Introduction to the Common

Module: Texts and Human

Experiences
English Studies
English Standard
English Advanced

TJ Ruckendorfer | English Faculty | The Ponds High School

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Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3
How to use this resource ............................................................................................................................................................................. 4
What is the Common Module? ................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Common Module Statement ....................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Reading the Module Statement............................................................................................................................... 6
Breaking down the Module Statement....................................................................................................................................................... 7
NESA Sample Paper 1................................................................................................................................................................................. 17
Section 1 ............................................................................................................................................................... 17
Section 2 ............................................................................................................................................................... 17
NESA Sample Questions and Responses ................................................................................................................................................... 19
English Studies, English Standard and English Advanced Paper 1 2020 ................................................................................................. 23
HSC Paper 1 – 2019/2020 English Studies .............................................................................................................. 23
HSC Paper 1 – 2020 English Standard .................................................................................................................... 29
HSC Paper 1 – 2020 English Advanced ................................................................................................................... 35
Selected Readings ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 40
The Human Condition (All) .................................................................................................................................... 40
The Human Experience (All) .................................................................................................................................. 43
I Am Very Real (All) ............................................................................................................................................... 45
Seaton’s Aunt (English Advanced) ......................................................................................................................... 48
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (English Advanced) .................................................................................... 65
The October Game (English Advanced/English Standard) ...................................................................................... 70
The Treasure of Lemon Brown (English Studies/English Standard) ......................................................................... 76
The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant (English Studies)............................................................................................ 83
Father and Son (All)............................................................................................................................................... 88
Cat's in the Cradle (All) .......................................................................................................................................... 89
The Tribute Money (All) ........................................................................................................................................ 90

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Introduction
What is the essence of the human condition? This question has puzzled humanity for ages. As an English
teacher, I naturally turned to the wisdom of Shakespeare. According to him, life is like a stage, and we are
all mere players, each with our entrances and exits, playing multiple roles throughout our lives.
Seeking more insights, I consulted my elderly neighbour, who believed that learning about human nature
is an ongoing journey. From her perspective, understanding ourselves and others is a lifelong pursuit. But I
needed something more immediate, so I turned to the words of famous thinkers, even if they happened to
be deceased.
O. Henry, in “The Gift of the Magi,” viewed life as a mixture of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating. Karl Marx suggested that our social being shapes our consciousness, not the other way
around. Jose Ortega y Gasset saw life as a constant process of decision-making. And Ernest Becker famously
declared that we are "gods with anuses," a statement that left me pondering its deeper meaning.
In a last-ditch effort, I sought the wisdom of a nine-year-old, who simply shrugged and said, “Check
YouTube.” And so I did. YouTube offered countless interpretations of life's meaning, the importance of
certain things, and what it truly means to be human. It seems that humans are complex creatures, stumbling
through life, trying to make sense of it all.
There is no instruction manual for being a human or an adult. You just can’t Google the answer. When we're
young, we believe that adulthood will bring all the answers, but most adults are still figuring it out as they
go. We clean, work, and pay bills, all while trying to navigate the complexities of being human.
It's fascinating that despite billions of lives lived and billions more in motion, the human experience remains
somewhat of a mystery. We don't fully understand phenomena like yawning, or how certain celebrity
couples come to be. Nevertheless, as individuals, we are connected to the collective of humanity. We share
beliefs, ideologies, quirks, and common needs. We crave belonging, community, and connections. We
experience a wide range of emotions and possess the marvellously complex human brain, which fuels our
curiosity, innovation, and thirst for knowledge.
Being human is about finding our place in the world, interacting with others, and leaving our mark for future
generations. As we grow older and reflect on our identities, relationships, and experiences, we search for
meaning and purpose in life. Throughout history, countless texts, from ancient mythologies to religious
scriptures to self-help books and TikToks, have attempted to shed light on our collective experiences and
our existence within and beyond them.
In the end, Jodi Picoult captures the essence of the human condition beautifully when she says, "There is a
reason the word 'belonging' has a synonym for 'want' at its centre; it is the human condition." We are
individuals navigating the complexities of life, seeking connection and longing for a sense of belonging. In
our pursuit of understanding and meaning, we contribute to the vast body of human knowledge and
exchange thoughts and philosophies about our shared experiences.

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It is the work of Daniela Gallego that graces the cover and the internal art. The combination of human
experiences with her own dreamy, fantastical art is what makes her work so stunning.

How to use this resource

Your classroom teacher will lead you through the common module, establishing connections between 'Texts
and Human Experiences' and your prescribed text. This resource is designed to supplement your
comprehension of the common module. Within it, you will discover materials that break down the common
module statement, introduce you to Paper 1 and provide additional valuable insights.

What is the Common Module?

The ‘Common Module: Texts and Human Experiences’ is the compulsory topic as prescribed by NESA and it
taught across the three English courses: English Studies, English Standard and English Advanced. The module
focuses on learning about how texts reveal individual and collective human experiences. This makes it a
broad subject of study and there are no right or wrong answers as it is about how you engage and see the
text and how you interpret it.
In the Common Module you will be reading and analysing one prescribed text, looking through the lens of
human experience, and a range of short texts that are related to the study of the human condition. You will
analyse the texts to investigate the ideas they represent about human experiences and how they convey
those ideas. This will mean looking closely at the form and techniques a composer uses to represent their
messages and shape meaning.
The prescribed text are as follows:
• English Studies – Billy Elliot directed by Stephen Daldry
• English Standard – The Crucible by Arthur Miller
• English Advanced – Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
You will also be studying additional related material of your own choosing. You must write about your set
text and your chosen related text in the first English paper of the HSC examination.

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Common Module Statement
In this common module students deepen their understanding of how texts _______________ individual and
collective human experiences. They examine how texts represent human qualities and emotions associated
with, or arising from, these _______________. Students appreciate, explore, interpret, analyse and evaluate
the ways language is used to shape these _______________ in a range of texts in a variety of
_______________, _______________ and _______________.
Students explore how texts may give insight into the anomalies, _______________ and inconsistencies in
human behaviour and motivations, inviting the _______________ to see the world differently, to challenge
assumptions, ignite new ideas or reflect personally. They may also consider the role of storytelling
throughout time to express and reflect particular _______________ and _______________. By responding
to a range of texts they further develop skills and confidence using various literary devices, language
concepts, modes and media to _______________ a considered response to texts.
Students study one prescribed text and a range of short texts that provide rich opportunities to further
explore representations of human experiences illuminated in texts. They make increasingly informed
_______________ about how aspects of these texts, for example context, purpose, structure,
_______________ and _______________ features, and form shape meaning. In addition, students select
one related text and draw from personal experience to make connections between themselves, the world of
the text and their _______________ _______________.
By _______________ and _______________ throughout the module students further develop a repertoire
of skills in comprehending, interpreting and analysing complex texts. They examine how different modes and
media use visual, verbal and/or digital _______________ elements. They communicate ideas (concepts you
are asked to investigate and discuss) using figurative language to express universal themes and evaluative
language to make informed judgements about texts. Students further develop skills (skills you need to
develop and display) in using _______________, correct grammar and syntax to analyse language and
express a personal perspective about a text.

Activity 1
1. Write the correct word in the spaces provided.

represent formulate world wider

experiences representations responding stylistic

language forms composing metalanguage

judgements grammatical modes culture

lives paradoxes media responder

2. Highlight or underline any words or sentences that are unclear and create a vocabulary bank to learn
terminology and meaning.
3. In your own words describe what you are required to do to meet the requirements of the course?
4. What aspects of human experiences are represented in texts?
5. How do texts represent these aspects of human experiences?
6. Why does the module statement invite us to delve into the concept of human experiences?
7. Identify techniques used by composers to make meaning and link them to the idea of representing in
the module statement.
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Reading the Module Statement
Following on from the cloze passage, the statement has been coloured coded to highlight the four key areas
you should be aware of in the rubric:

1. What I am learning about (concept)

2. Representation (texts)
3. Reader response
4. Composition

Texts and Human Experiences

In this common module students deepen their understanding of how texts represent individual and collective
human experiences. They examine how texts represent human qualities and emotions associated with, or
arising from, these experiences. Students appreciate, explore, interpret, analyse and evaluate the ways
language is used to shape these representations in a range of texts in a variety of forms, modes and media.

Students explore how texts may give insight into the anomalies, paradoxes and inconsistencies in human
behaviour and motivations, inviting the responder to see the world differently, to challenge assumptions,
ignite new ideas or reflect personally. They may also consider the role of storytelling throughout time to
express and reflect particular lives and cultures. By responding to a range of texts they further develop skills
and confidence using various literary devices, language concepts, modes and media to formulate a
considered response to texts.

Students study one prescribed text and a range of short texts that provide rich opportunities to further
explore representations of human experiences illuminated in texts. They make increasingly informed
judgements about how aspects of these texts, for example context, purpose, structure, stylistic and
grammatical features, and form shape meaning. In addition, students select one related text and draw from
personal experience to make connections between themselves, the world of the text and their wider world.

By responding and composing throughout the module students further develop a repertoire of skills in
comprehending, interpreting and analysing complex texts. They examine how different modes and media
use visual, verbal and/or digital language elements. They communicate ideas using figurative language to
express universal themes and evaluative language to make informed judgements about texts. Students
further develop skills in using metalanguage, correct grammar and syntax to analyse language and express a
personal perspective about a text.

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Breaking down the Module Statement
Below is a breakdown of the Common Module Statement. This section is aimed at showing you how to access
the common module and the conceptual ideas that underpin it.

“In this common module students deepen their understanding of how texts represent individual and
collective human experiences.”

The common module focuses on shared human experiences. As you read through the prescribed texts you
will be considering how composers represent individual and collective experiences in their works. You are
going to gain a clear understanding of how individual and collective human experiences are represented
through the techniques utilised by the composers. It is important to remember that as humans our
experiences more often unite us rather than divide us. For example, losing a loved one is both an individual
experience and a collective experience. We mourn as individuals, and we share the burden of loss with those
who make up the network of people who has passed on. It is important for you to remember that texts can
evoke emotional responses from us as well, and it is our individual and shared experiences that help us
understand how composers represent this idea in their works:

“Books can also provoke emotions. And emotions sometimes are even more troublesome than ideas.
Emotions have led people to do all sorts of things they later regret-like, oh, throwing a book at someone
else.”
― Pseudonymous Bosch, The Name of This Book Is Secret

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You must remember this common module is focused on representation. This will come up again later in this
section. For more information on the terms represent and representation you can refer to the NESA glossary
for Stage 6:
• Emotions: Emotions help us to act, to survive, strike and avoid danger, to make decisions, to
understand others. Moreover, they help other people to understand us.
• How: This generally requires you to examine the techniques used by composers to communicate
messages and ideas to responders.
• Human experiences: The almost limitless expanse of interactions and emotions we experience on our
journey between life and death.
• Human qualities: As implied in the title for the common module this is the focus, the most
complicated feature of it. Basically, this module is asking us to explore the question: “What makes us
human?” This is a question that has been contemplated throughout history by scholars without ever
reaching a clear or conclusive answer. Fundamentally, this means our analysis of “human qualities”
will be open to interpretation as the phrase itself is vague.
• Representation: The ways ideas are portrayed and represented in texts, using language devices,
forms, features and structures of texts to create specific views about characters, events and ideas.
Representation applies to all language modes – spoken, written, visual and multimodal.
• Representing: The language mode that involves composing images in visual or multimodal texts.
These images and their meaning are composed using codes and conventions. The term can include
such activities as graphically presenting the structure of a novel, making a film, composing a webpage,
or enacting a dramatic text.

“They examine how texts represent human qualities and emotions associated with, or arising from, these
experiences.”

Our common thread throughout this module is emotions. If we share a collective experience that is dominant
across cultures and societies, it is emotion. This best reflects human experiences and is easily accessible
through most texts. Emotions offer a foundation or starting point for us when we explore the more complex
ideas associated with collective experiences and human qualities:

“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret."
Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my
disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that
attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations
of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in
middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the
excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now
that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

You can find visual representations to help interpret emotional experiences you encounter in texts. For
example, this has been represented below in Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotion:

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 The wheel gives us a range of emotion as well as connecting those emotions to synonyms you can use in
your own writing. Study the wheel and become familiar with how the emotions are related and how they
can characterise a range of emotional responses. In this module you will be expected to understand the
importance of vocabulary. Being able to define human qualities and emotions will be necessary in your
responses:
• Faith, generosity, hope, optimism, trust
• Disbelief, doubt, scepticism, suspicion
• Anguish, bereavement, loneliness, suffering
• Awe, curiosity, shock, surprise
• Despair, distress, hopelessness, pessimism
• Elation, happiness, joy, love
A less theoretical approach to human qualities in this module is to brainstorm aspects of human behaviour
that are not categorized as human emotions and are more appropriately described as human behaviour and
motivations. As human we tend to:
• attain and exercise power or control
• build communities, forge relationships, foster trust
• exclude, include
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 • inspire others, instil fear in others
• rebel, exercise agency, fear or promote change
• procreate, survive
You will need to demonstrate your understanding for the consequences of human behaviour and
motivations on the reader:
• How texts and human experiences allow us to see the world differently
• Challenging our expectations about people and the world
• Acceptance of new ideas and diversity
• Understanding the importance of reflection
• Understanding the role of the storytelling across time
The universal nature of human qualities and behaviours allow us to access a range of human experiences
and to identify how composers can use these experiences as themes in their works. Remember to focus on
the common conceptions as they emerge in the works you are responding to ensure you are not
overwhelmed.1

“Students appreciate, explore, interpret, analyse and evaluate the ways language is used to shape these
representations in a range of texts in a variety of forms, modes and media.”

The common module will require you to develop a proficiency in analysis, comprehension and interpretation
so can identify patterns and structures within different genres, modes, and text types. This will require you
to understand a range of literary techniques and be able to construct your responses through an informed
understanding of the texts using appropriate control of language.

“Students study one prescribed text and a range of short texts that provide rich opportunities to further
explore representations of human experiences illuminated in texts.”

The common module requires you to study one prescribed text along with shorter texts that will be set by
your teacher. You will be required to study these texts and analyse how these texts represent human
experiences.

In addition, students select one related text and draw from personal experience to make connections
between themselves, the world of the text and their wider world.”

Based on your study of the prescribed text in class you will be required to select a piece of related material
of your own choosing. This is an excellent opportunity to choose a text you want to study rather than texts
being selected by your teacher or the faculty. You will be required to analyse this text and make connections
between the narratives and ideas of your texts. This will give you the chance to share how the text resonates
with you and reflect on your own experiences. You are expected to make connections between your
understandings of the texts as well as your experiences as an individual and the wider world.

“They examine how different modes and media use visual, verbal and/or digital language elements.”

You will be analysing and discussing texts from a range of mediums. As with previous modules, you will not
be studying texts from the same form or medium.

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Emily Bosco, IntoEnglish: Texts and Human Experiences, 2018
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 “In this common module students deepen their understanding of how texts represent individual and
collective human experiences. They examine how texts represent human qualities and emotions associated
with, or arising from, these experiences.”

“Students explore how texts may give insight into the anomalies, paradoxes and inconsistencies in human
behaviour and motivations.”

When you study the text, you will be engaging with the internal world of the text and the composer’s ideas
and understanding of human emotion, behaviour, and motivations. In your responses you will need to
address how you understand the way these are being presented in the text and what you have learned from
studying the text.
We need to explore the key terms in this part of the module statement before moving on:
• Anomaly: something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected
• Paradox: a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may
prove to be well founded or true; or a statement or proposition which, despite sound (or apparently
sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems logically unacceptable
or self-contradictory; or a person or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.
• Inconsistent: not staying the same throughout; or, not compatible or in keeping with.
By understanding these terms, you will also gain a deeper understanding of the contradictory nature of
human behaviour and motivations. By exploring anomalies, paradoxes, and inconsistencies in human nature
we gain a greater appreciation of human experiences and nature. You can think about how our emotions
and behaviour conflict with our morality and motivations.
Furthermore, you will need to understand the characters in your texts. You will need to be able to identify
patterns and structures (such as the hero’s journey) as well as character arcs and narrative arcs within the
text. Along with identifying the nature of the characters, and the patterns and structure within a text, you
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need to be able to compare and contrast your own emotional experience of reading the text through how
the composer positions you to feel and reflect on their work.

“They may also consider the role of storytelling throughout time to express and reflect particular lives and
cultures.”

Remember that texts are often stories that are retellings of past stories, and through appropriation are
transformed into new versions of these narratives. These metanarratives reveal to us how the transmission
of stories from culture to culture can maintain similar plots and events with only the characters changing
due to different cultural traditions. The hero’s journey is a good example of how humans share stories with
common features.
Myths and legends often share common plots and events. For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh is often cited
as an influence on the Flood Narrative in the Bible. The different cultural focus can reveal to us what was
important to that culture and if the event was more important than character, or vice versa. The hero’s
journey is a pattern that focuses on the individual while also revealing through those narratives what virtues
were the most significant.
For example, we can look at the journey of Ulysses (the Roman version of Odysseus) and the adaptation of
that mythological tale into the Coen Brother’s film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Everett Gill (George Clooney)
is trying to make his way home after being arrested and being forced into a chain-gang in the Depression-
era American South. This echoes the story of the hero Odyssey who journeyed home after the Trojan War.
Everett, along with Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson), must evade the Lotus Eaters
(performing baptisms in the river), Sirens (singing women who lure them in), the Cyclops (Big Dan, a one-
eyed villain played by John Goodman) so he can win back his wife Penelope (Penny, played by Holly Hunter).
A classic or great text will always impact the responder in some way. It is our role as students of English to
examine how new representations of human experience shapes a responder’s beliefs, assumptions, ideas
and even their understanding of themselves.

“Students appreciate, explore, interpret, analyse and evaluate the ways language is used to shape these
representations in a range of texts in a variety of forms, modes and media.”

You will be required to analyse texts and their content to show how composers represent human
experiences and structure their ideas. You will also be reading the text for key concepts, themes and
techniques used by the composer to shape meaning. This also states the action words you will become
familiar with throughout your senior studies in English:
• Analyse: Identify components and the relationship between them; draw out and relate implications
in a text.
• Appreciate: Make a judgement about the value of a text.
• Evaluate: Make a judgement based on a criterion; determine the value of a text.
• Explore: Examine or evaluate a text.
• Interpret: Draw meaning from a text.
• Mode: The various processes of communication: listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing and
representing. Modes are also used to refer to the semiotic (meaning-making) resources associated
with these communicative processes, for example sound, print, image and gesture.
• Media: Means of communication, for example print, digital. Plural of medium.

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 “Inviting the responder to see the world differently, to challenge assumptions, ignite ideas or reflect
personally.”

The responder, you, will be asked to focus on self-reflection. This means reflecting on the experiences you
have while reading the text and how it challenges your understanding about the world, others, and
yourself.

Reflective writing is:

• your response to experiences, opinions, events or new information
• your response to thoughts and feelings
• a way of thinking to explore your learning
• an opportunity to gain self-knowledge
• a way to achieve clarity and better understanding of what you are learning
• a chance to develop and reinforce writing skills
• a way of making meaning out of what you study

Reflective writing is not:

• just conveying information, instruction or argument
• pure description, though there may be descriptive elements
• straightforward decision or judgement (e.g. about whether something is right or wrong, good or
bad)
• simple problem-solving
• a summary of course notes
• a standard university essay2

“By responding to a range of texts they further develop skills and confidence using various literary devices,
language concepts, modes and media to formulate a considered response to texts.”

As you would expect from an English module you will be required to refine your skills and confidence
identifying and using form, language, structure and techniques in your own writing. It is important to
remember that you will be asked to create responses that may incorporate a variety of modes. This might
be a multimodal task and a reflection statement. You will require a greater mastery of language – writing in
variety of registers and using a range of techniques. This also means you are going to be analysing texts, but

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UNSW, Reflective Writing, 2018
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you’re going to do some composition of your own. You will be developing your own ability to represent your
ideas through your texts, much like the composers you are studying.

“Students study one prescribed text and a range of short texts that provide rich opportunities to further
explore representations of human experiences illuminated in texts. They make increasingly informed
judgements about how aspects of these texts, for example context, purpose, structure, stylistic and
grammatical features, and form shape meaning.”

You will also need to be able to think through why a composer has created their work in a specific way. For
example, why has the composer made the choice to write a poem in the ballad form. You need to understand
why composers use the process of composition and position the reader through their choices. You will have
one main, or prescribed, text that you will evaluate in-depth. Your understanding of the common module
will also be enhanced by your study of a selection of short texts. Key terms to remember while reading or
view are:
• Context: This is the setting within which a work of writing is situated. Literary context is background
information or circumstances you provide to inform why something is taking place; context can also
be the backstory of a character, provided to inform their behaviour and personality.
• Genre: Meaning ‘kind’ or ‘sort’ in French, it is a distinctive type or category of literary composition,
such as the epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, and short story.
• Purpose: This is the goal or aim of a piece of writing: to express oneself, to provide information, to
persuade, or to create a literary work. When someone communicates ideas in writing, they usually
do so to express themselves, inform their reader, to persuade a reader or to create a literary work.
• Structure: Structure means 'composed of parts' or 'the organization of something,' when referring to
literature. In its simplest form, we can think of literature as written material on a particular topic or
subject. The structure of literature can be described as the organizational method of the written
material.
• Stylistic Features: The ways in which aspects of texts (e.g., words, sentences, images) are arranged
and how they affect meaning. Examples of stylistic features are narrative viewpoint, structure of
stanzas, juxtaposition, nominalisation, alliteration, metaphor, and lexical choice.

“In addition, students select one related text and draw from personal experience to make connections
between themselves, the world of the text and their wider world.”

You are going to study a text related to human experience and one you may compare to your prescribed
text. If you require help choosing a related text, you can ask your teacher and read the suggested readings
below. Remember, as the common module is about human experience, nearly all texts are in some way
about it.

“They communicate ideas using figurative language to express universal themes and evaluate language to
make informed judgements about texts. Students further develop skills in using metalanguage, correct
grammar and syntax to analyse language and express a personal perspective about a text.”

You must be prepared to analyse and use figurative language in your responses. This means being able to
communicate complex ideas and abstract concepts through figurative language, metaphors and the use of
metalanguage.

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Activity 2
1. Choose three of the human experiences identified in Activity 1 and find three examples of texts that
explore each of these experiences. These texts can be books, films, poems, songs and so on. How can
these experiences be seen as universal? Can they be experienced individually and/or collectively?

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NESA Sample Paper 1
Paper 1 is based on the common module and includes
the following:
• It is 1 hour and 30 minutes long plus 10 minutes
reading time
• It has two sections: unseen texts and an
extended response
• There is no creative in Paper 1.
• It will be sat by English Advanced, English
Standard, and English Studies, but
• Only some sections of the Paper will be common
to the all levels of English
• It will be worth 40 marks.

Section 1
Section 1 is a short response section. It will include
several different questions totalling 20 marks.

There will be a series of unseen texts that students

must read and analyse in the 10 minutes reading
time. The texts in this section can be visual, prose
(both fiction and non-fiction), or poetry.
The texts for the HSC Sample Paper 1 include:
• Two film posters.
• The poem “Looking in the Album” by Vern Rutsala;
• An extract from Hillary McPhee’s autobiography Other People’s Words.
• An extract from Benjamin Law’s The Family Law.
• An extract from Neil Gaiman’s fantasy/horror novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Section 2
There will be between three and four questions (and possibly more). Two of these questions will be common
to both Standard and Advanced.
Section 2 is more conventional. It will contain an essay question for your text. The question may include a
stimulus and will possibly include an unseen text.
It might be the case that the question is specific to your text. The sample questions focus on ideas specific
to the text or techniques specific to the texts:

Example A (20 marks)

How has your understanding of the challenges of the human experience been shaped by the director’s use of
mise-en-scène in your prescribed text (Billy Elliot)?

Example B (20 marks)

Analyse how the representation of the natural environment shapes your understanding of family in Past the
Shallows.

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These questions will require a specific and detailed knowledge of your text. They will not be the kinds of
questions that you can memorise an essay for and recite on the day.

NESA has provided some generic criteria for a Band 6 response:

• Expresses deep understanding of complex ideas about human experiences represented in texts
• Presents a skilful response with detailed analysis of well-chosen textual references from the
prescribed text
• Writes a coherent and sustained response using language appropriate to audience, purpose and
context.

