A Y11 student analyses Eric extremely well.

What do you think is the importance of Eric and how does Priestley present him?

In the Edwardian era, England was steeped in hypocrisy and superficiality. Your step on the social hierarchy ladder was determined by your wealth and material possessions as opposed to your levels of kindness and moral reasoning.

We first see Eric’s character sitting at the edges of the tables whereas his Mother and Father are at opposite ends of the head of the table as if they were in thrones. This may make Eric feel like he can never become as superior as his Father and may also be a metaphor, for after the night’s events, Eric never becoming like his Father.

Eric’s character is quite complex as we see various sides of him throughout the play during various scenes.

When his Father has just been told about his importance in the life of Eva/Daisy, Birling justifies his own actions and states that there is nothing that could be done. Eric disagrees with him as he states “He could. He could have kept her on.” The word ‘kept’ here sounding very permanent to show us how there would be no mention of anyone getting sacked within his own business. Which would seem a very rebellious thing to say, especially coming from a middle class family, would be seen to be a very outlandish thing to do and very out of place for a middle class child. Although this shows us how Eric already has certain viewpoints that would agree with the Inspector and Eva as Gerald has also just heard these accusations but is still siding with Mr Birling. This shows how Eric must have some sort of moral conscience for the lesser classes before this event occurred.

I think at this point, we are supposed to feel a sense of sympathy towards Eric as he, during the play’s plot, is perceived to have a secret of his own, but he is at least looking as if he is feeling guilty with himself and is representing Eva and the working class when he states that his Father should have kept Eva within his business.

Eric questions his Father “was this recently?” which makes senses as he may be thinking that this girl may be the same one which he impregnated. At least he is seen to then be asking about the girl that we later find out to in fact be Eva.

When Eric asks if her firing from the business was the cause of her suicide, Birling tells Eric to “calm down and to not get excited”. This shows us again his dismissive nature even though he is being directly confronted of his actions. The word ‘excited’ here is perceived to be to do with a situation that was humorous as opposed to the actual situation: one of fatal consequences. This shows to us again of how    Birling doesn’t relate any of his doings to accumulate to the fatal demise of Eva. It also shows us of how dismissive he is of Eric’s question which was very acceptable and relevant at this stage of the play. As a bonded Father and Son may go into another room to discuss this, there is no more mention of Eric’s question from Birling and it seems like Eric’s enquiry has been dropped as quickly as Eva was dropped from the company in September of 1910.

I perceive JB, here, to be foreshadowing the later events to do with Eric and his Father. There are definite signs of tension between the two and it is obvious that they are not of a close-knit bond in which the lesser classes may depict the middle class families to be. There is always an ‘obligatory’ scene that tells us the secret of a character and about their murky past and it seems like Eric is already disgusted by one member of his family’s wrong doings.

This builds up much tension for the audience as we observe one after another, how the characters are being exposed to their murky past behaviour. We perceive how all members of the family have all done deeds they are ashamed of and each scene leaves the audience waiting to see what will be uncovered next. And as the play is perceived through three acts, the tension is built up throughout the play towards the final scene when all secrets have been revealed. This is metaphorical for how the middle class families are believed to be superior when they share all the same traits as the lower classes and there is no difference between the morals of the middle class and others.

During Eric’s confession part in the play, we see him try to make an attempt to make things okay for Eva, financially. When talking about the money he stole to give to Eva, he states: “until she refused to take any more.” This shows us how Eric has been financially stabilising Eva and has done all in his power to help make sure she was okay and has the necessities she needed.

I perceive JB to have shown this side of Eric to make us feel as if he is being responsible for his actions, as opposed to his Father who is refusing to mark his firing of any significance to the demise of Eva. We could say that Eric is being more mature than his Father and that his Father is very cowardly at the side of Eric, which could be seen as dramatic irony as his Father is always seated at the head of the table and is seen as ‘the head’.

Through Eric’s character, it is obvious that JB has the intention of changing the society in which they currently reside. He is in the position to manipulate Eric’s character to be one which is perceived to have empathy for the working class and Eva especially.

I also think that JB Priestley wants us to depict that it is Eric and Sheila’s generation that change the society as there is a political metaphor that the conservative government had been ruling during the First World War and continued for the Second World War which is depicting the thousands of deaths of Eva Smiths and John Smiths. When there is a new socialist labour party, this is seen as the era when the younger ones; such as Sheila and Eric are the leaders as far as businesses go etc, and so are in charge of helping there to be a better society for all the Eva Smiths and John Smiths out there.

A y11 student compares Come on Come Back and Hawk Roosting

Compare how the poets present the effect of conflict in ‘Come On, Come Back’ and one other poem.

