so densely that they had only to lower baskets over the side to bring them up groaning with fish.

It was a miraculous draught of fishes – an image that fitted wonderfully well with the theological rhetoric in which so much of the European colonization of America was conducted. The New World was Canaan, the land across the water that God promised to the Israelites. It was a moral duty to 'plant a Christian Habitation and regiment ' there 'to redeem the people of the Newfound land and those parts from out of the captivity of that spiritual Pharaoh, the devil'. Cabot's baskets of fish, with the powerful echo of the disciples casting their nets on the other side, were seen as happy confirming portents that the conquest of America was an evangelical mission.

The view from the Conveyor's bridge was of a watery world so dank and sun-starved that it was hard to imagine anyone being thrilled by it. Yet in the sixteenth century the fish of the Grand Banks inspired as much excitement as the gold, spices and tobacco of the southern discoveries.

In Haklyut's Voyages the Banks earn as much space as Florida and the West Indies. They were the place where fishermen's tall stories came true. By 1578 – nearly thirty years after the settlement of Virginia and more than forty years before the arrival of the colonists in Massachusetts – an adventurer called Anthony Parkhurst wrote a letter to Haklyut in which he reported he had encountered about 380 fishing vessels working the Banks during the previous summer. There had been fifty English boats, the rest were Spanish, French and Portuguese. In 1583, Edward Hayes, a ship's captain on the Gilbert expedition, called the Grand Banks 'the most famous fishing in the world.'

It is a hard fact to grasp. Europe was not fished-out. There were huge stocks of cod in the North Sea and the Eastern Atlantic. Although the Church (in England, the Crown) had stimulated the fishing industry by turning Friday into a pan-European fish-eating day, the demand can't have been so great as to force a crossing of the Atlantic in order to meet it. Yet the fishermen came.

They were the first Europeans to make themselves at home in America. They fished the Grand Banks from April to July every year, traded with the Indians, laid up stocks of gear and provisions in the natural harbours of Newfound land, Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia.

The Russians, working along the extreme easterly fringe of the Banks, were the last survivors of the international floating city of boats which used to fish over Whale Bank, Green Bank, St. Pierre Bank, Misaine, Banquereau, Cando and the rest. Everyone on the Conveyor could remember the time when these few hundred miles were an intricate slalom course, as the ship twisted and dodged through the fishing fleet, more than not in thick fog. When Canada increased its fishing limit to 200 miles in the 1970s, the Grand Banks emptied of boats. An hour after reaching the Banks, our own radar was drawing a blank again, and we were alone in the squabbling birds, the colours of our containers looking vulgar and strident against the sober grey

Jonathan Raban from 'New World' in  

                              Granta 29 (Winter 1989)

Eng A: Literature (SL) "Frankie Lane"

In each session you can look forward to detailed literary discussion of a passage or poem used in a previous exam and clear guidance on how to write a successful commentary.

See if you can answer the two guiding questions to this poem. Then contact us for your free trial session.

Write a guided literary analysis on one passage only. In your answer you must address both of the guiding questions provided.

FRANKIE LAINE* (1913–2007)

The Stephens’ Sweet Shop, 1949.
Bald Walt at work, “butterflying” hot dogs—
splitting them lengthwise for the griddle
and serving them up in hamburger buns—
while Boo, his smiling, slightly anxious wife
(a rigid perm and excess, too-bright lipstick),
provides to teen-aged guzzlers at the counter
and in an opium den of wooden booths
their sugary poisons, milkshakes thick as tar
and Coca-Cola conjured from syrup and fizz.


A smog of smoke. A jingle at the back
of pinball being deftly played. And through
the clamorous and hormone-laden haze
your slick voice, nasal yet operatic, sliced
and soared, assuring us of finding our
desire, at our old rendezvous. Today
I read you died, at ninety-three. Your voice
was oil, and we the water it spread on,
forming a rainbow film – our futures as
we felt them, dreamily, back there and then.