Unpacking these marking criteria, a Band 6 essay will require:

• You to demonstrate a detailed understanding of the Module and the complexities of human
experience. You must demonstrate your understanding of how these complex ideas are conveyed in
the text you have studied.
• Your response must be logically structured and systematically answer the question. Your choice of
evidence must be consistently relevant to the question. You must discuss your examples in detail and
convey their importance to your argument.
• You need to produce a sustained argument. A sustained argument requires you to answer the
question consistently and use signposting throughout to orientate your reader. Your response needs
to demonstrate exemplary mastery of grammar and spelling.

It is important to start thinking about essay responses and practising them early in the year.

Just because you might not have an essay task for the Common Module, doesn’t mean you can be
complacent. You will need to produce a Common Module essay for your Trial HSC and you’re going to need
to be on top of your short answer skills in readiness for unseen texts in both the Trial and HSC papers. 3

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Matrix Education, Part 1. Year 12 Common Module: Texts and Human Experiences, 2018
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NESA Sample Questions and Responses

NESA SAMPLE QUESTION 1

Example A (4 marks)
Use Text 1 to answer the question.
Compare how each of the two posters creates a sense of shared human experiences.

NESA SAMPLE TEXT ONE – POSTERS

NESA SAMPLE MARKING GUIDELINES

Criteria Marks
Compares skilfully how each text creates a sense of shared human experience 4
Compares how each text creates a sense of shared human experience 3
Describes a sense of shared human experience that is created in the texts 2
Provides some relevant information about the text(s) and/or human experience 1

NESA SAMPLE ANSWER

Both posters represent the idea that despite our diversity we are united in our capacity to share and receive
stories about our experiences through film. The Sydney Film Festival poster represents a collective emotional
experience through its composition of the multicoloured symmetric figures that fill the frame and this is
supported by the text, or tag-line, that reinforces a shared experience with the word ‘together’. The Miami
Film Festival poster centres the silhouette of a single figure with symbols of film reels revealing the interiority
of the individual, suggesting the power of film to express private thoughts that can be illuminating when
shared through stories. While the Sydney Film Festival image represents a collective experience and the
Miami Film Festival represents the personal experience, both suggest that telling stories through film is a
positive human experience.

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NESA SAMPLE TEXT TWO – POETRY
‘Looking in the Album’
Here the formal times are surrendered
to the camera’s indifferent gaze: weddings,
graduations, births and official portraits taken
every ten years to falsify appearances.
Even snapshots meant to gather afternoons
with casual ease are rigid. Smiles
are too buoyant. Tinny laughter echoes
from the staged scene on an artificial
beach. And yet we want to believe
this is how it was: The children’s hair
always bore the recent marks of combs;
that trousers, even at picnics, were always
creased and we travelled years with the light
but earnest intimacy of linked hands or arms
arranged over shoulders. This is the record
of our desired life: Pleasant, leisurely on vacations,
wryly comic before local landmarks, competent
auditors of commencement speakers, showing
in our poses that we believed what we were told.
But this history contains no evidence
of aimless nights when the wilderness of ourselves
sprang up to swallow the outposts of what
we thought we were. Nowhere can we see
tears provoked by anything but joy. There
are no pictures of our brittle, lost intentions.
We burned the negatives* that we felt did not give a true
account and with others made this abridgement of our lives.
VERN RUTSALA

NESA SAMPLE TEXT THREE – FICTION EXTRACT

First came her stories like webs across the world. They crisscrossed the Atlantic on steamers and the Rockies
by train. They made their way down dirt tracks where the scrub met overhead. They flew from Ben Lomond
in the Tasmanian Highlands, which we could see from her verandah, to Welsh farmhouses of dark stone. The
air would shiver slightly each time she began.
Once upon a time, when pigs were swine and monkeys chewed tobacco, there was a little girl who lived at
the foot of the mountains in the center of the universe at the bottom of the world...
The storyteller was my grandmother and the child was me. We came to her for stories ... Her stories were
vivid and shapely and we heard them again and again. In the night under the pine trees, her house creaked
and her stories invaded our dreams. Later I would catch something of their rhythms and word play in ballads
and sagas and know what a talented storyteller she was.
Then we took her for granted...
She was born in 1894, a beloved only child in a family with a little money or the myth of money from her
great-great-grandfather, a clergyman, who had invested during the early nineteenth century, surely
somewhat dubiously, in Welsh coal mines. Family portraits survive and hang in a Tasmanian dining room.

20 | P a g e
 I know I should check the facts. There is evidence to be weighed, archives to be searched, family members
still alive who knew her differently. There will be shipping lists and parish records, deeds and wills lodged in
three countries. The men I will find easily, labelled by their work and their bank balances, the buying and
selling of land, and of houses returned to at night. The women will have left less clear a mark on the record
but more of a mark on me, perhaps, and on all the children in between. There are some family papers,
recipes, photographs and a sampler in black cross-stitch done, my grandmother told me, by a child, my great-
great-great great-grandmother, during the Napoleonic wars when children were forbidden to use coloured
silks. Or so she said.
There were stories of unfeeling trustees and money withheld and unsuitable marriages when good looking
rogues took advantage of well-to-do widows – one of whom was my great grandmother. She seems to have
married an American twenty years her junior after my great grandfather died. This young man went into the
city of London every morning at ten but never told his wife what he did there. Perhaps she never asked.
When it was discovered that he’d been through all her money, he returned to America, never to be seen
again. Or so the story goes ...
The historian at the back of my brain says I should discover what is true and what is false, make a properly
considered account before it’s too late. The rest of me, the part that was shaped by the sense of myself at
the center of the universe at the bottom of the world, still sees, as if through certain cloud formations above
paddocks pale with tussocks, the shapes and shadows of other places she made my own.
I want to leave her and her stories be.
Hilary McPhee Adapted from Other People’s Words

NESA SAMPLE QUESTION 2

Example B (6 marks)
Use Text 2 and Text 3 to answer this question.
Compare how Text 2 and Text 3 explore the paradoxes in the human experience.

NESA SAMPLE MARKING GUIDELINES

Criteria Marks
Compares skillfully how the two texts explore the paradoxes in the human experience using 6
detailed, well-chosen supporting evidence
Compares how the two texts explore the paradoxes in the human experience using 4-5
appropriate supporting evidence
Describes how the texts explore the human experience with minimal supporting evidence 2-3
Provides some relevant information about the text(s) and/or human experience 1

NESA GUIDELINES FOR ANSWERS

• The accumulation of formal events such as ‘weddings, graduations, births and official portraits’ which
figuratively ‘falsify appearances’ highlights the artifice of their existence.
• The failure to acknowledge the paradoxes of life results in a failure to appreciate the human
experience in a holistic way, especially the metaphorical ‘wilderness of ourselves’ that cannot easily
be reconciled or understood. As such, the persona symbolically ‘burned the negatives’ that did not
align with what they desired their experience to be, resulting in the figurative ‘abridgement of our
lives’, implying that the persona felt fragmented, and the experience of their life had been lessened.
• Unlike the persona in the poem, the author of Text 3 recognises that it was her grandmother who
metaphorically ‘made a mark on me’ through her fantastical stories as established through the
intertextuality of the fact that she was ‘shaped by the sense of myself at the centre of the universe

21 | P a g e
 at the bottom of the world’, accentuating her embrace of the paradoxical nature of the human
experience as she ‘still sees, as if through certain cloud formations’.

NESA SAMPLE ANSWER

The human experience is multifaceted and can often be paradoxical. The response of individuals to the
paradoxes of life can be equally unpredictable, given the human desire to understand experiences. Rutsala’s
evocative poem, ‘Looking in the Album’, accentuates the challenges of confronting the paradoxical nature
of the human experience through the framing device of a photo album which highlights the desire of people
to curate their lives in a way that provides a desirable narrative. The passive voice in which ‘the formal times
are surrendered’ to the personified ‘indifferent gaze’ of the camera highlights the persona’s recognition of
the desire to control the representation of our experiences.
In contrast to Rutsala’s poem, the extract from Other People’s Words establishes how the writer embraces
the paradoxical and unexplainable nature of life and the qualities of the people who contribute to our lives.
McPhee tells the story of her grandmother and the stories she related to them that became an inextricable
part of her understanding of the world, shown through the simile of ‘first came her stories like webs across
the world’. The pervasive nature of these stories is rendered by the extended metaphor through which the
stories ‘crisscrossed the Atlantic’ and ‘flew from Ben Lomond’. However, the intertextuality of the beginning
of one of the stories, using the ‘Once upon a time’ archetype, accentuates their unreliability. The metaphor
of ‘there is evidence to be weighed’ echoes the human desire to achieve clarity as established in the poem
and avoid ambiguity in the face of the unreliability of oral stories, as exemplified through the repeated use
of qualifiers such as ‘or so she said’.

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English Studies, English Standard and English Advanced Paper 1 2020

HSC Paper 1 – 2019/2020 English Studies

Note: Due to copyright issues, stimulus has been drawn from the 2019 and 2020 papers. This means the
questions are examples from both exams and not a complete representation of either.

Text 1 – Book Cover

QUESTION 1
How does the book cover use visual techniques to communicate an idea about human experiences?

QUESTION 1
Criteria Marks
Explains effectively how visual techniques communicate an idea 3
Describes how visual techniques communicate an idea 2
Provides some relevant information about the image 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
The book cover to Community is communicating a sense of togetherness and belonging through our
connection to food by using a variety of visual techniques. A sense of abundance at a social gathering is
created through different colours and textures that are not uniform. For example, there are swirling brown
noodles and different coloured vegetables. Our sense of different people coming together to share food is
created by the fact that no two dishes or plates of food are the same. A sense of togetherness with food at
the centre is generated by an overhead shot that creates a vector of the chopsticks, spoon, fork, wooden
spoon and hands.

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Text 2 – Nonfiction Extract

QUESTION 2
(a) Why is ‘Reaching Out: messages of hope’ an appropriate title? (2)
(b) According to the extract, what is the value of sharing experiences? (3)

Mariah Kennedy was the 2013 UNICEF Australia Young Ambassador. She travelled to Cambodia as part of her role.

Reaching Out: messages of hope

In the past, dramatic change has come about as a result of the hard work, energy and passion of a single generation.
And we can do it too. It’s within our power to rewrite history and it’s exciting to be a part of a generation which can
achieve that. It all comes down to one question: do we care enough? If the answer is yes, then anything is possible. To
change the world, we don’t need a revolutionary leader, we don’t need a new scientific breakthrough and we don’t
need a miracle. We simply need each other . . . I met Pon, an eight-year-old girl living on the street, during a recent
trip to Cambodia. Every day after school, Pon would walk with her carton of flowers to the road where my hotel was
situated, to sell her wares to tourists. Her English was flawless, and I would often sit with her and we would chat, or
take a walk together through the crowded streets of Phnom Penh. It was during these times that I learned about Pon’s
life — the strict teachers at her school, the games she played with her friends during break-time, the friendly tuktuk*
drivers who would buy her ice-creams on Sundays, and the latest escapades of her three-year-old brother. We became
good friends. Evenings were our ‘special time’, spent racing each other down the street, playing ‘I Spy’ with local
shopkeepers, or working out cheating strategies for ‘Scissors, Paper, Rock’. At the end of my stay, it was difficult to
say goodbye. On my last night in Cambodia, I stood on the steps of the hotel, blinking back tears as Pon instructed me
to ‘Come back soon, and bring all your friends’. It was then that she handed me a single white flower and, standing on
tiptoes, whispered into my ear: ‘You and me, my friend. Together, we’re going to change the world.’ MARIAH KENNEDY

QUESTION 2 (a)
Criteria Marks
Explains why the title is appropriate for the text 2
Makes a relevant point about the title 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
‘Reaching Out: messages of hope’ is an appropriate title because Kennedy details the way in which her friend
Pon reached out to her with ‘Come back soon, and bring all your friends’. The messages of hope are clear in
this text with lines such as ‘anything is possible’ and ‘we’re going to change the world’.

QUESTION 2 (b)
Criteria Marks
Explains effectively how the writer shows the value of sharing 3 experiences 3
Describes how the writer shows the value of sharing experiences 2
Provides some relevant information 1

SAMPLE ANSWER:
The writer explains the value of sharing experiences through the childhood references to highlight the lasting
value of these experiences. Kennedy references games she and Pon played that helped develop their
friendship such as ‘I spy’ and ‘Scissors, Paper, Rock’. The playful tone created through ‘working out cheating
strategies’ highlights the value of their shared experience.

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Note: The question below is incomplete as the stimulus for Text 1 is not included in this document.

Text 1 and Text 2 — Feature Article Extract and Nonfiction

QUESTION 3
Extract In your view, which text depicts the most inspiring experience: the feature article extract or the
nonfiction extract?

QUESTION 3
Criteria Marks
Justifies effectively which text depicts the most inspiring experience 4
Justifies which text depicts the most inspiring experience 3
Describes an inspiring experience in a text/s 2
Makes a relevant point about a text 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
In my opinion, the feature article extract depicts a more inspiring experience because of what Scotty has
gone through in his life and his love of poetry. When Scotty says ‘I’ve been known as the Barefoot Poet since
I stopped wearing shoes at least 10 years ago’ it is an inspiring experience because it shows that Scotty is
unique and follows his own rules. The fact that he has ‘always loved poetry’ is uplifting as we can see how
poems have inspired him, especially when he says ‘I like Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson’. These are two
well-known bush poets who have influenced his life experiences.

Text 4 – Feature Article Extract

QUESTION 4
Explain how Look Alive encourages us to view the world?

I WAS WALKING down the street the other day We are always but not really on our way to
and I met a very small child. I was chatting with somewhere. Look back at any letter, email or
the child’s parent – a friend of mine – who had message thread from a friend when you were
stopped me as I dashed past, and we were doing updating them on your life and you will discover
the thing where we had to move our you were on your way somewhere but you were
conversation off the footpath so other people also exactly where you are now. Perhaps, then,
could pass. I realised, after a while, that I had not the secret is to be watching, always, the things
yet properly engaged with the little girl, so I asked that you’re seeing at the moment, enjoying them
her a question, which she answered in that way for what they are, rather than second-guessing
children have sometimes when speaking to adults what they might become. Small people (even the
as if to say: I will indulge your frankly dull intense wizard I met in the street) are very good
question with an answer, but mostly I shall watch at this. They run into a field and find hiding
your face with a look of mild disdain. I thought places, cubbies, swords and forts. They forget
perhaps this would be the end of it but then she about time and place and social mores*. So look
asked me something. ‘Pardon?’ I asked her and around.
watched a slight look of irritation cross her face. ‘I
said,’ she shouted up at me, ‘are you on the way ***
to somewhere?’

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Find the best thing and the worst thing and the thing. Doesn’t have to be a big thing. Doesn’t
thing you would find the hardest to even have to be a thing you care about, but there
explain to an alien… is always something. A person being nice to
someone in a supermarket. A song that takes you
Find the best view. somewhere else. A doughnut. A bath. Toast.

Can’t find a view? Tidy a desk. Wash a window. This is a Public Service Announcement: doesn’t
Rearrange a cutlery drawer… matter where you’re going, or what happens
next. There’s always toast… and a nice tidy desk.
Sometimes, where you are right now isn’t very LORIN CLARKE
nice at all. Sometimes it’s hard and sad and
confusing and frustrating. On those days: find a * mores: customs of a society or community

QUESTION 4
Criteria Marks
Explains effectively how Look Alive encourages us to view the world using detailed, well- 4
chosen supporting evidence
Explains how Look Alive encourages us to view the world using some supporting evidence 3
Describes how Look Alive encourages us to view the world 2
Makes relevant points about the text 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
The article Look Alive encourages audiences to view the world as somewhere we should appreciate ordinary,
everyday experiences. The encounter described at the beginning of the article, where she bumps into a
friend and her child, makes her stop and question herself and how she views the world. The question
prompted by the child, ‘Am I on the way to somewhere?’ which she turns into something rhetorical, launches
her into directing us to focus on being in the moment, rather than ‘second-guessing’ ourselves. The writer
wants us to see the world around us as something that is rich in significance and her use of short sentences
with directive verbs such as ‘Find’, ‘Tidy’, ‘Wash’ and ‘Rearrange’, encourages us to take action, as does her
use of the second person ‘you’. Ultimately, the writer wants us to view the world as something that we can
enjoy, as something that we can change by taking small, positive actions.

Text 5 – Prose Fiction Extract

QUESTION 5
Analyse the ways in which both individual and community experiences are represented in the text.

The Movie People

When the movie people left, the town grew sad. An air of disaster lingered in the stunned streets… There
was something shameful to it, like defeated virtue, and also something confidential, because people were
so in need of consolation they turned to each other with all their private burdens of ecstasy and despair.
There was at that time a run of extraordinary weather – as if the blank blue sky, the unshaded sun and the
minor, pleasurable breeze had all been arranged by the movie people. The weather lasted for the duration
of the filming and then began to turn, so that within a few weeks of the close of production, a stiff, mineral
wind had swept television aerials from roofs and disorganised the fragile root systems of more recently
26 | P a g e
imported shrubbery. My main sense of this time is as a period of collective mourning in which the
townspeople began to wear the clothes they had adopted as film extras and meet disconsolately on street
corners to re-enact their past happiness. I didn’t participate. I was happy the movie people had left. I was
overjoyed, in fact, to see no more trucks in the streets, no more catering vans in the supermarket parking
lot, no more microphones and boom lights standing in frail forests on corners or outside the town hall. The
main street of town had been closed to traffic for the filming, and now the townspeople were reluctant to
open it again. It’s a broad street lined with trees and old-fashioned gas lights (subtly electrified) and those
slim, prudish, Victorian storefronts that huddle graciously together like people in church, and as I rode down
the street on my scooter on those windy days after the movie people left, it struck me as looking more than
ever like the picturesque period town, frozen in the nineteenth century, that brought the movie to us in the
first place. I rode my scooter to the disgust of women in crinolines* with their hair braided and looped; men
in waistcoats and top hats; citizens of some elderly republic that had been given an unexpected opportunity
to sun itself in the wan** light of the twenty-first century. I knew these people as butchers, plumbers, city
commuters, waterers of thirsty lawns, walkers of imbecile dogs, washers of cars, postmen, and all the
women who had ever taught me in school. They were so bereft*** that they stayed in the street all day.
They eddied and flocked. Up the street, and then down again, as if they were following the same deep and
certain instinct that drives herring through the North Sea. They consulted fob watches and pressed
handkerchiefs to their sorrowful breasts. The wind blew out their hooped skirts and rolled the last of the
plastic recycling bins down the street and out into the countryside, where they nestled lifelessly together in
the scrub.
FIONA MCFARLANE

* crinolines: long dresses with hoops in the skirts

** wan: pale, weak
*** bereft: a feeling of loss

QUESTION 5
Criteria Marks
Analyses effectively the ways in which both individual and community experiences are 6
represented in the text using detailed, well-chosen supporting evidence
Analyses the ways in which both individual and community experiences are represented in 4-5
the text using some supporting evidence
Describes the ways in which both individual and community experiences are represented in 3-4
the text
Makes relevant points about the text 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
McFarlane makes a clear distinction between the community, who seem to be no more than faces in the
crowd, and the unnamed narrator, through the use of first-person perspective. The narrator clearly doesn’t
share the same perspective as the rest of the community and is ‘overjoyed’ at the departure of the movie
people. This sense of happiness is emphasised through the repetition of the phrase ‘no more’ in ‘no more
trucks’, ‘no more catering vans’, ‘no more microphones’, clearly outlining the narrator’s joy that the town is
no longer being used by the movie people.

In contrast, the community embraced the movie people, something reflected in the descriptions of their
behaviour when the visitors leave. The townsfolk ‘began to wear the clothes they had adopted as film

27 | P a g e
extras’ and are in a state of ‘collective mourning’. The sombre mood of the community after the movie
people leave is reflected in the emotive language of ‘the town grew sad’. Their confusion at having enjoyed
the experience of the movie people, but now being upset at their departure, is expressed in the paradox of
‘burdens of ecstasy and despair’ that community members carry around with them.

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HSC Paper 1 – 2020 English Standard

Text 1 – Feature Article Extract

QUESTION 1
Explain how Look Alive encourages us to view the world.

I WAS WALKING down the street the other day and Find the best thing and the worst thing and the
I met a very small child. I was chatting with the thing you would find the hardest to
child’s parent – a friend of mine – who had explain to an alien…
stopped me as I dashed past, and we were doing
the thing where we had to move our conversation Find the best view.
off the footpath so other people could pass. I
realised, after a while, that I had not yet properly Can’t find a view? Tidy a desk. Wash a window.
engaged with the little girl, so I asked her a Rearrange a cutlery drawer…
question, which she answered in that way children
have sometimes when speaking to adults as if to Sometimes, where you are right now isn’t very
say: I will indulge your frankly dull question with an nice at all. Sometimes it’s hard and sad and
answer, but mostly I shall watch your face with a confusing and frustrating. On those days: find a
look of mild disdain. I thought perhaps this would thing. Doesn’t have to be a big thing. Doesn’t even
be the end of it but then she asked me something. have to be a thing you care about, but there is
‘Pardon?’ I asked her and watched a slight look of always something. A person being nice to
irritation cross her face. ‘I said,’ she shouted up at someone in a supermarket. A song that takes you
me, ‘are you on the way to somewhere?’ somewhere else. A doughnut. A bath. Toast.

We are always but not really on our way to This is a Public Service Announcement: doesn’t
somewhere. Look back at any letter, email or matter where you’re going, or what happens next.
message thread from a friend when you were There’s always toast… and a nice tidy desk.
updating them on your life and you will discover LORIN CLARKE
you were on your way somewhere but you were
also exactly where you are now. Perhaps, then, the * mores: customs of a society or community
secret is to be watching, always, the things that
you’re seeing at the moment, enjoying them for
what they are, rather than second-guessing
what they might become. Small people (even the
intense wizard I met in the street) are very good at
this. They run into a field and find hiding places,
cubbies, swords and forts. They forget about time
and place and social mores*. So look around.

***

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QUESTION 1
Criteria Marks
Explains effectively how Look Alive encourages us to view the world using detailed, well- 4
chosen supporting evidence
Explains how Look Alive encourages us to view the world using some supporting evidence 3
Describes how Look Alive encourages us to view the world 2
Makes relevant points about the text 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
The article Look Alive encourages audiences to view the world as somewhere we should appreciate ordinary,
everyday experiences. The encounter described at the beginning of the article, where she bumps into a
friend and her child, makes her stop and question herself and how she views the world. The question
prompted by the child, ‘Am I on the way to somewhere?’ which she turns into something rhetorical, launches
her into directing us to focus on being in the moment, rather than ‘second-guessing’ ourselves. The writer
wants us to see the world around us as something that is rich in significance and her use of short sentences
with directive verbs such as ‘Find’, ‘Tidy’, ‘Wash’ and ‘Rearrange’, encourages us to take action, as does her
use of the second person ‘you’. Ultimately, the writer wants us to view the world as something that we can
enjoy, as something that we can change by taking small, positive actions.

Text 2 – Prose Fiction Extract

QUESTION 2
Analyse the ways in which both individual and community experiences are represented in the text.

The Movie People

When the movie people left, the town grew sad. An air of disaster lingered in the stunned streets… There
was something shameful to it, like defeated virtue, and also something confidential, because people were
so in need of consolation they turned to each other with all their private burdens of ecstasy and despair.
There was at that time a run of extraordinary weather – as if the blank blue sky, the unshaded sun and the
minor, pleasurable breeze had all been arranged by the movie people. The weather lasted for the duration
of the filming and then began to turn, so that within a few weeks of the close of production, a stiff, mineral
wind had swept television aerials from roofs and disorganised the fragile root systems of more recently
imported shrubbery. My main sense of this time is as a period of collective mourning in which the
townspeople began to wear the clothes they had adopted as film extras and meet disconsolately on street
corners to re-enact their past happiness. I didn’t participate. I was happy the movie people had left. I was
overjoyed, in fact, to see no more trucks in the streets, no more catering vans in the supermarket parking
lot, no more microphones and boom lights standing in frail forests on corners or outside the town hall. The
main street of town had been closed to traffic for the filming, and now the townspeople were reluctant to
open it again. It’s a broad street lined with trees and old-fashioned gas lights (subtly electrified) and those
slim, prudish, Victorian storefronts that huddle graciously together like people in church, and as I rode down
the street on my scooter on those windy days after the movie people left, it struck me as looking more than
ever like the picturesque period town, frozen in the nineteenth century, that brought the movie to us in the
first place. I rode my scooter to the disgust of women in crinolines* with their hair braided and looped; men
in waistcoats and top hats; citizens of some elderly republic that had been given an unexpected opportunity
to sun itself in the wan** light of the twenty-first century. I knew these people as butchers, plumbers, city
30 | P a g e
commuters, waterers of thirsty lawns, walkers of imbecile dogs, washers of cars, postmen, and all the
women who had ever taught me in school. They were so bereft*** that they stayed in the street all day.
They eddied and flocked. Up the street, and then down again, as if they were following the same deep and
certain instinct that drives herring through the North Sea. They consulted fob watches and pressed
handkerchiefs to their sorrowful breasts. The wind blew out their hooped skirts and rolled the last of the
plastic recycling bins down the street and out into the countryside, where they nestled lifelessly together in
the scrub.
FIONA MCFARLANE

* crinolines: long dresses with hoops in the skirts

** wan: pale, weak
*** bereft: a feeling of loss

QUESTION 2
Criteria Marks
Analyses effectively the ways in which both individual and community experiences are 6
represented in the text using detailed, well-chosen supporting evidence
Analyses the ways in which both individual and community experiences are represented in 4-5
the text using some supporting evidence
Describes the ways in which both individual and community experiences are represented in 3-4
the text
Makes relevant points about the text 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
McFarlane makes a clear distinction between the community, who seem to be no more than faces in the
crowd, and the unnamed narrator, through the use of first-person perspective. The narrator clearly doesn’t
share the same perspective as the rest of the community and is ‘overjoyed’ at the departure of the movie
people. This sense of happiness is emphasised through the repetition of the phrase ‘no more’ in ‘no more
trucks’, ‘no more catering vans’, ‘no more microphones’, clearly outlining the narrator’s joy that the town is
no longer being used by the movie people.