Conflict would be mainly seen to be in physical fights and such arguments but conflict is also apparent in the poems ‘Come On, Come Back’ and ‘Hawk Roosting’. In these poems, we can interpret there to be much inner conflict within the stanzas.

The poems share themes of power, violence, death and delusion. There is a large semantic field of negativity in both poems, such as: ‘hooked’ ‘kills’ ‘tearing’ ‘death’ and ‘locked’ in ‘Hawk Roosting’. These words give us the image of a confident and strong force as we can almost hear the tearing heads of prey with the onomatopoeia of ‘tearing’.

COCB also shares this theme of death with the semantic field of ‘dead’ ‘icy’ ‘black’ ‘bitterly’ treacherous’ ‘seizing’ ‘enemy’ - this gives us the visualisation of a higher power’s grasp of Vaudevue which could be symbolism for the governmental power upon the country[s1] [KE2] . We see the symbolism with the quote: ‘ML5 Has left her just alive’. In this quote, we are aware that the government have been using the young girl soldiers and now we see how badly Vaudevue currently is. ‘ML5’ seems to be quite a strong force as when Smith puts: “has left her”, it sounds as if the ML5 has very human characteristics and we see Smith personifying the chemical. The word “just” here, makes the reader really visualise the girl to be near death, as opposed to how we would feel if the poet had wrote ‘has left her alive’. We see how the war is affecting the civilians and how it has impacted upon them.

‘Hawk Roosting’ can be viewed as simply a poem about nature as the quote: “The convenience of the high trees! The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray” shows us of what nature means to the hawk. When he talks about the trees, he talks about them being an ‘advantage’ to him which gives us the sense that the hawk is dependent upon the beauty of nature and is thankful for it.

There is also a large political metaphor in the ‘Hawk Roosting’ poem, that the hawk is metaphorical for bullies and political leaders, this could signify the bird’s inner weakness thus being the reason for the gradient downward slope of stanza length, representing the gradual growing weakness of the hawk.

We also see a gradual degrade of weakness within ‘Come On, Come Back’ as there could be said to be a look of a heartbeat in the stanza length, which represents the journey that she is going through and her coping with those conflicts, like in ‘Hawk Roosting’ as we see him losing power. As the poem comes to three shorter lines at the end and no more lines that would reflect the look of a pulse, this is metaphorical for the end of her journey eg: death. But it could also represent the end of the war that was currently going on that Vaudevue had to deal with.

The hawk’s manner could be metaphorical for the government’s ideologies: thinking that they are powerful when really, they are degrading. This links with ‘Come On, Come Back’ as the government may think that their tactics are winning them the war but in reality, it is killing many individuals of their country. There is a definite theme of delusion[s3] [KE4]  within the poems. There is language to support this as in HR, the poet states: “Nothing has changed since I began” and it is obvious that the Earth has drastically changing all the time. The word “nothing” shows to us of how strongly the hawk feels this way about his homeland and to him, there is no other interpretation. In COCB there is a sense of delusion with the quote: “the icy waters of the adorable lake”. The oxymoron here of the words “icy’ and ‘adorable’ shows us that it is Vaudevue’s mind-set that is perceiving the waters to be this way and that in reality, it’s the ‘icy’ waters which later ‘seize her in’ and ‘close above her head’. This can be blamed on the emotional stability of Vaudevue and shows to us how delusional she was being to have perceived the lake to be anything but dangerous.

We perceive there to be lots of enjambment used throughout the poems such as: “over the ground she goes” in COCB and “my flight is direct” in HR. This could be metaphorical for them both being on their journeys together and their lives flowing in similar directions.

Similarly within the individual stanzas, there seems to be no regular pattern there so in both poems we could say that there is inner conflict with their emotions and represents their personal changing views and individual ideologies.

The poems differ with their endings as the hawk is seen to be arrogantly delusional with the line “I am going to keep things like this.” The final ending of the full stop may be a glimpse of the hawk’s inner conflict as he tries to persuade himself that ‘I am fine’ and that ‘I’m not degrading, I am still strong.’ Whereas in ‘Come On, Come Back’ we see that the conflicting thoughts have been enough to end her life as she commits suicide at the end of the poem. We see this with the final line: ‘Come On, Come Back’. The end stopped line [s5] [KE6] here signifies the end of her conflicting thoughts and the end of her life.

These endings of the poems could mirror the titles of the poems. COCB could be perceived to be so because it is the favourite song of Vaudevue and the theme of thoughts from many people waiting for Vaudevue to ‘come on, Vaudevue, come back’.