                    John Updike, The New York Times, Vol. 54 No.9, 31 May 2007

_________________________________________________________________________________
* Frankie Laine: was a popular singer (last of the Italian Crooner types) the 1940–50s. Hits include “Muletrain” and “Hey Joe”



– Discuss the ways in which the atmosphere/ambience of the sweet shop is conveyed.

– What is the effect of the singer upon the teenagers?

Spec P1 (HL) Eng A: LangLit "Bears"

Students at Higher Level English A: Language and Literature have the added challenge of writing a comparative commentary on two texts that share presumably something in common but diverge in genre and style. This entails first identifying points of possible comparison in subject, approach and stylistic and rhetorical devices, then structuring an argument that deals with both texts equally. A tall order!

Section B

Analyze, compare and contrast the following two texts. Include comments on the similarities and differences between the texts and the significance of context, audience, purpose, and formal and stylistic features.


Text 3

                                                                        From the www.artofmanliness.com (2013)

Text 4

        Public policy can turn on a single case of grizzly predation. During the summer of 1967, in Glacier National Park, two young women were killed by two different grizzlies on the same night, an incident memorialized in the 1969 book Night of the Grizzlies. Both bears had fed on garbage and associated humans with food. The National Park Service had been a bit cavalier about bears eating rubbish; in Yellowstone, virtually all grizzlies fed at open-pit dumps. Accused of near-criminal negligence by the press, the Park Service did an about-face. Against the advice of biologists who urged that bears be weaned slowly, Yellowstone abruptly closed the dumps, and bears began foraging for garbage in campgrounds and towns. Wildlife managers killed more than 200 grizzlies in a five year period.

       Post-Treadwell *, policies may change again. A shared view among bear observers is that bad press following a fatal mauling leads not only to dead bears, but also to new restrictions. Already, the growing trend is to keep people and bears separated. That's good in some ways, but I worry that we'll take it too far.

       At Alaska's McNeill River Falls, for example, observers are confined to a discrete space and led by an armed ranger from the Alaska Department of Fish and Wildlife—a practice that has kept people and bears safe for 28 years, but can't qualify as a real wilderness experience. In Yellowstone, seasonal closures rightly keep humans out of critical grizzly feeding grounds. But though people can't walk in, bears can walk out: Increasingly, young bears and mothers with cubs seek food near the park's roads, where they are hit by cars and fed by idiots. Keeping people and grizzlies distant is partly legitimate management strategy and partly, to my mind, chickenshit. In Glacier, the din of Park Service-recommended shouting and whistle blowing drifts down every trail. The message is that photography is fine, but please don't interact with nature. The spectrum of backcountry adventure is truncated at the wild extreme.

      What is the value, then, of face-to-face encounters with carnivores, who on rare occasions size up Homo sapiens as chow? The beasts that used to sweep down on a village and carry off a person are gone—so rare that maulings like this one make headlines in a way head-ons along the Alcan Highway never will. But here's an animal essential to us all, useful to distant corners of the soul: the grizzly roaring out an enforced humility, reminding us of our place in the food chain. In our charge to domesticate this continent, we missed a few pockets of wildness where risk still dwells. We could live without these beasts, though something in the imagination would stray aimlessly. That anchor of wild risk keeps us tethered.

       In our charge to domesticate this continent, we missed a few pockets of wildness where risk still dwells. We could live without these beasts, though something in the imagination would stray aimlessly. That anchor of wild risk keeps us tethered.

      That risk also delivers the salient lesson of bear encounters. Timothy Treadwell was not in control: He had a great run of luck that lasted more than a decade, and it ran out. In the grizzly business, it happens.

From “Blood Brothers: Timothy Treadwell,” Doug Peacock, Outside Magazine, January (2004)

______________________
* In 2003 a grizzly bear killed and ate Timothy Treadwell.




Learn how to write a successful, high-scoring comparative commentary. Contact us.

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