In contrast, the community embraced the movie people, something reflected in the descriptions of their
behaviour when the visitors leave. The townsfolk ‘began to wear the clothes they had adopted as film extras’
and are in a state of ‘collective mourning’. The sombre mood of the community after the movie people leave
is reflected in the emotive language of ‘the town grew sad’. Their confusion at having enjoyed the experience
of the movie people, but now being upset at their departure, is expressed in the paradox of ‘burdens of
ecstasy and despair’ that community members carry around with them.

Text 3 – Internet Article and Text 4 – Illustration

From On Writing: authors reveal the secrets of their craft

Ideas for things come into one’s head, or bits of ideas; you feel there’s something – there’s some meat on
the bone, there’s something there that lures you on. The more you think about it the more you’re led into
this new world and the more of that world you see. And part of having an idea is having some notion of how
you would tell the story… and the idea for the way to tell the story helps you to see what the story is. The
story suggests the means, the means suggests the story; it’s mutually dependent. And you don’t have very

31 | P a g e
much choice in the matter. Ideas come, characters suggest themselves, and the nature of the story and the
nature of the characters dictates how it’s going to be done.

I suppose if people are not writers or painters or whatever they see the life of the artist as being one of great
freedom, but it’s not really; it’s as constrained as anyone else’s by the material that’s available. The thing
seems to have some kind of reality in one’s head; it seems to be something that one is discovering, rather
than inventing. I see that as a kind of psychological trick on oneself, because the whole point about fiction is
that it’s invention. It doesn’t really seem like it at the time – it seems as if you are slowly discovering
something that already exists and seeing how the different parts of it relate to each other.
MICHAEL FRAYN
Text 2 — Illustration © Guardian News and Media Ltd, 2021

Illustration by JULIE PASCHKIS from Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People by Monica Brown

QUESTION 3
How do these texts use a variety of language forms and features to communicate ideas about being creative?

QUESTION 3
Criteria Marks
Explains effectively how the texts use a variety of language forms and features to 5
communicate ideas about being creative using detailed, well-chosen supporting evidence
Explains how the texts use a variety of language forms and features to communicate ideas 4
about being creative using some supporting evidence
Describes how both texts use a variety of language forms and features to communicate ideas 3
about being creative
Describes in a minimal way how the text(s) use some language forms and features to 2
communicate ideas about being creative
Makes a relevant point about being creative with limited use of one text 1

32 | P a g e
SAMPLE ANSWER
These texts use a variety of language forms and features to communicate ideas about how being creative
not only requires dedication, effort and being open to the world, but also brings joy and satisfaction through
the act of creating. For example, Frayn’s clear, almost practical voice details how writers are ‘lured on’ by
ideas that come into their heads. Frayn conveys the idea that being creative requires hard work by describing
how it is not a life of ‘great freedom’. He details being receptive to ideas that arrive, to ‘characters [who]
suggest themselves’ through the metaphor of being ‘led into this new world’. Frayn sees the act of being
creative through the analogy of discovery – which he sees as something very different to the act of invention:
being creative means discovering what is already there, following it and acting on it. The illustration, with its
symbols of the bird and pencil, highlights how art and creativity bring freedom and joy to individuals. The
journey of creativity, with its sense of discovering rich new ideas and unknown aspects of the world, is
depicted in the illustration through the sea of flowing, poetic words that keeps the smiling, content writer
afloat. The creativity that is evident in this illustration by Julie Paschkis captures the joy that comes from the
act of creating something vibrant, fresh and joyful.

Text 5 – Poem

QUESTION 4
How does the poem explore the power of storytelling?

It Begins with Darkness Soon everyone is laughing – they’re smiling

People file into the room, find their seats, and nodding and taking in every move my son
fill up the air with chatter. The stage makes.
is bare except for a leather couch
and a lamp on a chrome and bakelite* stand. I’ve never been to a play before. It’s not
It’s meant to be an old factory converted boilermaking, not the flying sparks from an arc
to an apartment – exposed pipes, a ceiling welder**,
fit for a cathedral, polished oak floorboards. not the precision required for a submarine hull,
A man dressed in black makes an announcement nor the relief of taking off your helmet,
about mobile phones. The lights go down. gloves and apron and enjoying the coolness
I don’t know what I’m doing here, of a harbour breeze as you eat your lunch
I just know that this is theatre, my son an actor. but it is, I guess, a different kind of trade.
I watch more and it all happens before my eyes
I hear his voice before I see him. It’s as loud and I can see that he loves this lady,
as the wind swatting at a loose sheet of corrugated everyone can see it and I want to say, ‘Son,
iron what are you afraid of?’ I want to reach out
on the chook shed. When he comes on stage and lift him up as I did when he was two
he swears five times in the first minute, years old, riding a supermarket trolley
all in the presence of a lady. I’ve a good mind and screaming as if he’d just discovered
to go down and slap him about the face, the power of his lungs. But I can’t touch him now
except that I’m sitting right in the middle of the or even talk to him and I have this feeling
row that it will turn out badly, like the week you have
and it wouldn’t be easy getting past all those the numbers in Lotto, but forget to buy the ticket.
knees. The stage is dark again and he’s not swearing now
Then I remember that he’s pretending and the lady’s really pleased to see him
to be someone else, that this is his job now. and she burns this scrap of paper and it flares up,
33 | P a g e
bright and yellow in the darkness and transfixes us, for as long as it burns.
and the flame flickers across his forehead ANDY KISSANE
and I glimpse in my son’s face the unmistakable Reproduced by permission
features of my father who is ten years dead.
Although the three of us won’t ever meet again, * bakelite: an early form of plastic used to make
I’m sure Dad would have loved this – a story electrical equipment
that takes a whole evening in the telling ** arc welder: arc welding is a process that is used
and a small fire that leaps and glows to join metal to metal

QUESTION 4
Criteria Marks
Explains effectively how the poem explores the power of storytelling using detailed, well- 5
chosen supporting evidence
Explains how the poem explores the power of storytelling using well-chosen supporting 4
evidence
Describes how the poem explores the power of storytelling using some supporting evidence 2-3
Makes relevant points about the power of storytelling in the poem 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
Andy Kissane’s poem, It Begins with Darkness details a father’s first encounter with his son’s performance
as an actor, using images of light and darkness to depict the transformative effect the evening has on the
father. The first stanza establishes the theatre as a place of storytelling and the father’s sense of dislocation
and displacement through ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,/I just know that this is theatre, my son an
actor.’ The father is characterised through his depiction as a ‘boilermaker’ whose experience is in ‘the flying
sparks from an arc welder’ but who recognises his son’s performance is ‘a different kind of trade.’ However,
Kissane gradually removes the father’s sense of dislocation through highlighting the effect his son’s
performance – and the story being told on stage – has on him. He moves from wanting to ‘go down and slap
him about the face’ because of his swearing to wanting to ‘reach out/and lift him up as I did when he was
two’. The final image of the burning scrap of paper illuminating his son’s face and revealing the
‘unmistakable/features of my father who is ten years dead’ creates a powerful resolution that binds the
three generations of men together through a ‘story/that takes a whole evening in the telling.’

34 | P a g e
HSC Paper 1 – 2020 English Advanced

Text 1 – Internet Article and Text 2 – Illustration

QUESTION 1
How do these texts use a variety of language forms and features to communicate ideas about being creative?

From On Writing: authors reveal the secrets of their craft

Ideas for things come into one’s head, or bits of ideas; you feel there’s something – there’s some meat on
the bone, there’s something there that lures you on. The more you think about it the more you’re led into
this new world and the more of that world you see. And part of having an idea is having some notion of how
you would tell the story… and the idea for the way to tell the story helps you to see what the story is. The
story suggests the means, the means suggests the story; it’s mutually dependent. And you don’t have very
much choice in the matter. Ideas come, characters suggest themselves, and the nature of the story and the
nature of the characters dictates how it’s going to be done.

I suppose if people are not writers or painters or whatever they see the life of the artist as being one of great
freedom, but it’s not really; it’s as constrained as anyone else’s by the material that’s available. The thing
seems to have some kind of reality in one’s head; it seems to be something that one is discovering, rather
than inventing. I see that as a kind of psychological trick on oneself, because the whole point about fiction is
that it’s invention. It doesn’t really seem like it at the time – it seems as if you are slowly discovering
something that already exists and seeing how the different parts of it relate to each other.
MICHAEL FRAYN
Text 2 — Illustration © Guardian News and Media Ltd, 2021

Illustration by JULIE PASCHKIS from Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People by Monica Brown

35 | P a g e
QUESTION 1
Criteria Marks
Explains effectively how the texts use a variety of language forms and features to 5
communicate ideas about being creative using detailed, well-chosen supporting evidence
Explains how the texts use a variety of language forms and features to communicate ideas 4
about being creative using some supporting evidence
Describes how both texts use a variety of language forms and features to communicate ideas 3
about being creative
Describes in a minimal way how the texts use some language forms and features to 2
communicate ideas about being creative
Makes a relevant point about being creative with limited use of one text 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
These texts use a variety of language forms and features to communicate ideas about how being creative
not only requires dedication, effort and being open to the world, but also brings joy and satisfaction through
the act of creating. For example, Frayn’s clear, almost practical voice details how writers are ‘lured on’ by
ideas that come into their heads. Frayn conveys the idea that being creative requires hard work by describing
how it is not a life of ‘great freedom’. He details being receptive to ideas that arrive, to ‘characters [who]
suggest themselves’ through the metaphor of being ‘led into this new world’. Frayn sees the act of being
creative through the analogy of discovery – which he sees as something very different to the act of invention:
being creative means discovering what is already there, following it and acting on it. The illustration, with its
symbols of the bird and pencil, highlights how art and creativity bring freedom and joy to individuals. The
journey of creativity, with its sense of discovering rich new ideas and unknown aspects of the world, is
depicted in the illustration through the sea of flowing, poetic words that keeps the smiling, content writer
afloat. The creativity that is evident in this illustration by Julie Paschkis captures the joy that comes from the
act of creating something vibrant, fresh and joyful.

Text 3 – Poem
QUESTION 2
How does the poem explore the power of storytelling?

It Begins with Darkness as the wind swatting at a loose sheet of corrugated

People file into the room, find their seats, iron
fill up the air with chatter. The stage on the chook shed. When he comes on stage
is bare except for a leather couch he swears five times in the first minute,
and a lamp on a chrome and bakelite* stand. all in the presence of a lady. I’ve a good mind
It’s meant to be an old factory converted to go down and slap him about the face,
to an apartment – exposed pipes, a ceiling except that I’m sitting right in the middle of the
fit for a cathedral, polished oak floorboards. row
A man dressed in black makes an announcement and it wouldn’t be easy getting past all those
about mobile phones. The lights go down. knees.
I don’t know what I’m doing here, Then I remember that he’s pretending
I just know that this is theatre, my son an actor. to be someone else, that this is his job now.
Soon everyone is laughing – they’re smiling
I hear his voice before I see him. It’s as loud

36 | P a g e
and nodding and taking in every move my son the numbers in Lotto, but forget to buy the ticket.
makes. The stage is dark again and he’s not swearing now
and the lady’s really pleased to see him
I’ve never been to a play before. It’s not and she burns this scrap of paper and it flares up,
boilermaking, not the flying sparks from an arc bright and yellow in the darkness
welder**, and the flame flickers across his forehead
not the precision required for a submarine hull, and I glimpse in my son’s face the unmistakable
nor the relief of taking off your helmet, features of my father who is ten years dead.
gloves and apron and enjoying the coolness Although the three of us won’t ever meet again,
of a harbour breeze as you eat your lunch I’m sure Dad would have loved this – a story
but it is, I guess, a different kind of trade. that takes a whole evening in the telling
I watch more and it all happens before my eyes and a small fire that leaps and glows
and I can see that he loves this lady, and transfixes us, for as long as it burns.
everyone can see it and I want to say, ‘Son, ANDY KISSANE
what are you afraid of?’ I want to reach out Reproduced by permission
and lift him up as I did when he was two
years old, riding a supermarket trolley * bakelite: an early form of plastic used to make
and screaming as if he’d just discovered electrical equipment
the power of his lungs. But I can’t touch him now ** arc welder: arc welding is a process that is used
or even talk to him and I have this feeling to join metal to metal
that it will turn out badly, like the week you have

QUESTION 2
Criteria Marks
Explains effectively how the poem explores the power of storytelling using detailed, well- 5
chosen supporting evidence
Explains how the poem explores the power of storytelling using well-chosen supporting 4
evidence
Describes how the poem explores the power of storytelling using some supporting evidence 2-3
Makes relevant points about the power of storytelling in the poem 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
Andy Kissane’s poem, It Begins with Darkness details a father’s first encounter with his son’s performance
as an actor, using images of light and darkness to depict the transformative effect the evening has on the
father. The first stanza establishes the theatre as a place of storytelling and the father’s sense of dislocation
and displacement through ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,/I just know that this is theatre, my son an
actor.’ The father is characterised through his depiction as a ‘boilermaker’ whose experience is in ‘the flying
sparks from an arc welder’ but who recognises his son’s performance is ‘a different kind of trade.’ However,
Kissane gradually removes the father’s sense of dislocation through highlighting the effect his son’s
performance – and the story being told on stage – has on him. He moves from wanting to ‘go down and slap
him about the face’ because of his swearing to wanting to ‘reach out/and lift him up as I did when he was
two’. The final image of the burning scrap of paper illuminating his son’s face and revealing the
‘unmistakable/features of my father who is ten years dead’ creates a powerful resolution that binds the
three generations of men together through a ‘story/that takes a whole evening in the telling.’

37 | P a g e
Text 4 — Nonfiction extract

QUESTION 3
Explain how this text examines the human experience of laughter.

On Laughter
Laughter is a universal phenomenon, which is not to say a uniform one. In an essay entitled ‘The Difficulty of
Defining Comedy’, Samuel Johnson remarks that though human beings have been wise in many different
ways, they have always laughed in the same way, but this is surely doubtful. Laughter is a language with a
host of different idioms: cackling, chortling, grunting, chuckling, shrieking, bellowing, screaming, sniggering,
gasping, shouting, braying, yelping, snickering, roaring, tittering, hooting, guffawing, snorting, giggling,
howling, screeching and so on. It can come in blasts, peals, gales, gusts, ripples or torrents, blaring,
trumpeting, trickling, swirling or piercing. There are also different ways of smiling, from beaming, smirking
and sneering to grinning, leering and simpering. Smiling is visual and laughter primarily aural… In fact, most
of the forms of laughter I have just listed have little or nothing to do with humour. Laughter may be a sign
of high spirits rather than amusement, though you are more likely to think things funny if you are feeling
euphoric in the first place. Physical modes and emotional attitudes can be combined in a variety of ways, so
that you can titter nervously or derisively, bray genially or aggressively, giggle with surprise or delight, cackle
appreciatively or sardonically and so on.
TERRY EAGLETON
Extract from Humour
Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear

QUESTION 3
Criteria Marks
Explains effectively how this text examines laughter using detailed, well-chosen supporting 4
evidence
Explains how this text examines laughter using some supporting evidence 3
Describes how this text examines laughter 2
Makes relevant points about laughter 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
In On Laughter, Eagleton examines how the human reaction of laughter is something that has a language of
its own, how it is remarkably fluid, lacks uniformity and can be completely divorced from humour. He
paraphrases Samuel Johnson to initialise his thesis, disagreeing with the statement that humans ‘have always
laughed in the same way’, accumulating an extensive list of adjectives to detail the many different ways in
which humans laugh – ‘cackling, chortling, grunting … screeching and so on.’ This almost exhaustive list is
also designed to amuse and engage our senses through detailing the wonderful variety of ways that people
laugh.

Eagleton’s distinction between smiling as a visual mode and laughter as an aural mode is designed to
communicate the complex reactions humans have to a complex world. His short piece concludes with
examples of how one way of describing a person’s laugh can be performed by a person in two completely
different ways. He combines the verb ‘bray’ with two opposing adverbs, ‘genially’ and ‘aggressively’, to
demonstrate how difficult it is to pin down the way the language of laughter works.

38 | P a g e
Text 5 – Prose Fiction Extract

QUESTION 4
Analyse the ways this text represents the relationship between identity and place.

QUESTION 4
Criteria Marks
Analyses effectively how thetext reveals the relationship between identity and place using 6
detailed, well-chosen supporting evidence
Analyses how the text reveals the relationship between identity and place using well-chosen 4-5
supporting evidence
Describes how the text reveals the relationship between identity and place using some 2-3
supporting evidence
Makes relevant points about the text 1

SAMPLE ANSWER
Throughout this extract from Carpentaria, Alexis Wright establishes the complex relationship between
identity and place juxtaposing the everyday and the supernatural using Normal ‘an old tribal man’ who lives
in a ‘foreign infestation on the edge of Desperance’.

Wright details the relationship between identity and place through the connection Normal has with sea and
sky that has been passed down to him by his ancestors, a connection that allows him to ‘grab hold of the
river in his mind and live with it as his father’s fathers did before him’. This spiritual connection with land,
combined with an ability to run off into the night ‘trying to catch stars’ is something Wright describes to
ensure Normal’s identity is connected with both the present and the past.

While Wright’s use of third person narrative has the potential to distance us from Normal, it also allows her
to shift the point of view so that we see him from a number of different perspectives – through the eyes of
the Pricklebush mob, the people of the town of Desperance and the eyes of ‘everyone’. Wright uses this
third person perspective to give us a wider view of how people view Normal as he drives ‘north to meet the
river’s edge’. It also allows her to focus in on the places that we have heard about, but no-one else has gone
to: ‘his gun pointing all over the place in a turmoil of water … until he made a direct hit between the eyes of
the reptile caught in an instant of moonlight’.

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Selected Readings
Below are sample readings that can be used to introduce and discuss the common module.

The Human Condition (All)

By Colin Welch
What is the human condition? What we call the “human condition” is an important part of our understanding
of literature. In the eyes of critics – especially in film and literature – a text is considered as significant – and
not merely disposable pulp – if the author tries to describe or explore this “human condition”.
Essentially, the human condition is defined as the "characteristics, key events, and situations which compose
the essentials of human existence, such as birth, growth, emotionality, aspiration, conflict and mortality.”
These encounters and experiences mark us as a species, and we will likely all face them at some point in our
lives. Thus, any discussion of the human condition is a concern for human nature, human society and how
we live our lives. One of literature's central concerns is to comment on these issues and it may be more
effective at exploring the human condition than psychology or philosophy.
If you are asked to make a theme statement about a piece of writing, the easiest way to identify a theme is
to look for some challenges and emotions within the human condition. Look for common problems that any
person – you included – might face sometime in his or her life. Many of the themes explored are universal
themes – an idea that applies to anyone regardless of cultural differences, or geographic location – that make
most texts enduring in nature, such as William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet or Ernest Hemmingway’s The
Old Man and the Sea.
What kind of issues connected to human nature, human society or how we live our lives are we talking
about? This can be ambiguous and not as easy to define as it can mean many different things!

****

The conceptual focus of the common module is human qualities and what makes up these qualities. What
makes us human has been debated and explored throughout history and remains the topic of modern texts
– in drama, film, literature, and philosophy. Philosophers and writers have contemplated this idea
traditionally and their answers are seldom clear. This means the answer is ambiguous and open to
interpretation, allowing us to explore this topic through human emotion, ideas, language, memory, reason,
thought and even the soul. To understand human nature in more depth, read through the links below to
expand your knowledge of the ideas presented behind what makes us human:
• https://www.biopsychology.org/biopsychology/papers/what_is_emotion.htm
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language
• http://www.textetc.com/theory/chomskian-linguistics.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Grammatology
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/practical-reason/
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/soul-religion-and-philosophy
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115296/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum
You also need to consider how we see ourselves as humans. From an anthropological point of view, we
have models based on our evolutionary pathways:

40 | P a g e
 • Noam Chomsky in his Chomskian Model emphasised that the defining characteristics of humanity
throughout our evolution as being our opposable thumbs and our capacity for complex ideas and
thought.
• On the other hand, Richard Leakey in his Continuity Model disagrees to an extent, emphasising our
capacity for sophisticated language and the transmission of these ideas as being the defining
characteristic of humanity.
• In both models it is recognised that humans are born with little to no instincts, we rely on heavily on
aggregated social structures, long-term nurturing and mentorship, complex social restraints and
prohibitions.
Other scholars have argued that our imagination and our ability to see the “big picture” have defined us as
a species and are integral to what makes us human. Religions have emphasised our emotions (especially our
ability to love and forgive) as evidence of the soul (our spiritual self) as what defines humans as human.
Modern psychology attempts to understand what makes us human through the scientific study of the human
mind and its functions, especially consciousness and how we behave.
It is also important to remember that English is often dominated by Western culture and philosophy, and
these have been given priority primarily through the texts and thought behind the English syllabus. The
predominance of the Christian creed and ideals should not occlude our use of Eastern ideas and philosophies
about what makes us human. Cultural and religious perspectives, through socio-religious beliefs such as
Brahmanism and Buddhism, also search for an understanding about what are our essential qualities.
We can also look to ancient and modern philosophers in their exploration of “What makes us human?”
Plato and Aristotle wrote about human nature, especially the human soul. Modern philosophers such as
Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and John Dewey continue this tradition of thought and searching for
the truth about our inherent qualities and nature. The answers gleaned from philosophy have often been
ambiguous and unsatisfying, leaving the question open for future generations:
• https://owlcation.com/humanities/Key-Concepts-of-the-Philosophy-of-Plato
• https://owlcation.com/humanities/Key-Concepts-of-the-Philosophy-of-Aristotle
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Dewey#ref133789
Modern literature continues to explore the concept of humanity and what makes us human through texts
such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick or Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.

Activity 3
1. What do the following quotes reveal about human experience:
• “I think that music, being an expression of the human heart, or of the human being itself, does express
just what is happening - the whole of human experience at the particular time that it is being
expressed.” – John Coltrane
• "If you and I go through a small town and if you are hungry, you will notice pizza places, donut shops
and restaurants and if I go through the town, with a strange sound in my engine, I will notice repair
shops and gas stations. You and I really went through different towns." – Ram Dass
• “Throughout the human experience people have read history because they felt that it was a pleasure
and that it was in some way instructive. The profession of professor of history has taken it in a very
different direction.” – Donald Kagan

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 • “Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going
too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.” – D.H. Lawrence
• “Fiction seeks to represent human experience as it is lived and as it reverberates in our hopes, fears,
dreams, and memories. So much of our lives are internal. The art of fiction has claimed - more than
anything else - this internal ground as its own.” – Varley O’Connor
• “We have listened here to the delegates who have recalled the terrible human suffering, and the great
material destruction of the late war in the Pacific. It is with feelings of sorrow that we recall the part
played in that catastrophic human experience by the old Japan.” – Shigeru Yoshida
2. In groups choose one of the following philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Søren Kirkegaard, Friedrich
Nietzsche or John Dewey. You have thirty minutes to research the philosopher’s theories on human
experiences and qualities. Your group will give a three-minute presentation (minimum) on your chosen
philosopher.