‘Hawk Roosting’ could mirror the final words of the poem as the hawk, for me, has persuaded himself of his status and is then ‘roosting’: meaning here to congregate for rest or sleep; sound in conscience as he has blinded himself with his deluded ideologies.

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 [s1]I think I would like to see you picking a longer quote to really analyse in detail now.  The semantic field work is great but to really push your grade it would be helpful to choose a juicy quote and go through how it shows that symbolism here.

 [KE2]Not sure if I have analysed enough of the quote??

 [s3]This is interesting – can you find language which supports this interpretation?

 [KE4]I’ve tried to do that J

 [s5]It would be better to call this an end stopped line as this would credit you for structure

 [KE6]Done J

Gothic Literature - some final revision

These are valuable resources that I have found: you may wish to have a look at some in preparation

Gothic in General:

General protential exam questions are here

General reminders of the features of the gothic are here

General information about assessment objectives and skills are here

Some ideas about starting essays on Wuthering Heights and The Bloody Chamber here

 

 



Resources on Macbeth as a Gothic Text

 

Really useful summary here

 

Revision slideshare here

 

The York Notes on Macbeth as Gothic for A2 here

 

This site tells you how to revise here

 

More useful general views of how Macbeth is Gothic here

 

But this reminds you that it is a tragedy.

 

Resources on Wuthering Heights as a Gothic Text

 

How far is Wuthering Heights a gothic text here

 

General view from Schmoop here

 

More general essay on gothic elements here

 

How far? Its also a Romantic Novel and more about potential genre here

 

 

Resources on The Bloody Chamber as a Gothic Text

 

Sex in The Bloody Chamber here

 

More on general gothic elements here

 

Potential exam questions here

 

The York Notes for A2 are here

 

Revision cards here

 

Post-modernism and gothic here for A/A*

 

Best of luck Year 13!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Presentational Features

In your exam you will be asked to write about presentational features. If you are doing English language and literature this will be for Q2 and will ask you to link headline and photo to the text. If you are sitting English only (and you didn't sit any literature exams) you will compare presentational features in two texts.

The very worst answer as to why that feature is used is always 'to attract the reader's attention'. Well, of course it is. This is so obvious that it needs explaining to show you understand the feature: 'to bring the reader's attention to the important theme in the headline regarding X which is the main focus of the story, as shown by the quote "x..." is far better for Q2 on Lang/Lit. If you are going to write about the reader's attention be specific and explain in detail.

Headlines.
These are important and in Q2 they need to be linked to the text. Headlines are not just there 'to tell the reader what the article is about'. In fact, most headlines don't do that: they may startle the reader ('Horror Crash') or amuse the reader ('Slimezilla!').

Headlines tend to use set formulae, use this as a mental checklist -

Puns? Is there a play on words like 'Slimezilla!' in January's exam which was appropriate as the article was about monster jellyfish in Japan and Godzilla was a Japanese monster. Oh, and jellyfish are slimy.

Alliteration - there is often an alliterative aspect to a headline which highlights the key words or concepts. Think about the sounds alliteration makes - S sounds (sibilance) can be sinister and suspicious (see?): f sounds angry as are plosives such as 'b' or 'p' - or plosives can also be excitable.

Important Colons: leading to more detail. Many headlines have two words, then a colon, then subsidiary detail about the story. The central message of the article is summarised in the first two words and then developed further after the colon. Check your article and find quotes that prove this.

Pictures: the picture is not there 'to show the reader more about the story', this is not an analytical answer. Picture editors at newspapers choose and photoshop images to give certain messages. You need to read the article and work out what that message is.

Colour: what are the connotations of the colours in that image? Blue can be linked with depression or sadness, but also professionalism, or hope (blue skies). Think about the tone of the article and how the colour choice supports it.

Facial expression / shot type: one of the most obvious things to write about, but also the hardest, is facial expression. As a human you are brilliant at reading the message that other people's facial expressions are giving you. Transfer this skill to the article. What emotion or thought is that face having? How can you link it to the article? Is there eye contact between the person in the picture and the reader to create a sense of relationship or empathy?

What about the background? The setting is vital. How is it shot? What can we see and what messages are there? Link this to the text clearly.

For A/A* - could we see the picture as metaphorical? Is there something there that could be far more symbolic of the entire tone or message of the article?

For English only: what about slogans or logos? Text boxes? Fonts?

For English Language and Literature only: you are linking the headline to the text and the picture to the text. DO NOT LINK THE HEADLINE TO THE PICTURE UNLESS ASKED TO. To do this you need to find quotes in the text and ask yourself how the central message or argument in that text is reflected in the picture or headline. In 12 minutes.
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