Writing on Literature

1
Writing on Literature

• Analysing and Evaluating

2
Answering the Question

• You will never be asked to simply write about
  literature
• A question or task will always shape your response

3
Answering the Question

• How does Bram Stoker use language to make the
  destruction of Lucy disturbing for the reader?
• In your books, list the three words that tell you
  how to answer this question.

4
Answering the Question

• How does Bram Stoker use language to make the
  destruction of Lucy disturbing for the reader?
• Key words how, use language, disturbing

5
Answering the Question

• Your job is answer this question as fully as
  possible.
• Aim to think out loud in your writing. In other
  words, show that you are exploring the issues
  raised by the question.

6
Answering the Question

• Aim to come across as someone who can think for
  themselves and can make judgements about what
  they are reading.
• Avoid coming across as someone who is listing the
  notes you have prepared

7
Evaluating

• A simple way of organising your answer is to
  decide on priorities.

8
Evaluating

• In order of seriousness, order these events
  most serious at the top
• A get away car is stolen
• A bank worker is shot
• A bank customer is wounded
• 2 million pounds in cash is stolen
• A parked car is damaged

9
Evaluating

• You have just evaluated a serious of events,
  using your own system of judgements.
• This could also have been prioritised from other
  points of view the robbers the bank owners the
  police

10
Evaluating

• When you write on literature, you do exactly the
  same thing
• Rather than a single persons point of view, the
  question is your guide to what is most important,
  what is less important.

11
Evaluating

• To go back to our question How does Bram Stoker
  use language to make the destruction of Lucy
  disturbing for the reader?
• It makes sense to order your response by
  discussing the most effective techniques used by
  Stoker first

12
Ordering your Answer

• Order these techniques in order of effectiveness
  (impact on reader)
• Use of religious/occult terms
• Use of violent explanations
• Use of graphic violence
• Basic premise husband mutilating wife
• Dehumanisation of Lucy

13
Writing your Response

• How you start, and how you progress in the
  paragraph, has been decided
• But you will need specialised language to keep
  the reader with you

14
Language for Evaluation

• You need words and phrases that show the decision
  you have made about the techniques used by the
  writer.
• For instance, since you are beginning with your
  most effective technique
• By far the most powerful aspect of the passage
  is Stokers use of

15
Language for Evaluation

• Compile a list of phrases that could be used to
  show how you are evaluating the writers
  techniques.
• Obvious Firstly, Lastly,
• Better In a similar way, In contrast to this
• Find at least five or six of your own

16
Language for Evaluation

• These phrases and words will allow you to take
  the reader with you as you explore and answer the
  question, from the most, to the least important
  techniques.

17
Language for Evaluation

• By far the most powerful aspect of the passage is
  Stokers exploitation of personal relationships
  Arthur pounds themercy bearing stake into his
  wife, raising the intensity of an already brutal
  situation. In similarly shocking fashion, the
  writer takes this violence to a graphic extreme,
  the blood welled, then spurted, which makes
  Arthurs actions so much more disturbing. So
  disturbing, in fact, that the reader suspects
  Stokers aim was to outrage as much as shock. To
  a lesser degree, cool, clinical descriptions of
  violence are used in order to disturb, then we
  cut off the head, mostly because their matter of
  factness contrasts with their emotive subject.