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The Human Experience (All)
By Angelo Lorenzo
Long before human civilization started in this world, stories are found among the constellations, beneath
the depths of the oceans, and within the woodland realm. Long before language was invented, stories were
told and engraved upon stone tablets and wall carvings. Long before humans began to know how to read
and write with the words that our ancestors created, literature already existed.
Literature is the foundation of humanity’s cultures, beliefs, and traditions. It serves as a reflection of reality,
a product of art, and a window to an ideology. Everything that happens within a society can be written,
recorded in, and learned from a piece of literature. Whether it be poetry or prose, literature provides insight,
knowledge or wisdom, and emotion towards the person who partakes it entirely.
Life is manifested in the form of literature. Without literature, life ceases to exist. It is an embodiment of
words based on human tragedies, desires, and feelings. It cultivates wonders, inspires a generation, and
feeds information. Even though it is dynamic, endless, and multi-dimensional, literature contributes
significant purposes to the world we live in.

Literature in History
Literature is present during the era of the ancient world. Even without the invention of words and language,
literature was already manifested in the earliest human civilizations. Carvings and paintings on walls inside
caves of stone give evidence about the lives of prehistoric people. They explain their way of life.
Literature is also a tool for the foundation of a religion. The Holy Bible, one of the oldest written scriptures,
is a compilation of tales, beliefs, and accounts that teach about Christianity (for both the Old and the New
Testament) and about Judaism (for some selected books in the Old Testament). Within a span of more than
a thousand years from the Prophet Moses to the Apostle Paul, the Bible was written by numerous authors
believed to be inspired by God’s divine wisdom and tries to explain about the mysteries of life as well as
setting rules for one’s personal faith. The same goes with the Qur’an for Muslims, Torah for the Jews, and
the Bhagavad-Gita, Ramayana and Veda for the Hindus.
Literature explains human values. The works of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle (the most famous Greek
philosophers) contain virtues that promote perfection to a society if only human beings have the willingness
to uphold and practice them. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave speaks about the importance of human wisdom
and the penalties that one would face to achieve a higher level of understanding. Through these
philosophers’ contributions to literature, not only did they craft an artistic convergence of words, but
exposed logic and ideas as well.

Literature in Revolution
Literature is an instrument of revolution. Political turmoil, societal injustice, and genocidal conquest can all
be ended and resolved in the form of literature. A writer can be a warrior with his words as his weapon. He
can be a revolutionist by writing a literary piece that exploits corruption in his nation yet fosters development
for his fellow countrymen. Not all revolutions have to be fought in blood.
In Europe, Martin Luther, the German monk most famous for the reformation of the Christian church during
the Renaissance Era, nailed his 95 Theses on the door of a cathedral to inform the townspeople about the
Roman Catholic Church’s corruption of riches and tithes. Although he was excommunicated eventually
because of this mere and blasphemous attempt of protest, the Christian church was then divided into two
sectors: Catholicism and Protestantism. Victor Hugo, a notable French writer, gave us a vivid view of the
French Revolution in his novel, Les Miserables and an epitome of French romantic literature in The
Hunchback of Notre Dame. Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who was a victim of the Holocaust during the reign of
Hitler in Nazi Germany, was only an innocent youth when she wrote a diary that details her life and struggles
43 | P a g e
as a captive during that time. The diary became known as The Diary of a Young Girl and was one of the most
read books in the twentieth century, with the readers sympathising the victims of the genocide geared
towards the Jews in the Second World War.
In America, the novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet-Beecher Stowe, and the memoir, 12 Years a Slave by
Solomon Northup, spoke about the cruelties and the hardships of the Negro slaves in the southern states.
These books gained attention and eventually ignited the Civil War that paved the way to the abolition of
slavery and the freedom of the African American people. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech, I Have a
Dream contains the revolutionist’s desire for a new America – a country filled with liberty, not only for the
Whites but for the Blacks as well. With courageous effort and an ambitious zeal, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote
his speech and recited it in front of the masses during the Civil Rights Era (1960’s). Another cultural revolution
that happened in the late 1960’s made possible the transition of conservativism to modernization in societal
norms when the Hippie Movement was practiced. John Lennon’s song, Imagine, basically tells us about the
philosophy of the hippie community – make love not war.
In my motherland, the Philippines, or national hero, Jose Rizal, was a revolutionist as well as a writer. He
wrote novels that aimed to threaten the Spanish Empire during the colonization of the Philippines by Spain.
His best works, Noli Me Tangere and its corresponding sequel, El Filibusterismo, were two of the many
revolutionary tools that contributed to my country’s independence from Spain. Both of which didn’t involve
violence and bloodshed. They were pieces of literature.
In addition to being a tool for revolution, literature can also be a device for adoration to a nation. It can do
so much for one’s own country. Numerous poems, songs, sonnets, ballads, and odes were written by famous
writers as manifestations of their love and patriotism towards their own country. A national anthem, with its
sole purpose to praise a nation, is a form of literature. A national anthem is a lyrical verse. Not only does it
praise the country, it also emphasizes its beauty, acknowledges its history, and signifies its majesty.

Literature in the Modern Era

Literature in the present generation still exists as an expression of art, a source of knowledge, and an
instrument of entertainment. Books are being read seriously by readers who crave for information and
recreationally by those who are passionate in exploring their imagination. Literature kindles new ideas. It
gives voice to the people who want to express their opinions about certain things in life – whether it be in
politics, health, religion, and the like. Literature is the heart of songs, rhythmic and harmonious pieces that
give message and inspiration to people. Films are visual representations of literature; they give life and action
to the words written on a page. Magazines, newspapers, the television, the radio, and even the internet
contain literature. It is found everywhere and anywhere. The power of literature affects all of us. It is
complex, intergenerational, and long-lasting.
Literature is found in the beginning of all things; this is what I am truly certain about. It continues to live
throughout the ages. It connects human beings and mirrors reality in an artistic way, in a profound value. As
long as our world lives, so does literature flourish.

Activity 4

1. Does Angelo Lorenzo support each point with evidence or opinion?

2. Identify features of the writing and provide examples (e.g. allusion, rhetorical questions, simple
sentences, emotive language etc.). Why do you think Lorenzo used these and what effect do they have
on your response?
3. Regardless of personal feelings about the article, what is the most compelling argument by Lorenzo?
Why?
4. What do you think influences the widely different experiences these authors had in the article?
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I Am Very Real (All)
By Kurt Vonnegurt

In October of 1973, Bruce Severy — a 26-year-old English teacher at Drake High School, North Dakota —
decided to use Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, as a teaching aid in his classroom. The next
month, on November 7th, the head of the school board, Charles McCarthy, demanded that all thirty-two
copies be burned in the school's furnace because of its “obscene language.” Other books soon met with the
same fate.

On the 16th of November, Kurt Vonnegut sent McCarthy the following letter. He didn't receive a reply.

Source: Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage; Image: Kurt Vonnegut, via Everything was Vonnegut.

November 16, 1973

Dear Mr. McCarthy:

I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American
writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to
me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing
this letter to let you know how real I am.

I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news
from Drake. We are not clapping each other on the back, crowing about all the books we will sell because of
the news. We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages, have granted
no lengthy interviews. We are angered and sickened and saddened. And no copies of this letter have been
sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the
people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of their children and then in
the eyes of the world. Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or
will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?

I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers,
too, as being sort of rat-like people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I
am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with
tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them
are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned
whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted with
young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and
the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker
at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other
living American fiction writer.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they
are not sexy, and do not argue in favour of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more
45 | P a g e
responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people
speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most
sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much.
They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our
right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our
community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in
an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even
your own children are entitled to call you that.

I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what
you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow
Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this
that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations
which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your
community, not merely your own.

If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you
exercise your powers over the education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten
lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books–books you
hadn’t even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in
order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.

Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.

Kurt Vonnegut

Activity 5
1. What was the reason behind Charles McCarthy’s demand to burn all thirty-two copies of
Slaughterhouse-Five in the school’s furnace? How does banning books impact our view of books and our
engagement with literature?
2. This would not be the first time a book has been banned in schools. Why do we ban certain books? What
does this infer about our societies?
3. How does Kurt Vonnegut respond to the accusation that his work is “evil,” and why does he find it
insulting?
4. What does Kurt Vonnegut emphasize about his own background and character to counter the negative
perceptions of him as a writer?
5. Why does Kurt Vonnegut believe it is important for communities like Drake to allow all ideas to circulate
freely, even if they disagree with certain books or opinions?

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47 | P a g e
Seaton’s Aunt (English Advanced)
By Walter de la Mare
I had heard rumours of Seaton's Aunt long before I actually encountered her. Seaton, in the hush of
confidence, or at any little show of toleration on our part, would remark, "My aunt," or "My old aunt, you
know," as if his relative might be a kind of cement to an entente cordiale.
He had an unusual quantity of pocket−money; or, at any rate, it was bestowed on him in unusually large
amounts; and he spent it freely, though none of us would have described him as an "awfully generous chap."
"Hullo, Seaton," we would say, "the old Begum?" At the beginning of term, too, he used to bring back
surprising and exotic dainties in a box with a trick padlock that accompanied him from his first appearance
at Gummidge's in a billy−cock hat to the rather abrupt conclusion of his schooldays.
From a boy's point of view he looked distastefully foreign, with his yellow skin, and slow chocolate−coloured
eyes, and lean weak figure. Merely for his looks he was treated by most of us true−blue Englishmen with
condescension, hostility, or contempt. We used to call him "Pongo," but without any much better excuse for
the nickname than his skin. He was, that is, in one sense of the term what he assuredly was not in the other
sense—a sport.
Seaton and I, as I may say, were never in any sense intimate at school; our orbits only intersected in class. I
kept deliberately aloof from him. I felt vaguely he was a sneak, and remained quite unmollified by advances
on his side, which, in a boy's barbarous fashion, unless it suited me to be magnanimous, I haughtily ignored.
We were both of us quick−footed, and at Prisoner's Base used occasionally to hide together.
And so I best remember Seaton—his narrow watchful face in the dusk of a summer evening, his peculiar
crouch, and his inarticulate whisperings and mumblings. Otherwise he played all games slackly and limply;
used to stand and feed at his locker with a crony or two until his "tuck" gave out; or waste his money on
some outlandish fancy or other. He bought, for instance, a silver bangle, which he wore above his left elbow,
until some of the fellows showed their masterly contempt of the practice by dropping it nearly red−hot down
his back.
It needed, therefore, a rather peculiar taste, a rather rare kind of schoolboy courage and indifference to
criticism, to be much associated with him. And I had neither the taste nor, perhaps, the courage. None the
less, he did make advances, and on one memorable occasion went to the length of bestowing on me a whole
pot of some outlandish mulberry−coloured jelly that had been duplicated in his term's supplies. In the
exuberance of my gratitude I promised to spend the next half−term holiday with him at his aunt's house.
I had clean forgotten my promise when, two or three days before the holiday, he came up and triumphantly
reminded me of it.
"Well, to tell you the honest truth, Seaton, old chap——" I began graciously; but he cut me short. "My aunt
expects you," he said; "she is very glad you are coming. She's sure to be quite decent to you, Withers."
I looked at him in sheer astonishment; the emphasis was so uncalled for. It seemed to suggest an aunt not
hitherto hinted at, and a friendly feeling on Seaton's side that was far more disconcerting than welcome.
We reached his home partly by train, partly by a lift in an empty farm−cart, and partly by walking. It was a
whole−day holiday, and we were to sleep the night; he lent me extraordinary nightwear, I remember. The
village street was unusually wide and was fed from a green by two converging roads, with an inn, and a high
green sign at the corner. About a hundred yards down the street was a chemist's shop—a Mr. Tanner's. We
descended the two steps into his dusky and odorous interior to buy, I remember, some rat poison. A little
beyond the chemist's was the forge. You then walked along a very narrow path, under a fairly high wall,
nodding here and there with weeds and tufts of grass, and so came to the iron garden−gates, and saw the
high, flat house behind its huge sycamore. A coach−house stood on the left of the house, and on the right a
gate led into a kind of rambling orchard. The lawn lay away over to the left again, and at the bottom (for the
whole garden sloped gently to a sluggish and rushy pond−like stream) was a meadow.
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 We arrived at noon, and entered the gates out of the hot dust beneath the glitter of the dark−curtained
windows. Seaton led me at once through the little garden−gate to show me his tadpole pond, swarming with
what (being myself not in the least interested in low life) I considered the most horrible creatures—of all
shapes, consistencies and sizes, but with whom Seaton seemed to be on the most intimate of terms. I can
see his absorbed face now as he sat on his heels and fished the slimy things out in his sallow palms. Wearying
at last of these pets, we loitered about awhile in an aimless fashion. Seaton seemed to be listening, or at any
rate waiting, for something to happen or for someone to come. But nothing did happen and no one came.
That was just like Seaton. Anyhow, the first view I got of his aunt was when, at the summons of a distant
gong, we turned from the garden, very hungry and thirsty, to go in to luncheon. We were approaching the
house when Seaton suddenly came to a standstill. Indeed, I have always had the impression that he plucked
at my sleeve. Something, at least, seemed to catch me back, as it were, as he cried, "Look out, there she is!"
She was standing at an upper window which opened wide on a hinge, and at first sight she looked an
excessively tall and overwhelming figure. This, however, was mainly because the window reached all but to
the floor of the bedroom. She was in reality rather an under−sized woman, in spite of her long face and big
head. She must have stood, I think, unusually still, with eyes fixed on us, though this impression may be due
to Seaton's sudden warning and to my consciousness of the cautious and subdued air that had fallen on him
at sight of her. I know that, without the least reason in the world, I felt a kind of guiltiness, as if I had been
"caught." There was a silvery star pattern sprinkled on her black silk dress, and even from the ground I could
see the immense coils of her hair and the rings on her left hand which was held fingering the small jet buttons
of her bodice. She watched our united advance without stirring, until, imperceptibly, her eyes raised and lost
themselves in the distance, so that it was out of an assumed reverie that she appeared suddenly to awaken
to our presence beneath her when we drew close to the house.
"So this is your friend Mr. Smithers, I suppose?" she said, bobbing to me. "Withers, aunt," said Seaton.
"It's much the same," she said, with eyes fixed on me. "Come in, Mr. Withers, and bring him along with
you." She continued to gaze at me—at least, I think she did so. I know that the fixity of her scrutiny and her
ironical "Mr" made me feel peculiarly uncomfortable. None the less she was extremely kind and attentive to
me, though, no doubt, her kindness and attention showed up more vividly against her complete neglect of
Seaton. Only one remark that I have any recollection of she made to him: "When I look on my nephew, Mr.
Smithers, I realise that dust we are, and dust shall become. You are hot, dirty, and incorrigible, Arthur."
She sat at the head of the table, Seaton at the foot, and I, before a wide waste of damask tablecloth, between
them. It was an old and rather close dining−room, with windows thrown wide to the green garden and a
wonderful cascade of fading roses. Miss Seaton's great chair faced this window, so that its rose−reflected
light shone full on her yellowish face and on just such chocolate eyes as my schoolfellow's, except that hers
were more than half−covered by unusually long and heavy lids.
There she sat, steadily eating, with those sluggish eyes fixed for the most part on my face; above them stood
the deep−lined fork between her eyebrows; and above that the wide expanse of a remarkable brow beneath
its strange steep bank of hair. The lunch was copious, and consisted, I remember, of all such dishes as are
generally considered too rich and too good for the schoolboy digestion—lobster mayonnaise, cold game
sausages, an immense veal and ham pie faced with eggs, truffles, and numberless delicious flavours; besides
kickshaws, creams, and sweetmeats. We even had wine, a half−glass of old darkish sherry each.
Miss Seaton enjoyed and indulged an enormous appetite. Her example and natural schoolboy voracity soon
overcame my nervousness of her, even to the extent of allowing me to enjoy to the best of my bent so rare
a spread. Seaton was singularly modest; the greater part of his meal consisted of almonds and raisins, which
he nibbled surreptitiously and as if he found difficulty in swallowing them.
I don't mean that Miss Seaton "conversed" with me. She merely scattered trenchant remarks and now and
then twinkled a baited question over my head. But her face was like a dense and involved accompaniment
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to her talk. She presently dropped the "Mr," to my intense relief, and called me now Withers, or Wither, now
Smithers, and even once towards the close of the meal distinctly Johnson, though how on earth my name
suggested it, or whose face mine had reanimated in memory, I cannot conceive.
"And is Arthur a good boy at school, Mr. Wither?" was one of her many questions. "Does he please his
masters? Is he first in his class? What does the reverend Dr. Gummidge think of him, eh?"
I knew she was jeering at him, but her face was adamant against the least flicker of sarcasm or facetiousness.
I gazed fixedly at a blushing crescent of lobster.
"I think you're eighth, aren't you, Seaton?"
Seaton moved his small pupils towards his aunt. But she continued to gaze with a kind of concentrated
detachment at me.
"Arthur will never make a brilliant scholar, I fear," she said, lifting a dextrously−burdened fork to her wide
mouth…"
After luncheon she proceeded me up to my bedroom. It was a jolly little bedroom, with a brass fender and
rugs and a polished floor, on which it was possible, I afterwards found, to play "snowshoes." Over the
washstand was a little black−framed water−colour drawing, depicting a large eye with an extremely fishlike
intensity in the spark of light on the dark pupil; and in "illuminated" lettering beneath was printed very
minutely, "Thou God, Seest ME," followed by a long looped monogram, "S.S.," in the corner. The other
pictures were all of the sea: brigs on blue water; a schooner overtopping chalk cliff; a rocky island of
prodigious steepness, with two tiny sailors dragging a monstrous boat up a shelf of beach.
"This is the room, Withers, my brother William died in when a boy. Admire the view!” I looked out of the
window across the tree−tops. It was a day hot with sunshine over the green fields, and the cattle were
standing swishing their tails in the shallow water. But the view at the moment was only exaggeratedly vivid
because I was horribly dreading that she would presently enquire after my luggage, and I had not brought
even a toothbrush. I need have had no fear. Hers was not that highly−civilised type of mind that is stuffed
with sharp, material details. Nor could her ample presence be described as in the least motherly.
"I would never consent to question a schoolfellow behind my nephew's back," she said, standing in the
middle of the room, "but tell me, Smithers, why is Arthur so unpopular? You, I understand, are his only close
friend." She stood in a dazzle of sun, and out of it her eyes regarded me with such leaden penetration beneath
their thick lids that I doubt if my face concealed the least thought from her. "But there, there," she added
very suavely, stooping her head a little, "don't trouble to answer me. I never extort an answer. Boys are
queer fish. Brains might perhaps have suggested his washing his hands before luncheon; but—not my choice,
Smithers. God forbid! And now, perhaps, you would like to go into the garden again. I cannot actually see
from here, but I should not be surprised if Arthur is now skulking behind that hedge."
He was. I saw his head come out and take a rapid glance at the windows.
"Join him, Mr. Smithers; we shall meet again, I hope, at the tea−table. The afternoon I spend in retirement."
Whether or not, Seaton and I had not been long engaged with the aid of two green switches in riding round
and round a lumbering old grey horse we found in the meadow, before a rather bunched−up figure appeared,
walking along the field−path on the other side of the water, with a magenta parasol studiously lowered in
our direction throughout our slow progress, as if that were the magnetic needle and we the fixed Pole.
Seaton at once lost all nerve in his riding. At the next lurch of the old mare's heels he toppled over in the
grass, and I slid off the sleek broad back to join him where he stood, rubbing his shoulder and sourly watching
the rather pompous figure till it was out of sight.
"Was that your aunt, Seaton?" I enquired; but not till then. He nodded. "Why didn't she take any notice of
us, then?"
"She never does."
"Why not?"
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 "Oh, she knows all right, without; that's the dam awful part of it." Seaton was about the only fellow at
Gummidge's who ever had the ostentation to use bad language. He had suffered for it too. But it wasn't, I
think, bravado. I believe he really felt certain things more intensely than most of the other fellows, and they
were generally things that fortunate and average people do not feel at all—the peculiar quality, for instance,
of the British schoolboy's imagination.
"I tell you, Withers," he went on moodily, slinking across the meadow with his hands covered up in his
pockets, "she sees everything. And what she doesn't see she knows without."
"But how?" I said, not because I was much interested, but because the afternoon was so hot and tiresome
and purposeless, and it seemed more of a bore to remain silent. Seaton turned gloomily and spoke in a very
low voice.
"Don't appear to be talking of her, if you wouldn't mind. It's—because she's in league with the devil." He
nodded his head and stooped to pick up a round flat pebble. "I tell you", he said, still stooping, "you fellows
don't realise what it is. I know I'm a bit close and all that. But so would you be if you had that old hag listening
to every thought you think."
I looked at him, then turned and surveyed one by one the windows of the house, "Where's your father?" I
said awkwardly.
"Dead, ages and ages ago, and my mother too; she's not my aunt by right."
"What is she, then?"
"I mean she's not my mother's sister, because my grandmother married twice; and she's one of the first lot.
I don't know what you call her; anyhow she's not my real aunt."
"She gives you plenty of pocket−money."
Seaton looked steadfastly at me out of his flat eyes. "She can't give me what's mine. When I come of age
half the whole lot will be mine; and what's more"—he turned his back on the house—"I'll make her hand
over every blessed shilling of it."
I put my hands in my pockets and stared at Seaton; "Is it much?"
He nodded.
"Who told you?" He got suddenly very angry; a darkish red came into his cheeks, his eyes glistened, but he
made no answer, and we loitered listlessly about the garden until it was time for tea…
Seaton's aunt was wearing an extraordinary kind of lace jacket when we sidled sheepishly into the
drawing−room together. She greeted me with a heavy and protracted smile, and bade me bring a chair close
to the little table.
"I hope Arthur has made you fed at home," she said, as she handed me my cup in her crooked hand. "He
don't talk much to me; but then I'm an old woman. You must come again, Wither, and draw him out of his
shell. You old snail!" She wagged her head at Seaton, who sat munching cake and watching her intently.
"And we must correspond, perhaps." She nearly shut her eyes at me. "You must write and tell me everything
behind the creature's back." I confess I found her rather disquieting company. The evening drew on. Lamps
were brought in by a man with a nondescript face and very quiet footsteps. Seaton was told to bring out the
chessmen.
And we played a game, she and I, with her big chin thrust over the board at every move as she gloated over
the pieces and occasionally croaked "Check!"—after which she would sit back inscrutably staring at me. But
the game was never finished. She simply hemmed me defencelessly in with a cloud of men that held me
impotent, and yet one and all refused to administer to my poor flustered old king a merciful coup de grâce.
"There," she said as the clock struck ten—"a drawn game, Withers. We are very evenly matched. A very
creditable defence, Withers. You know your room. There's supper on a tray in the dining−room. Don't let the
creature over−eat himself. The gong will sound three−quarters of an hour before a punctual breakfast." She
held out her cheek to Seaton, and he kissed it with obvious perfunctoriness. With me she shook hands.
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 "An excellent game," she said cordially, "but my memory is poor, and"—she swept the pieces helter-skelter
into the box—"the result will never be known." She raised her great head far back.
"Eh?"
It was a kind of challenge, and I could only murmur: "Oh, I was absolutely in a hole, you know!" when she
burst out laughing and waved us both out of the room.
Seaton and I stood and ate our supper, with one candlestick to light us, in a corner of the dining−room.
"Well, and how would you like it?" he said very softly, after cautiously poking his head round the doorway.
"Like what?"
"Being spied on—every blessed thing you do and think?"
"I shouldn't like it at all," I said, "if she does."
"And yet you let her smash you up at chess!"
"I didn't let her!" I said, indignantly.
"Well, you funked it, then."
"And I didn't funk it either," I said; "she's so jolly clever with her knights." Seaton stared fixedly at the candle.
"You wait, that's all," he said slowly. And we went upstairs to bed.
I had not been long in bed, I think, when I was cautiously awakened by a touch on my shoulder. And there
was Seaton's face in the candlelight—and his eyes looking into mine.
"What's up?" I said, rising quickly to my elbow.
"Don't scurry," he whispered, "or she'll hear. I'm sorry for waking you, but I didn't think you'd be asleep so
soon."
"Why, what's the time, then?" Seaton wore, what was then rather unusual, a night−suit, and he hauled his
big silver watch out of the pocket in his jacket.
"It's a quarter to twelve. I never get to sleep before twelve—not here." "What do you do, then?"
"Oh, I read and listen." "Listen?"
Seaton stared into his candle−flame as if he were listening even then. "You can't guess what it is. All you
read in ghost stories, that's all rot. You can't see much, Withers, but you know all the same."
"Know what?"
"Why, that they're there."
"Who's there?" I asked fretfully, glancing at the door.
"Why, in the house. It swarms with 'em. Just you stand still and listen outside my bedroom door in the
middle of the night. I have, dozens of times; they're all over the place."
"Look here, Seaton," I said, "you asked me to come here, and I didn't mind chucking up a leave just to oblige
you, and because I'd promised; but don't get talking a lot of rot, that's all, or you'll know the difference when
we get back."
"Don't fret," he said coldly, turning away. "I shan't be at school long. And what's more, you're here now,
and there isn't anybody else to talk to. I'll chance the other."
"Look here, Seaton," I said, "you may think you're going to scare me with a lot of stuff about voices and all
that. But I'll just thank you to clear out; and you may please yourself about pottering about all night."
He made no answer; he was standing by the dressing−table looking across his candle into the looking−glass;
he turned and stared slowly round the walls.
"Even this room's nothing more than a coffin. I suppose she told you—'It's exactly the same as when my
brother William died'—trust her for that! And good luck to him, say I. Look at that." He raised his candle close
to the little watercolour I have mentioned. "There's hundreds of eyes like that in this house; and even if God
does see you, He takes precious good care you don't see Him. And it's just the same with them. I tell you
what, Withers, I'm getting sick of all this. I shan't stand it much longer."

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 The house was silent within and without, and even in the yellowish radiance of the candle a faint silver
showed through the open window on my blind. I slipped off the bedclothes, wide awake, and sat irresolutely
on the bedside.
"I know you're only guying me," I said angrily, "but why is the house full of—what you say? Why do you
hear—what you do hear? Tell me that, you silly fool!" Seaton sat down on a chair and rested his candlestick
on his knee. He blinked at me calmly.
"She brings them," he said, with lifted eyebrows. "Who? Your aunt?"
He nodded. "How?"
"I told you," he answered pettishly. "She's in league. You don't know. She as good as killed my mother; I
know that. But it's not only her by a long chalk. She just sucks you dry. I know.
And that's what she'll do for me; because I'm like her—like my mother, I mean. She simply hates to see me
alive. I wouldn't be like that old she−wolf for a million pounds. And so"—he broke off, with a comprehensive
wave of his candlestick—"they're always here. Ah, my boy, wait till she's dead! She'll hear something then, I
can tell you. It's all very well now, but wait till then! I wouldn't be in her shoes when she has to clear out—
for something. Don't you go and believe I care for ghosts, or whatever you like to call them. We're all in the
same box. We're all under her thumb."
He was looking almost nonchalantly at the ceiling at the moment, when I saw his face change, saw his eyes
suddenly drop like shot birds and fix themselves on the cranny of the door he had just left ajar. Even from
where I sat I could see his colour change; he went greenish. He crouched without stirring, simply fixed.
And I, scarcely daring to breathe, sat with creeping skin, simply watching him. His hands relaxed, and he
gave a kind of sigh.
"Was that one?" I whispered, with a timid show of jauntiness. He looked round, opened his mouth, and
nodded. "What?" I said. He jerked his thumb with meaningful eyes, and I knew that he meant that his aunt
had been there listening at our door cranny.
"Look here, Seaton," I said once more, wriggling to my feet. "You may think I'm a jolly noodle; just as you
please. But your aunt has been civil to me and all that, and I don't believe a word you say about her, that's
all, and never did. Every fellow's a bit off his pluck at night, and you may think it a fine sport to try your
rubbish on me. I heard your aunt come upstairs before I fell asleep. And I'll bet you a level tanner she's in
bed now. What's more, you can keep your blessed ghosts to yourself. It's a guilty conscience, I should think."
Seaton looked at me curiously, without answering for a moment. "I'm not a liar, Withers; but I'm not going
to quarrel either. You're the only chap I care a button for; or, at any rate, you're the only chap that's ever
come here; and it's something to tell a fellow what you feel. I don't care a fig for fifty thousand ghosts,
although I swear on my solemn oath that I know they're here. But she"— he turned deliberately—"you laid
a tanner she's in bed, Withers; well, I know different.
She's never in bed much of the night, and I'll prove it, too, just to show you I'm not such a nolly as you think
I am. Come on!"
"Come on where?"
"Why to see!"
I hesitated. He opened a large cupboard and took out a small dark dressing−gown and a kind of
shawl−jacket. He threw the jacket on the bed and put on the gown. His dusky face was colourless, and I could
see by the way he fumbled at the sleeves he was shivering. But it was no good showing the white feather
now. So I threw the tasselled shawl over my shoulders and, leaving our candle brightly burning on the chair,
we went out together and stood in the corridor.
"Now then, listen!" Seaton whispered.
We stood leaning over the staircase. It was like leaning over a well, so still and chill the air was all around
us. But presently, as I suppose happens in most old houses, began to echo and answer.in my ears a medley
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of infinite small stirrings and whisperings. Now out of the distance an old timber would relax its fibres, or a
scurry die away behind the perishing wainscot. But amid and behind such sounds as these I seemed to begin
to be conscious, as it were, of the lightest of footfalls, sounds as faint as the vanishing remembrance of voices
in a dream. Seaton was all in obscurity except his face; out of that his eyes gleamed darkly, watching me.
"You'd hear, too, in time, my fine soldier," he muttered. "Come on!"
He descended the stairs, slipping his lean fingers lightly along the balusters. He turned to the right at the
loop, and I followed him barefooted along a thickly−carpeted corridor. At the end stood a door ajar and from
here we very stealthily and in complete blackness ascended five narrow stairs. Seaton, with immense
caution, slowly pushed open a door, and we stood together looking into a great pool of duskiness, out of
which, lit by the feeble clearness of a night−light, rose a vast bed. A heap of clothes lay on the floor; beside
them two slippers dozed, with noses each to each, two yards apart. Somewhere a little clock ticked huskily.
There was a rather close smell of lavender and eau de cologne, mingled with the fragrance of ancient sachets,
soap, and drugs. Yet it was a scent even more peculiarly commingled than that.
And the bed! I stared warily in; it was mounded gigantically, and it was empty.
Seaton turned a vague pale face, all shadows: "What did I say?" he muttered. "Who's—who's the fool now,
I say? How are we going to get back without meeting her, I say? Answer me that!
Oh, I wish to goodness you hadn't come here, Withers."
He stood visibly shivering in his skimpy gown, and could hardly speak for his teeth chattering.
And very distinctly, in the hush that followed his whisper, I heard approaching a faint unhurried voluminous
rustle. Seaton clutched my arm, dragged me to the right across the room to a large cupboard, and drew the
door close to on us. And presently, as with bursting lungs I peeped out into the long, low, curtained bedroom,
waddled in that wonderful great head and body. I can see her now, all patched and lined with shadow, her
tied−up hair (she must have had enormous quantities of it for so old a woman), her heavy lids above those
flat, slow, vigilant eyes. She just passed across my ken in the vague dusk; but the bed was out of sight.
We waited on and on, listening to the clock's muffled ticking. Not the ghost of a sound rose up from the
great bed. Either she lay archly listening or slept a sleep serener than an infant's. And when, it seemed, we
had been hours in hiding and were cramped, chilled, and half suffocated, we crept out on all fours, with
terror knocking at our ribs, and so down the five narrow stairs and back to the little candle−lit blue−and−gold
bedroom.
Once there, Seaton gave in. He sat livid on a chair with closed eyes.
"Here," I said shaking his arm, "I'm going to bed; I've had enough of this foolery; I'm going to bed." His lips
quivered, but he made no answer. I poured out some water into my basin and, with that cold pictured azure
eye fixed on us, bespattered Seaton's sallow face and forehead and dabbled his hair. He presently sighed and
opened fish−like eyes.
"Come on!" I said. "Don't get shamming, there's a good chap. Get on my back if you like, and I'll carry you
into your bedroom."
He waved me away and stood up. So, with my candle in one hand, I took him under the arm and walked
him along according to his direction down the corridor. His was a much dingier room than mine, and littered
with boxes, paper, cages, and clothes. I huddled him into bed and turned to go. And suddenly—I can hardly
explain it now—a kind of cold and deadly terror swept over me. I almost ran out of the room, with eyes fixed
rigidly in front of me, blew out my candle, and buried my head under the bedclothes.
When I awoke, roused not by a gong, but by a long−continued tapping at my door, sunlight was raying in
on cornice and bedpost, and birds were singing in the garden. I got up, ashamed of the night's folly, dressed
quickly, and went downstairs. The breakfast−room was sweet with flowers and fruit and honey. Seaton's
aunt was standing in the garden beside the open French windows, feeding a great flutter of birds. I watched
her for a moment, unseen. Her face was set in a deep reverie beneath the shadow of a big loose sunhat. It
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was deeply lined, crooked, and, in a way I can't describe, fixedly vacant and strange. I coughed, and she
turned at once with a prodigious smile to enquire how I had slept. And in that mysterious way by which we
learn each other's secret thoughts without a sentence spoken I knew that she had followed every word and
movement of the night before, and was triumphing over my affected innocence and ridiculing my friendly
and too easy advances.
We returned to school, Seaton and I, lavishly laden, and by rail all the way. I made no reference to the
obscure talk we had had, and resolutely refused to meet his eyes or to take up the hints he let fall. I was
relieved—and yet I was sorry—to be going back, and strode on as fast as I could from the station, with Seaton
almost trotting at my heels. But he insisted on buying more fruit and sweets—my share of which I accepted
with a very bad grace. It was uncomfortably like a bribe; and, after all, I had no quarrel with his rum old aunt,
and hadn't really believed half the stuff he had told me.
I saw as little of him as I could after that. He never referred to our visit or resumed his confidences, though
in class I would sometimes catch his eyes fixed on mine, full of a mute understanding, which I easily affected
not to understand. He left Gummidge's, as I have said, rather abruptly, though I never heard of anything to
his discredit. And I did not see him or have any news of him again till by chance we met one summer
afternoon in the Strand.
He was dressed rather oddly in a coat too large for him and a bright silky tie. But we instantly recognised
one another under the awning of a cheap jeweller's shop. He immediately attached himself to me and
dragged me off, not too cheerfully, to lunch with him at an Italian restaurant nearby. He chattered about our
old school, which he remembered only with dislike and disgust; told me cold−bloodedly of the disastrous
fate of one or two of the old fellows who had been among his chief tormentors; insisted on an expensive
wine and the whole gamut of the foreign menu; and finally informed me, with a good deal of niggling, that
he had come up to town to buy an engagement−ring.
And of course: "How is your aunt?" I enquired at last.
He seemed to have been awaiting the question. It fell like a stone into a deep pool, so many expressions
flitted across his long un−English face.
"She's aged a good deal," he said softly, and broke off.
"She's been very decent," he continued presently after, and paused again. "In a way," he eyed me fleetingly.
"I dare say you heard that—she—that is, that we—had lost a good deal of money."
"No," I said.
"Oh, yes!" said Seaton, and paused again.
And somehow, poor fellow, I knew in the clink and clatter of glass and voices that he had lied to me; that
he did not possess, and never had possessed, a penny beyond what his aunt had squandered on his too
ample allowance of pocket−money.
"And the ghosts?" I enquired quizzically. He grew instantly solemn, and, though it may have been my fancy,
slightly yellowed. But "You are making game of me, Withers," was all he said.
He asked for my address, and I rather reluctantly gave him my card.
"Look here, Withers," he said, as we stood together in the sunlight on the kerb, saying good−bye, "here I
am, and—and it's all very well. I'm not perhaps as fanciful as I was. But you are practically the only friend I
have on earth—except Alice… And there—to make a clean breast of it, I'm not sure that my aunt cares much
about my getting married. She doesn't say so, of course. You know her well enough for that." He looked
sidelong at the rattling gaudy traffic.
"What I was going to say is this: Would you mind coming down? You needn't stay the night unless you
please, though, of course, you know you would be awfully welcome. But I should like you to meet my—to
meet Alice; and then, perhaps, you might tell me your honest opinion of—of the other too."

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 I vaguely demurred. He pressed me. And we parted with a half promise that I would come. He waved his
ball−topped cane at me and ran off in his long jacket after a 'bus.
A letter arrived soon after, in his small weak handwriting, giving me full particulars regarding route and
trains. And without the least curiosity, even, perhaps, with some little annoyance that chance should have
thrown us together again, I accepted his invitation and arrived on one hazy at midday at his out−of−the−way
station to find him sitting on a low seat under a clump of double hollyhocks, awaiting me.
His face looked absent and singularly listless; but he seemed, none the less, pleased to see me.
We walked up the village street, past the little dingy apothecary's and the empty forge, and, as on my first
visit, skirted the house together, and, instead of entering by the front door, made our way down the green
path into the garden at the back. A pale haze of cloud muffled the sun; the garden lay in a grey shimmer—
its old trees, its snap−dragooned faintly glittering walls. But now there was an air of slovenliness where
before all had been neat and methodical. In a patch of shallowly−dug soil stood a worn−down spade leaning
against a tree. There was an old broken wheelbarrow. The roses had run to leaf and briar; the fruit−trees
were unpruned. The goddess of neglect brooded in secret.
"You ain't much of a gardener, Seaton," I said, with a sigh of ease.
"I think, do you know, I like it best like this," said Seaton. "We haven't any man now, of course. Can't afford
it." He stood staring at his little dark square of freshly−turned earth. "And it always seems to me," he went
on ruminatingly, "that, after all we are nothing better than interlopers on the earth, disfiguring and staining
wherever we go. I know it's shocking blasphemy to say so, but then it's different here, you see. We are further
away."
"To tell you the truth, Seaton, I don't quite see," I said; "but it isn't a new philosophy, is it? Anyhow, it's a
precious beastly one."
"It's only what I think," he replied, with all his odd old stubborn meekness. We wandered on together,
talking little, and still with that expression of uneasy vigilance on Seaton's face. He pulled out his watch as
we stood gazing idly over the green meadows and the dark motionless bulrushes.
"I think, perhaps, it's nearly time for lunch," he said. "Would you like to come in?"
We turned and walked slowly towards the house, across whose windows I confess my own eyes, too, went
restlessly wandering in search of its rather disconcerting inmate. There was a pathetic look of draggledness,
of want of means and care, rust and overgrowth and faded paint.
Seaton's aunt, a little to my relief, did not share our meal. Seaton carved the cold meat, and dispatched a
heaped−up plate by an elderly servant for his aunt's private consumption. We talked little and in
half−suppressed tones, and sipped a bottle of Madeira which Seaton had rather heedfully fetched out of the
great mahogany sideboard.
I played him a dull and effortless game of chess, yawning between the moves he himself made almost at
haphazard, and with attention elsewhere engaged. About five o'clock came the sound of a distant ring, and
Seaton jumped up, overturning the board, and so ending a game that else might have fatuously continued
to this day. He effusively excused himself, and after some little while returned with a slim, dark, rather sallow
girl of about nineteen, in a white gown and hat, to whom I was presented with some little nervousness as his
"dear old friend and schoolfellow."
We talked on in the pale afternoon light, still, as it seemed to me, and even in spite of a real effort to be
clear and gay, in a half−suppressed, lack−lustre fashion. We all seemed, if it were not my fancy, to me
expectant, to be rather anxiously awaiting an arrival, the appearance of someone who all but filled our
collective consciousness. Seaton talked least of all, and in a restless interjectory way, as he continually
fidgeted from chair to chair. At last he proposed a stroll in the garden before the sun should have quite gone
down.

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 Alice walked between us. Her hair and eyes were conspicuously dark against the whiteness of her gown.
She carried herself not ungracefully and yet without the least movement of her arms and body, and answered
us both without turning her head. There was a curious provocative reserve in that impassive and rather long
face, half−unconscious strength of character.
And yet somehow, I knew—I believe we all knew—that this walk, this discussion of their future plans was a
futility. I had nothing to base such a cynicism on, except only a vague sense of oppression, the foreboding
remembrance of the inert invincible power in the background, to whom optimistic plans and lovemaking and
youth are as chaff and thistle−down. We came back silent, in the last light. Seaton's aunt was there—under
an old brass lamp. Her hair was as barbarously massed and curled as ever. Her eyelids, I think, hung even a
little heavier in age over their slow−moving inscrutable pupils. We filed in softly out of the evening, and I
made my bow.
"In this short interval, Mr. Withers," she remarked amiably, "you have put off youth, put on the man. Dear
me, how sad it is to see the young days vanishing! Sit down. My nephew tells me you met by chance—or act
of Providence, shall we call it?—and in my beloved Strand! You, I understand, are to be best man—yes, best
man, or am I divulging secrets?" She surveyed Arthur and Alice with overwhelming graciousness. They sat
apart on two low chairs and smiled in return.
"And Arthur—how do you think Arthur is looking?"
"I think he looks very much in need of a change," I said deliberately.
"A change! Indeed?" She all but shut her eyes at me and with an exaggerated sentimentality shook her
head. "My dear, Mr Withers, are we not all in need of a change in this fleeting, fleeting world?" She mused
over the remark like a connoisseur. "And you," she continued, turning abruptly to Alice, "I hope you pointed
out to Mr. Withers all my pretty bits?"
"We walked round the garden," said Alice, looking out of the window. "It's a very beautiful evening."
"Is it?" said the old lady, starting up violently. "Then on this very beautiful evening we will go in to supper.
Mr. Withers, your arm; Arthur, bring your bride."
I can scarcely describe with what curious ruminations I led the way into the faded, heavy−aired
dining−room, with this indefinable old creature leaning weightily on my arm—the large flat bracelet on the
yellow−laced wrist. She fumed a little, breathed rather heavily, as if with an effort of mind rather than of
body; for she had grown much stouter and yet little more proportionate.
And to talk into that great white face, so close to mine, was a queer experience in the dim light of the
corridor, and even in the twinkling crystal of the candles. She was naïve —appallingly naïve; she was sudden
and superficial; she was even arch; and all these in the brief, rather puffy passage from one room to the
other, with these two tongue−tied children bringing up the rear. The meal was tremendous. I have never
seen such a monstrous salad. But the dishes were greasy and over−spiced, and were indifferently cooked.
One thing only was quite unchanged—my hostess's appetite was as Gargantuan as ever. The old solid
candelabra that lighted us stood before her high−back chair. Seaton sat a little removed, with his plate almost
in darkness.
And throughout this prodigious meal his aunt talked, mainly to me, mainly at Seaton, with an occasional
satirical courtesy to Alice and muttered explosions of directions to the servant. She had aged, and yet, if it
be not nonsense to say so, seemed no older. I suppose to the Pyramids a decade is but as the rustling down
of a handful of dust. And she reminded me of some such unshakable pre-historicism. She certainly was an
amazing talker—racy, extravagant, with a delivery that was perfectly overwhelming. As for Seaton—her
flashes of silence were for him.
On her enormous volubility would suddenly fall a hush: acid sarcasm would be left implied; and she would
sit softly moving her great head, with eyes fixed full in a dreamy smile; but with her whole attention, one
could see, slowly, joyously absorbing his mute discomfiture.
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 She confided in us her views on a theme vaguely occupying at the moment, I suppose, all our minds. "We
have barbarous institutions, and so must put up, I suppose, with a never−ending procession of fools—of fools
ad infinitum. Marriage, Mr. Withers, was instituted in the privacy of a garden; sub rosa, as it were. Civilization
flaunts it in the glare of day. The dull marry the poor; the rich the effete; and so our New Jerusalem is peopled
with naturals, plain and coloured, at either end. I detest folly; I detest still more (if I must be frank, dear
Arthur), mere cleverness.
Mankind has simply become a tailless host of un-instinctive animals. We should never have taken to
Evolution, Mr. Withers. “Natural Selection!—little gods and fishes!—the deaf for the dumb; we should have
used our brains—intellectual pride, the ecclesiastics call it. And by brains I mean—what do I mean, Alice?—
I mean, my dear child"—and she laid two gross fingers on Alice's narrow sleeve—"I mean courage. Consider
it, Arthur. I read that the scientific world is once more beginning to be afraid of spiritual agencies. Spiritual
agencies that tap, and actually float, bless their hearts! I think just one more of those mulberries—thank you.
"They talk about 'blind Love,' " she ran inconsequently on as she helped herself, with eyes roving on the
dish, "but why blind? I think, do you know, from weeping over its rickets. After all, it is we plain women that
triumph, Mr. Withers, beyond the mockery of time. Alice, now!
Fleeting, fleeting is youth, my child. What's that you were confiding to your plate, Arthur? Satirical boy. He
laughs at his old aunt: nay, but thou didst laugh. He detests all sentiment. He whispers the most acid asides.
Come, my love, we will leave these cynics; we will go and commiserate with each other on our sex. The choice
of two evils, Mr Smithers!" I opened the door, and she swept out as if borne on a torrent of unintelligible
indignation; and Arthur and I were left in the clear four−flamed light alone.
For a while we sat in silence. He shook his head at my cigarette−case, and I lit a cigarette.
Presently he fidgeted in his chair and poked his head forward into the light. He paused to rise and shut again
the shut door.
"How long will you be?" he said, standing by the table. I laughed.
"Oh, it's not that!" he said, in some confusion. "Of course, I like to be with her. But it's not that. The truth
is, Withers, I don't care about leaving her too long with my aunt."
I hesitated. He looked at me questioningly.
"Look here, Seaton," I said, "you know well enough that I don't want to interfere in your affairs, or to offer
advice where it is not wanted. But don't you think perhaps you may not treat your aunt quite in the right
way? As one gets old, you know a little give and take. I have an old godmother, or something. She talks, too.
. . . A little allowance: it does no harm. But hang it all, I'm no talker."
He sat down with his hands in his pockets and still with his eyes fixed almost incredulously on mine. "How?"
he said.
"Well, my dear fellow, if I'm any judge—mind, I don't say that I am—but I can't help thinking she thinks you
don't care for her; and perhaps takes your silence for—for bad temper. She has been very decent to you,
hasn't she?"
“Decent? My God!” said Seaton.
I smoked on in silence; but he continued to look at me with that peculiar concentration I remembered of
old. "I don't think, perhaps, Withers," he began presently; “I don't think you quite understand.”
Perhaps you are not quite our kind. You always did, just like the other fellows, guy me at school.
You laughed at me that night you came to stay here—about the voices and all that. But I don't mind being
laughed at— because I know."
"Know what?" It was the same old system of dull question and evasive answer.
"I mean I know that what we see and hear is only the smallest fraction of what is. I know she lives quite out
of this. She talks to you; but it's all make−believe. It's all a 'parlour game.' She's not really with you; only

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pitting her outside wits against yours and enjoying the fooling. She's living on inside on what you're rotten
without. That's what it is—a cannibal feast. She's a spider.
It doesn't much matter what you call it. It means the same kind of thing. I tell you, Withers, she hates me;
and you can scarcely dream what that hatred means. I used to think I had an inkling of the reason. It's oceans
deeper than that. It just lies behind: herself against myself. “Why, after all, how much do we really
understand of anything? We don't even know our own histories, and not a tenth, not a tenth of the reasons.
What has life been to me?—nothing but a trap. And when one is set free, it only begins again. I thought you
might understand; but you are on a different level: that's all."
"What on earth are you talking about?" I said contemptuously, in spite of myself.
"I mean what I say," he said gutturally. "All this outside's only make−believe—but there! what's the good of
talking? So far as this is concerned I'm as good as done. You wait."
Seaton blew out three of the candles, and, leaving the vacant room in semidarkness, we groped our way
along the corridor to the drawing−room. There a full moon stood shining in at the long garden windows.
Alice sat stooping at the door, with her hands clasped, looking out, alone.
"Where is she?" Seaton asked in a low tone.
Alice looked up; their eyes met in a kind of instantaneous understanding, and the door immediately
afterwards opened behind us.
"Such a moon!" said a voice that, once heard, remained unforgettably on the ear. "A night for lovers, Mr.
Withers, if ever there was one. Get a shawl, my dear Arthur, and take Alice for a little promenade. I dare say
we old cronies will manage to keep awake. Hasten, hasten, Romeo!
My poor, poor Alice, how laggard a lover!"
Seaton returned with a shawl. They drifted out into the moonlight. My companion gazed after them till they
were out of hearing, turned to me gravely, and suddenly twisted her white face into such a convulsion of
contemptuous amusement that I could only stare blankly in reply.
"Dear innocent children!" she said, with inimitable unctuousness. "Well, well, Mr. Withers, we poor
seasoned old creatures must move with the times. Do you sing?"
I scouted the idea.
"Then you must listen to my playing. Chess"—she clasped her forehead with both cramped hands—"chess
is now completely beyond my poor wits."
She sat down at the piano and ran her fingers in a flourish over the keys. "What shall it be? How shall we
capture them, those passionate hearts? That first fine careless rapture? Poetry itself." She gazed softly into
the garden a moment, and presently, with a shake of her body, began to play the opening bars of Beethoven's
"Moonlight Sonata." The piano was old and woolly. She played without music. The lamplight was rather dim.
The moonbeams from the window lay across the keys. Her head was in shadow. And whether it was simply
due to her personality or to some really occult skill in her playing I cannot say: I only know that she gravely
and deliberately set herself to satirise the beautiful music. It brooded on the air, disillusioned, charged with
mockery and bitterness. I stood at the window; far down the path I could see the white figure glimmering in
that pool of colourless light. A few faint stars shone, and still that amazing woman behind me dragged out
of the unwilling keys her wonderful grotesquerie of youth, and love, and beauty. It came to an end. I knew
the player was watching me. "Please, please, go on!" I murmured, without turning. "Please go on playing,
Miss Seaton."
No answer was returned to my rather fluttering sarcasm, but I knew in some indefinite way that I was being
acutely scrutinised, when suddenly there followed a procession of quiet, plaintive chords which broke at last
softly into the hymn, "A Few More Years Shall Roll."
I confess it held me spellbound. There is a wistful, strained, plangent pathos in the tune; but beneath those
masterly old hands it cried softly and bitterly the solitude and desperate estrangement of the world. Arthur
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and his lady−love vanished from my thoughts. No one could put into a rather hackneyed old hymn−tune such
an appeal who had never known the meaning of the words. Their meaning, anyhow, isn't commonplace.
I turned very cautiously and glanced at the musician. She was leaning forward a little over the keys, so that
at the approach of my cautious glance she had but to turn her face into the thin flood of moonlight for every
feature to become distinctly visible. And so, with the tune abruptly terminated, we steadfastly regarded one
another, and she broke into a chuckle of laughter.
"Not quite so seasoned as I supposed, Mr. Withers. I see you are a real lover of music. To me it is too painful.
It evokes too much thought…"
I could scarcely see her little glittering eyes under their penthouse lids.
"And now," she broke off crisply, "tell me, as a man of the world, what do you think of my new niece?"
I was not a man of the world, nor was I much flattered in my stiff and dullish way of looking at things by
being called one; and I could answer her without the least hesitation.
"I don't think, Miss Seaton, I'm much of a judge of character. She's very charming." "A brunette?"
"I think I prefer dark women."
"And why? Consider, Mr. Withers; dark hair, dark eyes, dark cloud, dark night, dark vision, dark death, dark
grave, dark DARK!"
Perhaps the climax would have rather thrilled Seaton, but I was too thick−skinned. "I don't know much
about all that," I answered rather pompously.
"Broad daylight's difficult enough for most of us."
"Ah," she said, with a sly inward burst of satirical laughter.
"And I suppose," I went on, perhaps a little nettled, "it isn't the actual darkness one admires, it's the contrast
of the skin, and the colour of the eyes, and—and their shining. Just as," I went blundering on, too late to turn
back, "just as you only see the stars in the dark. It would be a long day without any evening. As for death and
the grave, I don't suppose we shall much notice that."
Arthur and his sweetheart were slowly returning along the dewy path. "I believe in making the best of
things." "How very interesting!" came the smooth answer. "I see you are a philosopher, Mr. Withers. H'm!
“As for death and the grave, I don't suppose we shall much notice that. Very interesting. And I'm sure," she
added in a particularly suave voice, "I profoundly hope so." She rose slowly from her stool. "You will take pity
on me again, I hope. You and I would get on famously— kindred spirits—elective affinities. And, of course,
now that my nephew's going to leave us, now that his affections are centred on another, I shall be a very
lonely old woman… Shall I not, Arthur?"
Seaton blinked stupidly. "I didn't hear what you said, aunt."
"I was telling our old friend, Arthur, that when you are gone I shall be a very lonely old woman." "Oh, I don't
think so," he said in a strange voice.
"He means, Mr. Withers, he means, my dear child," she said, sweeping her eyes over Alice, "he means that
I shall have memory for company—heavenly memory—the ghosts of other days.
Sentimental boy! And did you enjoy our music, Alice? Did I really stir that youthful heart? … O, O, O,"
continued the horrible old creature, "you billers and cooers, I have been listening to such flatteries, such
confessions! Beware, beware, Arthur, there's many a slip." She rolled her liffle eyes at me, she shrugged her
shoulders at Alice, and gazed an instant stonily into her nephew's face.
I held out my hand. "Good night, good night!" she cried. "He that fights and runs away. Ah, good night, Mr.
Withers; come again soon!" She thrust out her cheek at Alice, and we all three filed slowly out of the room.
Black shadow darkened the porch and half the spreading sycamore. We walked without speaking up the
dusty village street. Here and there a crimson window glowed. At the fork of the highroad I said good−bye.
But I had taken hardly more than a dozen paces when a sudden impulse seized me.
"Seaton!" I called.
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 He turned in the moonlight.
"You have my address; if by any chance, you know, you should care to spend a week or two in town between
this and the—the Day, we should be delighted to see you.
"Thank you, Withers, thank you," he said in a low voice.
"I dare say"—I waved my stick gallantly to Alice—"I dare say you will be doing some shopping; we could all
meet," I added laughing.
"Thank you, thank you, Withers—immensely," he repeated. And so we parted.
But they were out of the jog−trot of my prosaic life. And being of a stolid and incurious nature, I left Seaton
and his marriage, and even his aunt, to themselves in my memory, and scarcely gave a thought to them until
one day I was walking up the Strand again, and passed the flashing gloaming of the covered−in jeweller's
shop where
I had accidentally encountered my old schoolfellow in the summer. It was one of those still close autumnal
days after a rainy night. I cannot say why, but a vivid recollection returned to my mind of our meeting and of
how suppressed Seaton had seemed, and of how vainly he had endeavoured to appear assured and eager.
He must be married by now, and had doubtless returned from his honeymoon. And I had clean forgotten my
manners, had sent not a word of congratulation, nor—as I might very well have done, and as I knew he would
have been immensely pleased at my doing—the ghost of a wedding−present.
On the other hand, I pleaded with myself, I had had no invitation. I paused at the corner of Trafalgar Square,
and at the bidding of one of those caprices that seize occasionally on even an unimaginative mind, I suddenly
ran after a green 'bus that was passing, and found myself bound on a visit I had not in the least foreseen.
The colours of autumn were over the village when I arrived. A beautiful late afternoon sunlight bathed
thatch and meadow. But it was close and hot. A child, two dogs, a very old woman with a heavy basket I
encountered. One or two incurious tradesmen looked idly up as I passed by. It was all so rural and so still,
my whimsical impulse had so much flagged, that for a while I hesitated to venture under the shadow of the
sycamore−tree to enquire after the happy pair. I deliberately passed by the faint−blue gates and continued
my walk under the high green and tufted wall. Hollyhocks had attained their topmost bud and seeded in the
little cottage gardens beyond; the Michaelmas daisies were in flower; a sweet warm aromatic smell of fading
leaves was in the air. Beyond the cottages lay a field where cattle were grazing, and beyond that I came to a
little churchyard. Then the road wound on, pathless and houseless, among gorse and bracken. I turned
impatiently and walked quickly back to the house and rang the bell.
The rather colourless elderly woman who answered my enquiry informed me that Miss Seaton was at home,
as if only taciturnity forbade her adding, "But she doesn't want to see you."
"Might I, do you think, have Mr. Arthur's address?" I said.
She looked at me with quiet astonishment, as if waiting for an explanation. Not the faintest of smiles came
into her thin face.
"I will tell Miss Seaton," she said after a pause. "Please walk in."
She showed me into the dingy undusted drawing−room, filled with evening sunshine and with the
green−dyed light that penetrated the leaves overhanging the long French windows. I sat down and waited
on and on, occasionally aware of a creaking footfall overhead. At last the door opened a little, and the great
face I had once known peered round at me. For it was enormously changed; mainly, I think, because the old
eyes had rather suddenly failed, and so a kind of stillness and darkness lay over its calm and wrinkled pallor.
"Who is it?" she asked.
I explained myself and told her the occasion of my visit.
She came in and shut the door carefully after her and, though the fumbling was scarcely perceptible, groped
her way to a chair. She had on an old dressing−gown, like a cassock, of a patterned cinnamon colour.
"What is it you want?" she said, seating herself and lifting her blank face to mine.
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 "Might I just have Arthur's address?" I said deferentially. "I am so sorry to have disturbed you. "H'm. You
have come to see my nephew?"
"Not necessarily to see him, only to hear how he is, and, of course, Mrs. Seaton, too. I am afraid my silence
must have appeared . . ."
"He hasn't noticed your silence," croaked the old voice out of the great mask; "besides, there isn't any Mrs.
Seaton."
"Ah, then," I answered, after a momentary pause, "I have not seemed so black as I painted myself! And how
is Miss Outram?"
"She's gone into Yorkshire," answered Seaton's aunt.
"And Arthur too?"
She did not reply, but simply sat blinking at me with lifted chin, as if listening, but certainly not for what I
might have to say. I began to feel rather at a loss.
"You were no close friend of my nephew's, Mr. Smithers?" she said presently.
"No," I answered, welcoming the cue, "and yet, do you know, Miss Seaton, he is one of the very few of my
old schoolfellows I have come across in the last few years, and I suppose as one gets older one begins to
value old associations . . ." My voice seemed to trail off into a vacuum.
"I thought Miss Outram," I hastily began again, "a particularly charming girl. I hope they are both quite well."
Still the old face solemnly blinked at me in silence.
"You must find it very lonely, Miss Seaton, with Arthur away?"
"I was never lonely in my life," she said sourly. "I don't look to flesh and blood for my company. When you've
got to be my age, Mr. Smithers (which God forbid), you'll find life a very different affair from what you seem
to think it is now. You won't seek company then, I'll be bound. It's thrust on you." Her face edged round into
the clear green light, and her eyes groped, as it were, over my vacant, disconcerted face. "I dare say, now,"
she said, composing her mouth, "I dare say my nephew told you a good many tarradiddles in his time. Oh,
yes, a good many, eh? He was always a liar. What, now, did he say of me? Tell me, now." She leant forward
as far as she could, trembling, with an ingratiating smile.
"I think he is rather superstitious," I said coldly, "but, honestly, I have a very poor memory, Miss Seaton."
"Why?" she said. "I haven't."
"The engagement hasn't been broken off, I hope."
"Well, between you and me," she said, shrinking up and with an immensely confidential grimace, "it has."
"I'm sure I'm very sorry to hear it. And where is Arthur?"
"Eh?"
"Where is Arthur?"
We faced each other mutely among the dead old bygone furniture. Past all my scrutiny was that large, flat,
grey, cryptic countenance. And then, suddenly, our eyes for the first time really met. In some indescribable
way out of that thick−lidded obscurity a far small something stooped and looked out at me for a mere instant
of time that seemed of almost intolerable protraction.
Involuntarily I blinked and shook my head. She muttered something with great rapidity, but quite
inarticulately; rose and hobbled to the door. I thought I heard, mingled in broken mutterings, something
about tea.
"Please, please, don't trouble," I began, but could say no more, for the door was already shut between us.
I stood and looked out on the long−neglected garden. I could just see the bright greenness of Seaton's old
tadpole pond. I wandered about the room. Dusk began to gather, the last birds in that dense shadowiness
of trees had ceased to sing. And not a sound was to be heard in the house. I waited on and on, vainly
speculating. I even attempted to ring the bell; but the wire was broken, and only jangled loosely at my efforts.

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 I hesitated, unwilling to call or to venture out, and yet more unwilling to linger on, waiting for a tea that
promised to be an exceedingly comfortless supper. And as darkness drew down, a feeling of the utmost
unease and disquietude came over me. All my talks with Seaton returned on me with a suddenly enriched
meaning. I recalled again his face as we had stood hanging over the staircase, listening in the small hours to
the inexplicable stirrings of the night. There were no candles in the room; every minute the autumnal
darkness deepened. I cautiously opened the door and listened, and with some little dismay withdrew, for I
was uncertain of my way out. I even tried the garden, but was confronted under a veritable thicket of foliage
by a padlocked gate. It would be a little too ignominious to be caught scaling a friend's garden fence!
Cautiously returning into the still and musty drawing−room, I took out my watch, and gave the incredible old
woman ten minutes in which to reappear. And when that tedious ten minutes had ticked by I could scarcely
distinguish its hands. I determined to wait no longer, drew open the door, and, trusting to my sense of
direction, groped my way through the corridor that I vaguely remembered led to the front of the house.
I mounted three or four stairs, and, lifting a heavy curtain, found myself facing the starry fanlight of the
porch. From here I glanced into the gloom of the dining−room. My fingers were on the latch of the outer
door when I heard a faint stirring in the darkness above the hall. I looked up and became conscious of, rather
than saw, the huddled old figure looking down on me.
There was an immense hushed pause. Then, "Arthur, Arthur," whispered an inexpressibly peevish, rasping
voice, "is that you? Is that you, Arthur?"
I can scarcely say why, but the question horribly startled me. No conceivable answer occurred to me. With
head craned back, hand clenched on my umbrella, I continued to stare up into the gloom, in this fatuous
confrontation.
"Oh, oh"; the voice croaked. "It is you, is it? That disgusting man! ... Go away out. Go away out."
Hesitating no longer, I caught open the door and, slamming it behind me, ran out into the garden, under the
gigantic old sycamore, and so out at the open gate.
I found myself half up the village street before I stopped running. The local butcher was sitting in his shop
reading a piece of newspaper by the light of a small oil−lamp. I crossed the road and enquired the way to the
station. And after he had with minute and needless care directed me, I asked casually if Mr. Arthur Seaton
still lived with his aunt at the big house just beyond the village. He poked his head in at the little parlour door.
"Here's a gentleman enquiring after young Mr. Seaton, Millie," he said. "He's dead, ain't he?" "Why, yes,
bless you," replied a cheerful voice from within. "Dead and buried these three months or more—young Mr.
Seaton. And just before he was to be married, don't you remember, Bob?" I saw a fair young woman's face
peer over the muslin of the little door at me.
"Thank you," I replied, "then I go straight on?"
"That's it, sir; past the pond, bear up the hill a bit to the left, and then there are the station lights before
your eyes.
We looked intelligently into each other's faces in the beam of the smoky lamp. But not one of the many
questions in my mind could I put into words.
And again, I paused, irresolutely a few paces further on. It was not fancy, merely a foolish apprehension of
what the raw−boned butcher might "think" that prevented my going back to see if I could find Seaton's grave
in the benighted churchyard. There was precious little use in pottering about in the muddy dark, merely to
discover where he was buried. And yet I felt a little uneasy. My rather horrible thought was that, so far as I
was concerned—one of his extremely few friends—he had never been much better than "buried" in my
mind.

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Activity 6

1. Throughout the story there are motifs that are used by de la Mare. Identify these motifs and explain
how he uses them to create an emotional response in the reader.
2. How does de la Mare use structure to maintain the suspense in his narrative? Why does the power
relationship remain the same for Withers and Seaton’s aunt even when he is an adult?
3. Seaton makes it clear in the story that his aunt is in some way otherworldly. How does de la Mare
communicate this idea through the text? Is it possible to explain her behaviour and nature without
resorting to a supernatural explanation?
4. Children’s authors often make successful horror writers, and Walter de la Mare found success as a writer
of children’s fiction and ghost stories. After reading the story, reflect on how de la Mare uses language
(dialogue) to instil an aura of paranoia and the unnatural in Seaton’s Aunt.
5. How does Walter de la Mare capture the experiences of friendship and social exclusion in Seaton’s Aunt?
6. Choose an event from your own childhood and write a short narrative (500 words minimum) based on
your experiences. This narrative should not be a recount; you must use the experience as the inspiration
for this story.

Seaton’s Aunt is about a reluctant schoolboy who is drawn into the unhappy world of the school misfit,
Seaton. The perpetual outsider, Seaton is bullied at school and by his domineering aunt he believes
communicates with ghosts. The very human experiences of being boys, the unsympathetic relationships
between them and the encroaching mysteries of the adult world, do not change for Arthur and Seaton when
they mature. Seaton’s aunt still holds a power over them, keeping them ensnared in her web. The truly
disturbing moments of horror are subtle and only offer a mere glimpse behind the veil into a world that is
impossibly vast and unknowable. However, as the reader we are left wondering if it is nothing more than the
imaginings of Arthur and Seaton… or something weirder.

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A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (English Advanced)
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched
courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they
thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-grey
thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew
of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house
after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the
rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down
in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn't get up, and impeded by his enormous wings.
Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife, who was putting compresses on the sick
child, and he took her to the rear of the courtyard. They both looked at the fallen body with a mute stupor.
He was dressed like a rag-picker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth
in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away and sense of grandeur he
might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked were forever entangled in the mud. They
looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the
end found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with
a strong sailor's voice. That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently
concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign shipwrecked by the storm. And yet, they called
in a neighbour woman who knew everything about life and death to see him, and all she needed was one
look to show them their mistake.
"He's an angel," she told them. "He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that
the rain knocked him down."
On the following day everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo's house.
Against the judgment of the wise neighbour woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive
survivors of a spiritual conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death. Pelayo watched over him
all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff's club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of
the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop. In the middle of the night, when the rain
stopped, Pelayo and Elisenda were still killing crabs. A short time afterward the child woke up without a fever
and with a desire to eat. Then they felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water
and provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas. But when they went out into the
courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found the whole neighbourhood in front of the chicken coop
having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in
the wire as if weren't a supernatural creature but a circus animal.
Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o'clock, alarmed at the strange news. By that time onlookers less
frivolous than those at dawn had already arrived and they were making all kinds of conjectures concerning
the captive's future. The simplest among them thought that he should be named mayor of the world. Others
of sterner mind felt that he should be promoted to the rank of five-star general in order to win all wars. Some
visionaries hoped that he could be put to stud in order to implant the earth a race of winged wise men who
could take charge of the universe. But Father Gonzaga, before becoming a priest, had been a robust
woodcutter. Standing by the wire, he reviewed his catechism in an instant and asked them to open the door
so that he could take a close look at that pitiful man who looked more like a huge decrepit hen among the
fascinated chickens. He was lying in the corner drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peels
and breakfast leftovers that the early risers had thrown him. Alien to the impertinences of the world, he only
lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his dialect when Father Gonzaga went into the
chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter
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when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers. Then he
noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back
side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds,
and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels. The he came out of the chicken coop
and in a brief sermon warned the curious against the risks of being ingenuous. He reminded them that the
devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary. He argued that if
wings were not the essential element in determining the different between a hawk and an airplane, they
were even less so in the recognition of angels. Nevertheless, he promised to write a letter to his bishop so
that the latter would write his primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get
the final verdict from the highest courts.
His prudence fell on sterile hearts. The news of the captive angel spread with such rapidity that after a few
hours the courtyard had the bustle of a marketplace and they had to call in troops with fixed bayonets to
disperse the mob that was about to knock the house down. Elisenda, her spine all twisted from sweeping up
so much marketplace trash, then got the idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see
the angel.
The curious came from far away. A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the
crowd several times, but no one paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel but,
rather, those of a sidereal bat. The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor
woman who since childhood has been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese
man who couldn't sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to
undo the things he had done while awake; and many others with less serious ailments. In the midst of that
shipwreck disorder that made the earth tremble, Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with fatigue, for in less
than a week they had crammed their rooms with money and the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter
still reached beyond the horizon.
The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He spent his time trying to get comfortable in
his borrowed nest, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been
placed along the wire. At first, they tried to make him eat some mothballs, which, according to the wisdom
of the wise neighbour woman, were the food prescribed for angels. But he turned them down, just as he
turned down the papal lunches that the penitents brought him, and they never found out whether it was
because he was an angel or because he was an old man that in the end ate nothing but eggplant mush. His
only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience. Especially during the first days, when the hens pecked at
him, searching for the stellar parasites that proliferated in his wings, and the cripples pulled out feathers to
touch their defective parts with, and even the most merciful threw stones at him, trying to get him to rise so
they could see him standing. The only time they succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side
with an iron for branding steers, for he had been motionless for so many hours that they thought he was
dead. He awoke with a start, ranting in his hermetic language and with tears in his eyes, and he flapped his
wings a couple of times, which brought on a whirlwind of chicken dung and lunar dust and a gale of panic
that did not seem to be of this world. Although many thought that his reaction had not been one of rage but
of pain, from then on they were careful not to annoy him, because the majority understood that his passivity
was not that of a her taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in repose.
Father Gonzaga held back the crowd's frivolity with formulas of maidservant inspiration while awaiting the
arrival of a final judgment on the nature of the captive. But the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency.
They spent their time finding out in the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic,
how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn't just a Norwegian with wings. Those
meagre letters might have come and gone until the end of time if a providential event had not put an end to
the priest's tribulations.
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 It so happened that during those days, among so many other carnival attractions, there arrived in the town
the traveling show of the woman who had been changed into a spider for having disobeyed her parents. The
admission to see her was not only less than the admission to see the angel, but people were permitted to
ask her all manner of questions about her absurd state and to examine her up and down so that no one
would ever doubt the truth of her horror. She was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head
of a sad maiden. What was most heartrending, however, was not her outlandish shape but the sincere
affliction with which she recounted the details of her misfortune. While still practically a child she had
sneaked out of her parents' house to go to a dance, and while she was coming back through the woods
after having danced all night without permission, a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in tow and through the
crack came the lightning bolt of brimstone that changed her into a spider. Her only nourishment came from
the meatballs that charitable souls chose to toss into her mouth. A spectacle like that, full of so much human
truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel who
scarcely deigned to look at mortals. Besides, the few miracles attributed to the angel showed a certain mental
disorder, like the blind man who didn't recover his sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who didn't
get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers. Those consolation
miracles, which were more like mocking fun, had already ruined the angel's reputation when the woman
who had been changed into a spider finally crushed him completely. That was how Father Gonzaga was cured
forever of his insomnia and Pelayo's courtyard went back to being as empty as during the time it had rained
for three days and crabs walked through the bedrooms.
The owners of the house had no reason to lament. With the money they saved they built a two-story
mansion with balconies and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn't get in during the winter and
with iron bars on the windows so that angels wouldn't get in. Pelayo also set up a rabbit warren close to
town and have up his job as a bailiff for good, and Elisenda bought some satin pumps with high heels and
many dresses of iridescent silk, the kind worn on Sunday by the most desirable women in those times. The
chicken coop was the only thing that didn't receive any attention. If they washed it down with creolin and
burned tears of myrrh inside it every so often, it was not in homage to the angel but to drive away the dung
heap stench that still hung everywhere like a ghost and was turning the new house into an old one. At first,
when the child learned to walk, they were careful that he not get too close to the chicken coop. But then
they began to lose their fears and got used to the smell, and before they child got his second teeth he'd gone
inside the chicken coop to play, where the wires were falling apart. The angel was no less standoffish with
him than with the other mortals, but he tolerated the most ingenious infamies with the patience of a dog
who had no illusions. They both came down with the chicken pox at the same time. The doctor who took
care of the child couldn't resist the temptation to listen to the angel's heart, and he found so much whistling
in the heart and so many sounds in his kidneys that it seemed impossible for him to be alive. What surprised
him most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed so natural on that completely human organism
that he couldn't understand why other men didn't have them too.
When the child began school, it had been some time since the sun and rain had caused the collapse of the
chicken coop. The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man. They would drive
him out of the bedroom with a broom and a moment later finds him in the kitchen. He seemed to be in so
many places at the same time that they grew to think that he'd be duplicated, that he was reproducing
himself all through the house, and the exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it was awful living in
that hell full of angels. He could scarcely eat and his antiquarian eyes had also become so foggy that he went
about bumping into posts. All he had left were the bare cannulae of his last feathers. Pelayo threw a blanket
over him and extended him the charity of letting him sleep in the shed, and only then did they notice that he
had a temperature at night and was delirious with the tongue twisters of an Old Norwegian. That was one of

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the few times they became alarmed, for they thought he was going to die and not even the wise neighbour
woman had been able to tell them what to do with dead angels.
And yet he not only survived his worst winter but seemed improved with the first sunny days. He remained
motionless for several days in the farthest corner of the courtyard, where no one would see him, and at the
beginning of December some large, stiff feathers began to grow on his wings, the feathers of a scarecrow,
which looked more like another misfortune of decrepitude. But he must have known the reason for those
changes; for he was quite careful that no one should notice them that no one should hear the sea chanteys
that he sometimes sang under the stars. One morning Elisenda was cutting some bunches of onions for lunch
when a wind that seemed to come from the high seas blew into the kitchen. Then she went to the window
and caught the angel in his first attempts at flight. They were so clumsy that his fingernails opened a furrow
in the vegetable patch, and he was on the point of knocking the shed down with the ungainly flapping that
slipped on the light and couldn't get a grip on the air. But he did manage to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a
sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in
some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through
cutting the onions and she kept on watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then
he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is a short story that begins with Pelayo and Elisendra finding a very
old man in their courtyard during a stormy afternoon. They are astonished by the enormous wings attached
to the body of the old man as he struggles against the mud. Have you ever considered the possibility that
even if something divine did exist, it must be something very different from what representatives of various
religions represent it to be? Here is an angel that is not anywhere as glorious as religions will have us believe.
Like in other Marquez story I have read The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World the central character
himself never utters a word, we only get reactions from other people. There are also the themes of fickle
sensationalism in general and the way religion is often reduced to entertainment for purposes of money.

Activity 7
1. Identify some of the words used in the first paragraph to establish the atmosphere and setting of the
story.
2. How does Garcia Marquez make an apparently fantastic event seem real and plausible?
3. Who is the story’s narrator and what role or function does he or she serve?
4. What elements of irony and humour does the story contain? What is their purpose?
5. In what sense is Garcia Marquez’s story “A Tale for Children”?
6. How can the story best be read and understood? As an allegory? As a folk tale or parable? Symbolically?
As fantasy? Does the story contain an identifiable theme?
7. List the characters in the story. Write one to two sentences on the defining characteristics of each one,
providing at least one citation to illustrate your comments.
8. How does the priest respond to the man with wings? What do you think his response symbolizes?
Provide at least two citations to illustrate your argument. Be sure that your citations illustrate your
argument: do not simply quote details that can be summarized. Use your textual evidence to make your
argument.
9. How do the villagers respond to the spider girl? What do you think their response symbolizes -- how
does it relate to the rest of the story? Provide at least two citations to illustrate your argument.

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10. When reading "A Very Old Man," think about what Garcia Marquez is saying about how people would
react to the second coming. Would people know that it happened, or would they pass it off as nothing?
How do the people in the story react when the angel doesn't behave the way they would think an angel
would behave?

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The October Game (English Advanced/English Standard)
By Ray Bradbury
He put the gun back into the bureau drawer and shut the drawer.
No, not that way. Louise wouldn't suffer. It was very important that this thing have, above all duration,
duration through imagination. How to prolong the suffering? How, first of all, to bring it about? Well.
The man standing before the bedroom mirror carefully fitted his cufflinks together. He paused long enough
to hear the children run by swiftly on the street below, outside this warm two-storey house, like so many
grey mice the children, like so many leaves.
By the sound of the children you knew the calendar day. By their screams you knew what evening it was.
You knew it was very late in the year. October. The last day of October, with white bone masks and cut
pumpkins and the smell of dropped candle wax.
No. Things hadn’t been right for some time. October didn't help any. If anything it made things worse. He
adjusted his black bowtie. If this were spring, he nodded slowly, quietly, emotionlessly, at his image in the
mirror, and then there might be a chance. But tonight all the world was burning down into ruin. There was
no green spring, none of the freshness, none of the promise.
There was a soft running in the hall. "That's Marion", he told himself, “My little one".
All eight quiet years of her, never a word, just her luminous grey eyes and her wondering little mouth. His
daughter had been in and out all evening, trying on various masks, asking him, which was most terrifying,
most horrible. They had both finally decided on the skeleton mask. It was 'just awful!' It would 'scare the
beans' from people!
Again he caught the long look of thought and deliberation he gave himself in the mirror. He had never liked
October. Ever since he first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother’s house many years ago and
heard the wind and sway the empty trees. It has made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness
returned each year to him.
It always went away with spring. But it was different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last
a million years. There would be no spring.
He had been crying quietly all evening. It did not show, not a vestige of it, on his face. It was all hidden
somewhere and it wouldn't stop.
The rich syrupy smell of sweets filled the bustling house. Louise had laid out apples in new skins of toffee;
there were vast bowls of punch fresh-mixed, stringed apples in each door, scooped, vented pumpkins
peering triangularly from each cold window. There was a water tub in the centre of the living room, waiting,
with a sack of apples nearby, for dunking to begin. All that was needed was the catalyst, the inpouring of
children, to start the apples bobbing, the stringed apples to penduluming in the crowded doors, the sweets
to vanish, and the halls to echo with fright or delight, it was all the same.
Now, the house was silent with preparation.
And just a little more than that…
Louise had managed to be in every other room save the room he was in today. It was her very fine way of
intimating, Oh look Mich, see how busy I am! So busy that when you walk into a room, I'm in there's always
something I need to do in another room! Just see how I dash about!
For a while he had played a little game with her, a nasty childish game. When she was in the kitchen then
he came to the kitchen saying, “I need a glass of water.” After a moment, he is standing, drinking water, she
like a crystal witch over the caramel brew bubbling like a prehistoric mud pot on the stove, she said, “Oh, I
must light the pumpkins!” and she rushed to the living room to make the pumpkins smile with light. He came
after, smiling, “I must get my pipe.”
“Oh, the cider!” she had cried, running to the dining room. “I'll check the cider,” he had said. But when he
tried following, she ran to the bathroom and locked the door.
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 He stood outside the bathroom door, laughing strangely and senselessly, his pipe gone cold in his mouth,
and then, tired of the game, but stubborn, he waited another five minutes. There was not a sound from the
bath. And lest she enjoy in any way knowing that he waited outside, irritated, he suddenly jerked about and
walked upstairs, whistling merrily.
At the top of the stairs he had waited. Finally he had heard the bathroom door unlatch and she had come
out and life below-stairs and resumed, as life in a jungle must resume once a terror has passed on away and
the antelope return to their spring.
Now, as he finished his bowtie and put his dark coat there was a mouse-rustle in the hall. Marion appeared
in the door, all skeletons in her disguise.
“How do I look, Papa?”
“Fine!”
From under the mask, blonde hair showed. From the skull sockets small blue eyes smiled. He sighed. Marion
and Louise: the two silent denouncers of his virility, his dark power. What alchemy had there been in Louise
that took the dark of a dark man and bleached the dark brown eyes and black hair and washed and bleached
the ingrown baby all during the period before birth until the child was born, Marion, blonde, blue-eyed,
ruddy-cheeked? Sometimes he suspected that Louise had conceived the child as an idea, completely asexual,
an immaculate conception of contemptuous mind and cell. As a firm rebuke to him she had produced a child
in her own image, and, to top it, she had somehow fixed the doctor so he shook his head and said, “Sorry,
Mr Wilder, your wife will never have another child. This is the last one.”
“And I wanted a boy,” Mich had said eight years ago.
He almost bent to take hold of Marion now, in her skull mask. He felt an inexplicable rush of pity for her,
because she had never had a father’s love, only the crushing, holding love of a loveless mother. But most of
all he pitied himself, that somehow, he had not made the most of a bad birth, enjoyed his daughter for
herself, regardless of her not being dark and a son and like himself. Somewhere he had missed out. Other
things being equal, he would have loved the child. But Louise hadn't wanted a child, anyway, in the first
place. She had been frightened of the idea of birth. He had forced the child on her, and from that night, all
through the year until the agony of the birth itself, Louise had lived in another part of the house. She had
expected to die with the forced child. It had been very easy for Louise to hate this husband who so wanted
a son that he gave his only wife over to the mortuary.
But–Louise had lived. And in truimph! Her eyes, the day he came to the hospital, were cold. I'm alive they
said. And I have a blonde daughter! Just look! And when he had put out a hand to touch, the mother had
turned away to conspire with her new pink daughter–child–away from that dark forcing murderer. It had all
been so beautifully ironic. His selfishness deserved it.
But now it was October again. There had been other Octobers and when he thought of the long winter, he
had been filled with horror year after year to think of the endless months mortared into the house by an
insane fall of snow, trapped with a woman and child, neither of whom loved him, for months on end. During
the eight years there had been respites. In spring and summer you got out, walked, picnicked; these were
desperate solutions to the desperate problem of a hated man.
But, in winter, the hikes and picnics and escapes fell away with leaves. Life, like a tree, stood empty, the
fruit picked, the sap run to earth. Yes, you invited people in, but people were hard to get in winter with
blizzards and all. Once he had been clever enough to save for a Florida trip. They had gone south. He had
walked in the open.
But now, the eighth winter coming, he knew things were finally at an end. He simply could not wear this
one through. There was an acid walled off in him that slowly had eaten through tissue and bone over the
years, and now, tonight, it would reach the wild explosive in him and all would be over!

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 There was a mad ringing of the bell below. In the hall, Louise went to see. Marion, without a word, ran down
to greet the first arrivals. There were shouts and hilarity.
He walked to the top of the stairs.
Louise was below, taking cloaks. She was tall and slender and blonde to the point of whiteness, laughing
down upon the new children.
He hesitated. What was all this? The years? The boredom of living? Where had it gone wrong? Certainly not
with the birth of the child alone. But it had been a symbol of all their tensions, he imagined. His jealousies
and his business failures and all the rotten rest of it. Why didn’t he just turn, pack a suitcase, and leave? No.
Not without hurting Louise as much as she had hurt him. It was simple as that. Divorce wouldn’t hurt her at
all. It would simply be an end to numb indecision. If he thought divorce would give her pleasure in any way,
he would stay married the rest of his life to her, for damned spite. No he must hurt her. Figure some way,
perhaps, to take Marion away from her, legally. Yes. That was it. That would hurt most of all.
To take Marion.
“Hello down there!” He descended the stairs beaming.
Louise didn't look up.
“Hi, Mr Wilder!”
The children shouted, waved, as he came down.
By ten o’clock the doorbell had stopped ringing, the apples were bitten from stringed doors, the pink faces
were wiped dry from the apple bobbling, napkins were smeared with toffee and punch, and he, the husband,
with pleasant efficiency had taken over. He took the party right out of Louise's hands. He ran about talking
to the twenty children and the twelve parents who had come and were happy with the special spiked cider
he had fixed them. He supervised pin the tail on the donkey; spin the bottle, musical chairs, and all the rest,
amid fits of shouting laughter. Then, in the triangular-eyed pumpkin shine, all house lights out, he cried,
'Hush! Follow me!' tiptoeing towards the cellar.
The parents, on the outer periphery of the costumed riot, commented to each other, nodding at the clever
husband, speaking to the lucky wife. How well he got on with children, they said.
The children, crowded after the husband, squealing.
“The cellar!” he cried. “The tomb of the witch!”
More squealing. He made a mock shiver. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!”
The parents chuckled.
One by one the children slid down a slide which Mich had fixed up from lengths of table-section, into the
dark cellar. He hissed and shouted ghastly utterances after them. A wonderful wailing filled dark pumpkin-
lighted house. Everybody talked at once. Everybody, but Marion; she had gone through all the party with a
minimum of sound or talk; it was all inside her, all the excitement and joy. What a little troll, he thought.
With a shut mouth and shiny eyes she had watched her own party, like so many serpentines thrown before
her.
Now, the parents. With laughing reluctance they slid down the short incline, uproarious, while little Marion
stood by, always wanting to see it all, to be last. Louise went down without help. He moved to aid her, but
she was gone even before he bent.
The upper house was empty and silent in the candle-shine. Marion stood by the slide. 'Here we go,' he said,
and picked her up.
They sat in a vast circle in the cellar. Warmth came from the distant bulk of the furnace. The chairs stood in
a long line along each wall, twenty squealing children, twelve rustling relatives, alternatively spaced, with
Louise down at the far end, Mich up at this end, near the stairs. He peered but saw nothing. They had all
grouped to their chairs, catch-as-you-can in the blackness. The entire programme from here on was to be

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enacted in the dark, he as Mr Interlocutor. There was a child scampering, a smell of damp cement, and the
sound of the wind out in the October stars.
“Now!” cried the husband in the dark cellar. “Quiet!”
Everybody settled.
The room was black, black. Not a light, not a shine, not a glint of an eye.
A scraping of crockery, a metal rattle.
“The witch is dead,” intoned the husband.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” said the children.
“The witch is dead, she has been killed, and here is the knife she was killed with.” He handed over the knife.
It was passed from hand to hand, down and around the circle, with chuckles and little odd cries and
comments from the adults.
“The witch is dead, and this is her head,” whispered the husband, and handed an item to the nearest person.
“Oh, I know how this game is played,' some child cried, happily, in the dark.” He gets some old chicken
innards from the icebox and hands them around and says, “These are her innards!" And he makes a clay head
and passes it for her head and passes a soup bone for her arm.
And he takes a marble and says, "This is her eye!" And he takes some corn and says, “This is her teeth!"
And he takes a sack of plum pudding and gives that and says, "This is her stomach! I know how this is played!”
“Hush, you'll spoil everything,” some girl said.
“The witch came to harm, and this is her arm,” said Mich.
“Eeeeeeeeeeee!”
The items were passed and passed, like hot potatoes, around the circle. Some children screamed, wouldn't
touch them. Some ran from their chairs to stand in the centre of the cellar until the grisly items had passed.
“Aw, it's only chicken insides,” scoffed a boy. “Come back, Helen!”
Shot from hand to hand, with small scream after scream, the items went down, down, to be followed by
another and another.
“The witch cut apart, and this is her heart,” said the husband.
Six or seven items moving at once through the laughing, trembling dark.
Louise spoke up. “Marion, don't be afraid; it's only play."
Marion didn't say anything.
“Marion?” asked Louise. “Are you afraid?”
Marion didn't speak.
“She's all right,” said the husband. “She's not afraid.”
On and on the passing, the screams, the hilarity.
The autumn wind sighed about the house. And he, the husband stood at the head of the dark cellar, intoning
the words, handing out the items.
“Marion?” asked Louise again, from far across the cellar.
Everybody was talking.
“Marion?” called Louise.
Everybody quieted.
“Marion, answer me, are you afraid?”
Marion didn't answer.
The husband stood there, at the bottom of the cellar steps.
Louise called, “Marion, are you there?”
No answer. The room was silent.
“Where's Marion?” called Louise.
“She was here,” said a boy.
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 “Maybe she's upstairs.”
“Marion!”
No answer. It was quiet.
Louise cried out, “Marion, Marion!”
“Turn on the lights,” said one of the adults.
The items stopped passing. The children and adults sat with the witch's items in their hands.
“No!” Louise gasped. There was a scraping of her chair, wildly, in the dark. “No. Don't turn on the lights, oh,
God, God, God, don't turn them on, please, don't turn on the lights, don't!” Louise was shrieking now. The
entire cellar froze with the scream.
Nobody moved.
Everyone sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game; the wind blew
outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with the smell of the objects
in their fingers while one boy cried, “I'll go upstairs and look!” and he ran upstairs hopefully and out around
the house, four times around the house, calling, “Marion, Marion, Marion!” over and over and at last
coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, “I can't find
her.”
Then… some idiot turned on the lights.

A glimpse into a marriage in decline, The October Game captures elements of the simmering rage of the
‘male beast’ trapped in a loveless relationship by the expectations and conformity of post-war America. It is
a tale of domestic horror – trapped in a house with someone you resent and the need to make them suffer
to alleviate your own suffering. The horror of the story is in its unspoken implications, the mystery at its end
and the knowledge that the story almost begins with violence. As it progresses, the story descends into
gruesome grand guignol as the reader becomes complicit, and helpless to intervene, with the events as they
unfold.

Activity 8
1. After reading the story, what do you think happened to Marion?
2. “He put the gun back into the bureau drawer and shut the drawer.” In your opinion, how effective is this
hook for The October Game? How does it foreshadow the events and relationships in the short story?
3. How does Ray Bradbury use the seasons to represent the state of the marriage?
4. “For a while he had played a little game with her, a nasty childish game.” The concept of a game is
expressed in the title and throughout the story. How does Bradbury use this concept throughout the
narrative?
5. Why is Marion the victim in the story? How is Marion presented as a “game piece” in the relationship of
her parents? How does her experience reflect the experiences of childhood?
6. How is the theme of domestic abuse implied through the dialogue? How does the concept of the game
represent this in The October Game?
7. Choose a scene from The October Game and recreate it as a comic strip.

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The Treasure of Lemon Brown (English Studies/English Standard)
By Walter Dean Myers
The dark sky, filled with angry, swirling clouds, reflected Greg Ridley’s mood as he sat on the stoop of his
building. His father’s voice came to him again, first reading the letter the principal had sent to the house,
then lecturing endlessly about his poor efforts in math.
“I had to leave school when I was thirteen,” his father had said; “that’s a year younger than you are now. If
I’d had half the chances that you have, I’d…”
Greg had sat in the small, pale-green kitchen listening, knowing the lecture would end with his father saying
he couldn’t play ball with the Scorpions. He had asked his father the week before, and his father had said it
depended on his next report card. It wasn’t often the Scorpions took on new players, especially fourteen-
year-olds, and this was the chance of a lifetime for Greg. He hadn’t been allowed to play high school ball,
which he had really wanted to do, but playing for the Community Center team was the next best thing.
Report cards were due in a week, and Greg had been hoping for the best. But the principal had ended the
suspense early when she sent that letter saying Greg would probably fail math if he didn’t spend more time
studying.
“And you want to play basketball?” His father’s brows knitted over deep-brown eyes. “That must be some
kind of joke. Now you just get into your room and hit those books.” (So, Greg wants to play basketball, but
his bad grades are keeping him from it.)
That had been two nights before. His father’s words, like the distant thunder that now echoed through the
streets of Harlem, still rumbled softly in his ears.
It was beginning to cool. Gusts of wind made bits of paper dance between the parked cars. There was a
flash of nearby lightning, and soon large drops of rain splashed onto his jeans. He stood to go upstairs,
thought of the lecture that probably awaited him if he did anything except shut himself in his room with his
math book, and started walking down the street instead. Down the block there was an old tenement that
had been abandoned for some months. Some of the guys had held an impromptu checkers tournament here
the week before, and Greg had noticed that the door, once boarded over, had been slightly ajar. (Greg was
experiencing an internal conflict – deciding whether or not to go home and get in trouble, or to just keep
walking. He chose to keep walking.)
Pulling his collar up as high as he could, he checked for traffic and made a dash across the street. He reached
the house just as another flash of lightning changed the night today for an instant, then returned the graffiti
scarred building to the grim shadows. He vaulted over the outer stairs and pushed tentatively on the door.
It was open, and he let himself in.
The inside of the building was dark except for the dim light that filtered through the dirty windows from the
streetlamps. There was a room a few feet from the door, and from where he stood at the entrance, Greg
could see a squarish patch of light on the floor. He entered the room, frowning at the musty smell. It was a
large room that might have been someone’s parlour at one time. Squinting, Greg could see an old table on
its side against one wall, what looked like a pile of rags or a torn mattress in the corner, and a couch, with
one side broken, in front of the window.
He went to the couch. The side that wasn’t broken was comfortable enough, though a little creaky. From
this sport he could see the blinking neon sign over the bodega on the corner. He sat awhile watching the sign
blink first green, then red, allowing his mind to drift to the Scorpions, then to his father. His father had been
a postal worker for all Greg’s life and was proud of it, often telling Greg how hard he had worked to pass the
test. Greg had heard the story too many times to be interested now.
For a moment Greg thought he heard something that sounded like a scraping against the wall. He listened
carefully, but it was gone.

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 Outside, the wind has picked up, sending the rain against the window with a force that shook the glass in
its frame. A car passed, its tires hissing over the wet street and its red taillights glowing in the darkness.
Greg thought he heard the noise again. His stomach tightened as he held himself still and listened intently.
There weren’t any more scraping noises, but he was sure he had heard something in the darkness –
something breathing!
He tried to figure out just where the breathing was coming from; he knew it was in the room with him.
Slowly he stood, tensing. As he turned, a flash of lightning lit up the room, frightening him with its sudden
brilliance. He saw nothing, just the overturned table, the pile of rags, and an old newspaper on the floor.
Could he have been imagining the sounds? He continued listening but heard nothing and thought that I might
have been just rats. Still, he thought, as soon as the rain let up, he would leave. He went to the window and
was about to look out when he heard a voice behind him.
“Don’t try nothin’, cause I got a razor here sharp enough to cut a week into nine days!”
Greg, except for an involuntary tremor in his knees, stood stock-still. The voice was high and brittle, like dry
twigs being broken, surely not one he had ever heard before. There was a shuffling sound as the person who
had been speaking moved a step closer. Greg turned, holding his breath, his eyes straining to see in the dark
room. (Conflict: Someone is in the room with Greg, and that person is threatening him.)
The upper part of the figure before him was in darkness. The lower half was in the dim rectangle of light
that fell unevenly from the window. There were two feet, in cracked, dirty shoes from which rose legs that
were wrapped in rags.
“Who are you?” Greg hardly recognized his own voice.
“I’m Lemon Brown,” came the answer. “Who’re you?”
“Greg Ridley.”
“What you doing here?” The figure shuffled forward again, and Greg took a small step backward.
“It’s raining,” Greg said.
“I can see that,” the figure said.
The person who called himself Lemon Brown peered forward, and Greg could see him clearly. He was an
old man. His black, heavily wrinkled face was surrounded by a halo of crinkly white hair and whiskers that
seemed to separate his head from the layers of dirty coats piled on his smallish frame. His pants were bagged
to the knee, where they were met with rags that went down to the old shoes. The rags were held on with
strings, and there was a rope around his middle. Greg relaxed. He had seen the man before, picking through
trash on the corner and pulling clothes out of a Salvation Army box. There was no sign of the razor that could
“cut a week into nine days.” (So, we’re learning that Lemon Brown is homeless and doesn’t have any money.)
“What are you doing here?” Greg asked.
“This is where I’m staying,” Lemon Brown said. “What you here for?”
“Told you it was raining out,” Greg said, leaning against the back of the couch until he felt it give slightly.
“Ain’t you got no home?”
“I got a home,” Greg answered.
“You ain’t one of them bad boys looking for my treasure, is you?” Lemon Brown cocked his head to one side
and squinted one eye. “Because I told you I got me a razor.”
“I’m not looking for your treasure,” Greg answered, smiling. “If you have one.”
“What you mean, if I have one,” Lemon Brown said. “Every man got a treasure. You don’t know that, you
must be a fool!”
“Sure,” Greg said as he sat on the sofa and put one leg over the back. “What do you have, gold coins?”
“Don’t worry none about what I got,” Lemon Brown said. “You know who I am?”
“You told me your name was orange or lemon or something like that.”

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 “Lemon Brown,” the old man said, pulling back his shoulders as he did so, “they used to call me Sweet
Lemon Brown.”
“Sweet Lemon?” Greg asked.
“Yessir. Sweet Lemon Brown. They used to say I sung the blues so sweet that if I sang at a funeral, the dead
would commence to rocking with the beat. Used to travel all over Mississipi and as far as Monroe, Lousisiana,
and east on over to Macon, Georgia. You mean you ain’t never heard of Sweet Lemon Brown?”
“Afraid not,” Greg said. “What… what happened to you?”
“Hard times, boy. Hard times always after a poor man. One day I got tired, sat down to rest a spell and felt
a tap on my shoulder. Hard times caught up with me.” (So, hard times – which we’ll find out about later in
the story – forced Lemon Brown to quit his career as a blues singer.)
“Sorry about that.”
“What you doing here? How come you didn’t go home when the rain come? Rain don’t bother you young
folks non.”
“Just didn’t.” Greg looked away.
“I used to have a knotty headed boy just like you.” Lemon Brown had half walked, half shuffled back to the
corner and sat down against the wall. “Had them big eyes like you got. I used to call them moon eyes. Look
into them moon eyes and see anything you want.”
“How come you gave up singing the blues?” Greg asked.
“You don’t give up the blues; they give you up. After a while you do good for yourself, and it ain’t nothing
but foolishness singing about how hard you got it. Ain’t that right?”
“I guess so.”
“What’s that noise?” Lemon Brown asked, suddenly sitting upright.
Greg listened, and he heard a noise outside. He looked at Lemon Brown and saw the old man was pointing
toward the window.
Greg went to the window and saw three men, neighbourhood thugs, on the stoop. One was carrying a
length of pipe. Greg looked back toward Lemon Brown, who moved quietly across the room to the window.
The old man looked out, then beckoned frantically for Greg to follow him. For a moment Greg couldn’t move.
Then he found himself following Lemon Brown into the hallway and up darkened stairs. Greg followed as
closely as he could. They reached the top of the stairs, and Greg felt Lemon Brown’s hand first lying on his
shoulder, then probing down his arm until he finally took Greg’s hand into his own as they crouched in the
darkness.
“They’s bad men,” Lemon Brown whispered. His breath was warm against Greg’s skin.
“Hey! Ragman!” a voice called. “We know you in here. What you got up under them rags? You got any
money?”
Silence.
“We don’t want to have to come in and hurt you, old man, but we don’t mind if we have to.”
Lemon Brown squeezed Greg’s hand in his own hard, gnarled fist.
There was a banging downstairs and a light as the men entered. They banged around noisily, calling for the
ragman.
“We heard you talking about your treasure.” The voice was slurred. “We just want to see it, that’s all.”
“You sure he’s here?” One voice seemed to come from the room with the sofa.
“Yeah, here, take the pipe, too.”
Greg opened his mouth to quiet the sound of his breath as he sucked it in uneasily. A beam of light hit the
wall a few feet opposite him, then went out.
“Ain’t nobody in that room,” a voice said. “You think he gone or something?”

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 “I don’t know,” came the answer. “All I know is that I heard him talking about some kind of treasure. You
know they found that shopping-bag lady with money in her bags.”
“Yeah. You think he’s upstairs?”
“HEY, OLD MAN, ARE YOU UP THERE?”
Silence.
“Watch my back, I’m going up.”
There was a footstep on the stairs, and the beam from the flashlight danced crazily along the peeling
wallpaper. Greg held his breath. There was another step and aloud crashing noise as the man banged the
pipe against the wooden banister. Greg could feel his temples throb as the man slowly neared them. Greg
thought about the pipe, wondering what he would do when the man reached them – what he could do.
Then Lemon Brown released his hand and moved toward the top of the stairs. Greg looked around and saw
stairs going up to the next floor. He tried waving to Lemon Brown, hoping the old man would see him in the
dim light and follow him to the next floor. Maybe, Greg thought, the man wouldn’t follow them up there.
Suddenly, though, Lemon Brown stood at the top of the stairs, both arms raised high above his head.
“There he is!” a voice cried from below.
“Throw down your money, old man, so I won’t have to bash your head in!”
Lemon Brown didn’t move. Greg felt himself near panic. The steps came closer, and still Lemon Brown didn’t
move. He was an eerie sight, a bundle of rags standing at the top of the stairs, his shadow on the wall looming
over him. Maybe, the thought came to Greg, the scene could be even eerier.
Greg wet his lips, put his hands to his mouth, and tried to make a sound. Nothing came out. HE swallowed
hard, wet his lips once more, and howled as evenly as he could.
“What’s that?”
As Greg howled, the light moved away from Lemon Brown, but not before Greg saw him hurl his body down
the stairs at the men who had come to take his treasure. There was a crashing noise, and then footsteps. A
rush of warm air came in as the downstairs door opened; then there was only an ominous silence.
Greg stood on the landing. He listened, and after a while there was another sound on the staircase.
“Mr. Brown?” he called.
“Yeah, it’s me,” came the answer. “I got their flashlight.”
“Greg exhaled in relief as Lemon Brown made his way slowly back up the stairs.
“You OK?”
“Few bumps and bruises,” Lemon Brown said.
“I think I’d better be going,” Greg said, his breath returning to normal. “You’d better leave, too, before they
come back.”
“They may hang around outside for a while,” Lemon Brown said, “but they ain’t getting their nerve up to
come in here again. Not with crazy old ragmen and howling spooks. Best you stay awhile till the coast is clear.
I’m heading out west tomorrow, out to East St. Louis.”
“They were talking about treasures,” Greg said. “You really have a treasure?”
“What I tell you? Didn’t I tell you every man got a treasure?” Lemon Brown said. “You want to see mine?”
“If you want to show me,” Greg shrugged.
“Let’s look out the window first, see what them scoundrels be doing,” Lemon Brown said.
They followed the oval beam of the flashlight into one of the rooms and looked out the window. They saw
the men who had tried to take the treasure sitting on the curb near the corner. One of them had his pants
leg up, looking at his knee.
“You’re sure you’re not hurt?” Greg asked Lemon Brown.

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 “Nothing that ain’t been hurt before,” Lemon Brown said. “When you get as old as me, all you say when
something hurts is, ‘Howdy, Mr. Pain, sees you back again.’ Then when Mr. Pain see he can’t worry you none,
he goes on mess with somebody else.”
Greg smiled.
“Here, you hold this.” Lemon Brown gave Greg the flashlight.
He sat on the floor near Greg and carefully untied the strings that held the rags on his right leg. When he
took the rags away, Greg saw a piece of plastic. The old man carefully took off the plastic and unfolded it.
He revealed some yellowed newspaper clippings and a battered harmonica.
“There it be,” he said, nodding his head, “There it be.”
Greg looked at the old man, saw the distant look in his eye, then turned to the clippings. They told of Sweet
Lemon Brown, a blues singer and harmonica player who was appearing at different theaters in the South.
One of the clippings said he had been the hit of the show, although not the headliner. All of the clippings
were reviews of shows Lemon Brown had been in more than fifty years ago. Greg looked at the harmonica.
It was dented badly on one side, with the reed holes on one end nearly closed.
“I used to travel around and make money for to feed my wife and Jesse – that’s my boy’s name. Used to
feed them good, too. Then his mama died, and he stayed with his mama’s sister. He growed up to be a man,
and when the war come, he saw fit to go off and fight in it. I didn’t have nothing to give him except these
things that told him who I was, and what he come from. If you know your pappy did something, you know
you can do something too.
“Anyway, he went off to war, and I went off still playing and singing. ’Course by then I wasn’t as much as I
used to be, not without somebody to make it worth the while. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Greg nodded, not quite really knowing.
“I traveled around, and one time I come home, and there was this letter saying Jesse got killed in the war.
Broke my heart, it truly did.
They sent back what he had with him over there, and what it was is this old mouth fiddle and these clippings.
Him carrying it around with him like that told me it meant something to him. That was my treasure, and
when I give it to him, he treated it just like that, a treasure. Ain’t that something?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Greg said.
“You guess so?” Lemon Brown’s voice rose and octave 2 as he started to put his treasure back into the
plastic. “Well, you got to guess, ‘cause you sure don’t know nothing. Don’t know enough to get home when
it’s raining.”
“I guess… I mean, you’re right.”
“You OK for a youngster,” the old man said as he tied the strings around his leg, “better than those
scalawags what come here looking for my treasure. That’s for sure.”
“You really think that treasure of yours was worth fighting for?” Greg asked. “Against a pipe?”
“What else a man got ‘cepting what he can pass on to his son, or his daughter, if she be his oldest?” Lemon
Brown said. “For a big-headed boy, you sure do ask the foolishest questions.”
Lemon Brown got up after patting his rags in place and looked out the window again.
“Looks like they’re gone. You get on out of here and get yourself home. I’ll be watching from the window,
so you’ll be all right.”
Lemon Brown went down the stairs behind Greg. When they reached the front door, the old man looked
out first, saw the street was clear, and told Greg to scoot on home.
“You sure you’ll be OK?” Greg asked.
“Now, didn’t I tell you I was going to East St. Louis in the morning?” Lemon Brown asked. “Don’t that sound
OK to you?”
“Sure it does,” Greg said, the wrinkles about his eyes suggesting a smile. “That I’ll do.”
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 The night had warmed, and the rain had stopped, leaving puddles at the curbs. Greg didn’t even want to
think how late it was. He thought ahead of what his father would say and wondered if he should tell him
about Lemon Brown. He thought about it until he reached his stoop and decided against it. Lemon Brown
would be OK, Greg thought, with his memories and his treasure.
Greg pushed the button over the bell marked “Ridley,” thought of the lecture he knew his father would give
him and smiled.

The Treasure of Lemon Brown is a tale of memories and the value that lies in those memories. This
bildungsroman story focuses on the perspective of homelessness and the relationships between father and
sons. The protagonist, Greg, comes to learn and appreciate his father’s struggles to build a business after
leaving school at thirteen. He also comes to understand the expectations his father has of his own schooling
and his performance in Mathematics. Lemon Brown focuses on the very real generational differences and
expectations that make up many of our relationships, especially between parents and their children. For
Greg, this is coming to an understanding that his father’s refusal to let him play basketball if he does not
perform better in class is a result of the love, he has for him.

Activity 9

1. How does Walter Dean Myers create a sense of mood and tone in The Treasure of Lemon Brown?
2. Myers uses hyperbole, metaphor, personification and simile throughout the story. Find examples of
these techniques and how they are used to shape meaning.
3. How does Lemon Brown experience conflict with others and himself in the story?
4. Create a plot diagram to illustrate how conflict is used as complications in the story and how they are
resolved.
5. As in Seaton’s Aunt and The October Game, the relationship between parent and child is reoccurring.
How is the relationship between Lemon Brown and his father represented in The Treasure of Lemon
Brown?

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The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant (English Studies)
By W.D. Wetheril
There was a summer in my life when the only creature that seemed lovelier to me than a largemouth bass
was Sheila Mant. I was fourteen. The Mants had rented the cottage next to ours on the river; with their
parties, their frantic games of softball, their constant comings and goings, they appeared to me denizens of
a brilliant existence. “Too noisy by half,” my mother quickly decided, but I would have given anything to be
invited to one of their parties, and when my parents went to bed, I would sneak through the woods to their
hedge and stare enchanted at the candlelit swirl of white dresses and bright, paisley skirts.
Sheila was the middle daughter—at seventeen, all but out of reach. She would spend her days sunbathing
on a float my Uncle Sierbert had moored in their cove, and before July was over, I had learned all her moods.
If she lay flat on the diving board with her hand trailing idly in the water, she was pensive, not to be disturbed.
On her side, her head propped up by her arm, she was observant, considering those around her with a look
that seemed queenly and severe. Sitting up, arms tucked around her long, suntanned legs, she was
approachable, but barely, and it was only in those glorious moments when she stretched herself prior to
entering the water that her various suitors found the courage to come near.
These were many. The Dartmouth heavyweight crew would scull by her house on their way upriver, and I
think all eight of them must have been in love with her at various times during the summer; the coxswain
would curse them through his megaphone, but without effect—there was always a pause in their pace when
they passed Sheila’s float. I suppose to these jaded twenty-year-olds she seemed the incarnation of
innocence and youth, while to me she appeared unutterably suave, the epitome of sophistication. I was on
the swim team at school, and to win her attention would do endless laps between my house and the Vermont
shore, hoping she would notice the beauty of my flutter kick, the power of my crawl. Finishing, I would boost
myself up onto our dock and glance casually over toward her, but she was never watching, and the
miraculous day she was, I immediately climbed the diving board and did my best tuck and a half for her and
continued diving until she had left, and the sun went down and my longing was like a madness and I couldn’t
stop.
It was late August by the time I got up the nerve to ask her out. The tortured will-I’s, won’t-I’s, the agonized
indecision over what to say, the false starts toward her house and embarrassed retreats—the details of these
have been seared from my memory, and the only part I remember clearly is emerging from the woods toward
dusk while they were playing softball on their lawn, as bashful and frightened as a unicorn.
Sheila was stationed halfway between first and second, well outside the infield. She didn’t seem surprised
to see me—as a matter of fact, she didn’t seem to see me at all.
“If you’re playing second base, you should move closer,” I said.
She turned—I took the full brunt of her long red hair and well-spaced freckles.
“I’m playing outfield,” she said, “I don’t like the responsibility of having a base.”
“Yeah, I can understand that,” I said, though I couldn’t. “There’s a band in Dixford tomorrow night at nine.
Want to go?”
One of her brothers sent the ball sailing over the left-fielder’s head; she stood and watched it disappear
toward the river.
“You have a car?” she said, without looking up.
I played my master stroke. “We’ll go by canoe.”
I spent all of the following day polishing it. I turned it upside down on our lawn and rubbed every inch with
Brillo, hosing off the dirt, wiping it with chamois until it gleamed as bright as aluminium ever gleamed. About
five, I slid it into the water, arranging cushions near the bow so Sheila could lean on them if she was in one
of her pensive moods, propping up my father’s transistor radio by the middle thwart so we could have music

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when we came back. Automatically, without thinking about it, I mounted my Mitchell reel on my Pfleuger
spinning rod and stuck it in the stern.
I say automatically, because I never went anywhere that summer without a fishing rod. When I wasn’t
swimming laps to impress Sheila, I was back in our driveway practicing casts, and when I wasn’t practicing
casts, I was tying the line to Tosca, our springer spaniel, to test the reel’s drag, and when I wasn’t doing any
of those things, I was fishing the river for bass.
Too nervous to sit at home, I got in the canoe early and started paddling in a huge circle that would get me
to Sheila’s dock around eight. As automatically as I brought along my rod, I tried on a big Rapala plug, let it
down into the water, let out some line, and immediately forgot all about it.
It was already dark by the time I glided up to the Mants’ dock. Even by day the river was quiet, most of the
summer people preferring Sunapee or one of the other nearby lakes, and at night it was a solitude difficult
to believe, a corridor of hidden life that ran between banks like a tunnel. Even the stars were part of it. They
weren’t as sharp anywhere else; they seemed to have chosen the river as a guide on their slow wheel toward
morning, and in the course of the summer’s fishing, I had learned all their names.
I was there ten minutes before Sheila appeared. I heard the slam of their screen door first, and then saw
her in the spotlight as she came slowly down the path. As beautiful as she was on the float, she was even
lovelier now—her white dress went perfectly with her hair and complimented her figure even more than her
swimsuit.
It was her face that bothered me. It had on its delightful fullness a very dubious expression.
“Look,” she said. “I can get Dad’s car.”
“It’s faster this way,” I lied. “Parking’s tense up there. Hey, it’s safe. I won’t tip it or anything.”
She let herself down reluctantly into the bow. I was glad she wasn’t facing me. When her eyes were on me,
I felt like diving in the river again from agony and joy.
I pried the canoe away from the dock and started paddling upstream. There was an extra paddle in the bow,
but Sheila made no move to pick it up. She took her shoes off and dangled her feet over the side.
Ten minutes went by.
“What kind of band?” she said.
“It’s sort of like folk music. You’ll like it.”
“Eric Caswell’s going to be there. He strokes number four.” “No kidding?” I said. I had no idea whom she
meant.
“What’s that sound?” she said, pointing toward shore.
“Bass. That splashing sound?”
“Over there.”
“Yeah, bass. They come into the shallows at night to chase frogs and moths and things. Big largemouths.
Micropterus salmoides,” I added, showing off.
“I think fishing’s dumb,” she said, making a face. “I mean, it’s boring and all. Definitely dumb.”
Now I have spent a great deal of time in the years since wondering why Sheila Mant should come down so
hard on fishing. Was her father a fisherman? Her antipathy toward fishing nothing more than normal filial
rebellion? Had she tried it once? A messy encounter with worms? It doesn’t matter. What does is that at that
fragile moment in time I would have given anything not to appear dumb in Sheila’s severe and unforgiving
eyes.
She hadn’t seen my equipment yet. What I should have done, of course, was push the canoe in closer to
shore and carefully slide the rod into some branches where I could pick it up again in the morning. Failing
that, I could have surreptitiously dumped the whole outfit overboard, written off the forty or so dollars as
love’s tribute. What I actually did do was gently lean forward, and slowly, ever so slowly, push the rod back
through my legs toward the stern where it would be less conspicuous.
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 It must have been just exactly what the bass was waiting for. Fish will trail a lure sometimes, trying to make
up their mind whether or not to attack, and the slight pause in the plug’s speed caused by my adjustment
was tantalizing enough to overcome the bass’s inhibitions. My rod, safely out of sight at last, bent double.
The line, tightly coiled, peeled off the spool with the shrill, tearing zip of a high-speed drill.
Four things occurred to me at once. One, that it was a bass. Two, that it was a big bass. Three, that it was
the biggest bass I had ever hooked. Four, that Sheila Mant must not know. “What was that?” she said, turning
half around.
“Uh, what was what?”
“That buzzing noise.”
“Bats.”
She shuddered, quickly drew her feet back into the canoe. Every instinct I had told me to pick up the rod
and strike back at the bass, but there was no need to—it was already solidly hooked. Downstream, an
awesome distance downstream, it jumped clear of the water, landing with a concussion heavy enough to
ripple the entire river. For a moment, I thought it was gone, but then the rod was bending again, the tip
dancing into the water. Slowly, not making any motion that might alert Sheila, I reached down to tighten the
drag. While all this was going on, Sheila had begun talking, and it was a few minutes before I was able to
catch up with her train of thought.
“I went to a party there. These fraternity men. Katherine says I could get in there if I wanted. I’m thinking
more of UVM or Bennington. Somewhere I can ski.”
The bass was slanting toward the rocks on the New Hampshire side by the ruins of Donaldson’s boathouse.
It had to be an old bass—a young one probably wouldn’t have known the rocks were there. I brought the
canoe back into the middle of the river, hoping to head it off.
“That’s neat,” I mumbled. “Skiing. Yeah, I can see that.”
“Eric said I have the figure to model, but I thought I should get an education first. I mean, it might be a while
before I get started and all. I was thinking of getting my hair styled, more swept back? I mean, Ann- Margret?
Like hers, only shorter.”
She hesitated. “Are we going backward?”
We were. I had managed to keep the bass in the middle of the river away from the rocks, but it had plenty
of room there, and for the first time a chance to exert its full strength. I quickly computed the weight
necessary to draw a fully loaded canoe backward—the thought of it made me feel faint.
“It’s just the current,” I said hoarsely. “No sweat or anything.”
I dug in deeper with my paddle. Reassured, Sheila began talking about something else, but all my attention
was taken up now with the fish. I could feel its desperation as the water grew shallower. I could sense the
extra strain on the line, the frantic way it cut back and forth in the water. I could visualize what it looked
like—the gape of its mouth, the flared gills and thick, vertical tail. The bass couldn’t have encountered many
forces in its long life that it wasn’t capable of handling, and the unrelenting tug at its mouth must have been
a source of great puzzlement and mounting panic.
Me, I had problems of my own. To get to Dixford, I had to paddle up a sluggish stream that came into the
river beneath a covered bridge. There was a shallow sandbar at the mouth of this stream—weeds on one
side, rocks on the other. Without doubt, this is where I would lose the fish.
“I have to be careful with my complexion. I tan, but in segments. I can’t figure out if it’s even worth it. I
wouldn’t even do it probably. I saw Jackie Kennedy in Boston, and she wasn’t tan at all.”
Taking a deep breath, I paddled as hard as I could for the middle, deepest part of the bar. I could have
threaded the eye of a needle with the canoe, but the pull on the stern threw me off, and I
overcompensated—the canoe veered left and scraped bottom. I pushed the paddle down and shoved. A

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moment of hesitation . . . a moment more… The canoe shot clear into the deeper water of the stream. I
immediately looked down at the rod. It was bent in the same tight arc—miraculously, the bass was still on.
The moon was out now. It was low and full enough that its beam shone directly on Sheila there ahead of me
in the canoe, washing her in a creamy, luminous glow. I could see the lithe, easy shape of her figure. I could
see the way her hair curled down off her shoulders, the proud, alert tilt of her head, and all these things were
as a tug on my heart. Not just Sheila, but the aura she carried about her of parties and casual touchings and
grace. Behind me, I could feel the strain of the bass, steadier now, growing weaker, and this was another tug
on my heart, not just the bass but the beat of the river and the slant of the stars and the smell of the night,
until finally it seemed I would be torn apart between longings, split in half. Twenty yards ahead of us was the
road, and once I pulled the canoe up on shore; the bass would be gone, irretrievably gone. If instead I stood
up, grabbed the rod, and started pumping, I would have it—as tired as the bass was, there was no chance it
could get away. I reached down for the rod, hesitated, looked up to where Sheila was stretching herself lazily
toward the sky, her small breasts rising beneath the soft fabric of her dress, and the tug was too much for
me, and quicker than it takes to write down, I pulled a penknife from my pocket and cut the line in half.
With a sick, nauseous feeling in my stomach, I saw the rod unbend. “My legs are sore,” Sheila whined. “Are
we there yet?”
Through a superhuman effort of self-control, I was able to beach the canoe and help Sheila off. The rest of
the night is much foggier. We walked to the fair—there was the smell of popcorn, the sound of guitars. I may
have danced once or twice with her, but all I really remember is her coming over to me once the music was
done to explain that she would be going home in Eric Caswell’s Corvette. “Okay,” I mumbled.
For the first time that night she looked at me, really looked at me. “You’re a funny kid, you know that?”
Funny. Different. Dreamy. Odd. How many times was I to hear that in the years to come, all spoken with
the same quizzical, half-accusatory tone Sheila used then. Poor Sheila! Before the month was over, the spell
she cast over me was gone, but the memory of that lost bass haunted me all summer and haunts me still.
There would be other Sheila Mants in my life, other fish, and though I came close once or twice, it was these
secret, hidden tuggings in the night that claimed me, and I never made the same mistake again.

The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant explores the tipping point we experience as we transition from childhood
to adulthood. On his little boat, the narrator is caught between the bass, the focus of his childhood, and
Sheila Mant, his first crush who represents his first steps into the adult world. The two literally pull him in
two directions: one backwards and one forwards. The short story captures the struggles we all experience as
we are forced to abandon what we loved as children for the expectations of the ‘grown-up’ world where
boyfriends and girlfriends and parties await. The heartfelt realisation of the narrator speaks to us all and
connects us to a very common human experience that we share.

Activity 10
1. The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant, in some ways, is considered is a bildungsroman of sorts. Why? Use
examples from the text to support your answer.
2. How does W.D. Wetheril explore the idea of a rite of passage in the short story? How does he use time
and place to emphasise this idea in his narrative?
3. What is the conflict in The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant?
4. In the story what does the bass represent in relation to the theme of values in the story?
5. How does Wetherell create sympathy for the narrator?
6. In Wetherell's story what obstacle did the narrator have to overcome?

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7. What lessons are learned by the protagonist in The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant? How does he feel
about these lessons at the conclusion of the story?
8. Why is the narrator willing to sacrifice truthfulness in The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant?
9. What techniques can you identify from the short story?
10. Write a poem based on the experiences of the protagonist in The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant. You
can base the poem on a theme from the short story.

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Father and Son (All)
By Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)
It's not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to know
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy

I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy,
To be calm when you've found something going on
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you've got
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not

How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again

It's always been the same, same old story
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go

It's not time to make a change,

Just sit down, take it slowly
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to go through
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy

All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it
If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them you know not me
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go

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Cat's in the Cradle (All)
By Sandy Chaplin & Harry Chapin; Performed by Harry Chaplin
My child arrived just the other day So much like a man I just had to say
He came to the world in the usual way Son, I'm proud of you, can you sit for a while?
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay He shook his head, and he said with a smile
He learned to walk while I was away What I'd really like, dad, is to borrow the car keys
And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew See you later, can I have them please?
He'd say "I'm gonna be like you, dad"
"You know I'm gonna be like you" And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon "When you coming home, son?" "I don't know
Little boy blue and the man in the moon when"
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know But we'll get together then, dad
when" You know we'll have a good time then
But we'll get together then
You know we'll have a good time then I've long since retired and my son's moved away
I called him up just the other day
My son turned ten just the other day I said, I'd like to see you if you don't mind
He said, thanks for the ball, dad, come on let's play He said, I'd love to, dad, if I could find the time
Can you teach me to throw, I said, not today You see, my new job's a hassle, and the kids have
I got a lot to do, he said, that's okay the flu
And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed But it's sure nice talking to you, dad
It said, I'm gonna be like him, yeah It's been sure nice talking to you
You know I'm gonna be like him And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon My boy was just like me
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
when" Little boy blue and the man in the moon
But we'll get together then "When you coming home, son?" "I don't know
You know we'll have a good time then when"
But we'll get together then, dad
Well, he came from college just the other day We're gonna have a good time then.

Activity 11
1. Both authors use metaphors, personification and hyperbole to explore an experience. Identify examples
of each from both texts.
2. How have the various composers used these language features to express their experiences of love?
3. Based on the texts, how would you describe the persona of the speaker of each text? Create a short
profile. What sort of person would have that opinion?
4. How do the songs Cats in the Cradle and Father and Son connect to the representation of parent-child
relationships in the other texts in this booklet?

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The Tribute Money (All)
By Masaccio

Activity 12
1. What visual techniques does Masaccio use in his visual representation of this biblical account? How can
the scene be divided into different experiences?
2. What scene is Masaccio depicting in his painting? How does the painting create a sense of shared human
experience?
3. What biblical allusions and references are being made in this painting? You should research the gospel
of Matthew for answers. For example, the old man by the water alludes to Matthew 17:27.
4. Who is the central figure of The Tribute Money? Why are the men gathered around him?
5. Research the story that The Tribute Money is alluding to in the New Testament. How does Masaccio
change the account and why?

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