PAPER 1 SKILLS - SKILLS FOR WRITING COMMENTARIES on PROSE.
************************************************************************************* An Evil Cradling: Brian Keenan.
Born in Belfast in 1950, Brian Keenan took a degree in English Literature at Coleraine University, worked for a while in Brussels and in Spain, and returned to Ireland to teach and then to work in community development.
After taking an M.A. in Anglo-Irish literature he went to Beirut in Lebanon to take up a post at the American University there.
In 1986, a year after his arrival, he was kidnapped by a Shi’ite fundamentalist group and held hostage for four and a half years. For some of the time that he was kept prisoner he shared a cell with John McCarthy, a journalist who ironically had come to Beirut to report on Keenan’s plight.
Questions:
1. What seems to be the narrator’s purpose for writing his extract?
2. How would you describe the language and what can you say about the style in which it’s written?
3. What do we learn about Keenan’s character and how is this communicated to the reader?
4. What is interesting about Keenan’s reaction to it and what does it tell you about his feelings about his own identity?
5. What genre of writing is this? How would you use the templates used in class to approach a commentary in the exam? (TSLTT) and (W-W-W-W-W)
**************************************************************************************
COME NOW INTO THE CELL WITH me, and stay here and feel if you can and if you will that time, whatever time it was, for however long, for time means nothing in this cell. Come, come in.
I am back from my daily ablution. I hear the padlock slam behind me and I lift the towel that has draped my head from my face. I look at the food on the floor. The round of Arab bread, a boiled egg, the jam I will not eat, the slice or two of processed cheese and perhaps some hummus. Everyday I look to see if it will change, if there will be some new morsel of food that will make this day different from all the other days, but there is no change.
I set down my plastic bottle of drinking water and the other bottle. From bottle to bottle, through me, this fluid will daily run. I set the urine bottle at the far corner away from the food. This I put in a plastic bag to keep it fresh. In this heat, the bread rapidly turns stale and hard. I pace my four paces backward and forward, slowly feeling my mind empty, wondering where it will go today. Will I go with it or will I try to hold it back, like a father and an unruly child? There is a greasy patch on the wall where I lay my head. Like a dog I sniff it.
I begin, as I have always begun these days, to think of something, anything upon which I can concentrate. Something I can think about and so try to push away the crushing emptiness of this tiny, tiny cell and the day's long silence. I try with desperation to recall the dream of the night before, or perhaps to push away the horror of it. The nights are filled with dreaming. The cinema of the mind, the reels flashing and flashing by and suddenly stopping at some point or place, where with strange contortions and twists it throws up some absurd drama that I cannot understand. I try to block it out. Strange how in the daytime it is only the dreams that we do not wish to remember that come flickering back into the conscious mind.
The guards are gone. I have not heard a noise for several hours now. Until tomorrow, there will be silence in this tomb of a place so far down under the ground.
Then it begins. I feel it coming from out of nowhere. I recognize it now, and I shrink into the corner to await its pleasure. What will it be today? That slow down-dragging slide and pull into hopeless depression and the heart's weariness. The waters of the sea of despair are heavy and thick and I think I cannot swim through them. But today is a day of euphoria. Up snakes and down ladders, my mind is manically playing games with me and I cannot escape. Today it is teasing me, threatening me, so far without the full blast of its fury. I squat and rock backward and forward, reciting half-remembered nursery rhymes like a religious mantra. I am determined I will make myself more mad than my mind.
Blackness, the light has gone. There will be none for 10 hours. They have given me candles. Small, stubby candles. I will not light them. I fear the dark, so I save the candles. It's stupid; it's ridiculous. There are a dozen or so hidden under my bed. I will not light them, yet I hate the dark and cannot abide its thick palpable blackness that weighs upon my flesh. I can feel it against my skin. I am going crazier by the day. In the thick sticky darkness, I lie naked on the mattress. The blanket reeks, full of filth. It is pointless to try to shield myself from the mosquitoes, their constant buzz, buzz, buzz everywhere, as if it is inside my ears and inside my head. In the thick black invisibility, it is foolishness to hope to kill what you cannot see but only feel when it is too late, upon your flesh.
The night buzzing of these insects is so insidious, I cannot take much more. I thrust my body back upon the mattress and pull the filthy curtain over it to keep these things from feeding on my flesh. I cannot bear the heat and smell of this rag over my body like a shroud. I must content myself, let the mosquitoes feed and hope that having had a fill of me they will leave me alone to find some sleep in this night heat.
************************************************************************************* An Evil Cradling: Brian Keenan.
Born in Belfast in 1950, Brian Keenan took a degree in English Literature at Coleraine University, worked for a while in Brussels and in Spain, and returned to Ireland to teach and then to work in community development.
After taking an M.A. in Anglo-Irish literature he went to Beirut in Lebanon to take up a post at the American University there.
In 1986, a year after his arrival, he was kidnapped by a Shi’ite fundamentalist group and held hostage for four and a half years. For some of the time that he was kept prisoner he shared a cell with John McCarthy, a journalist who ironically had come to Beirut to report on Keenan’s plight.
Questions:
1. What seems to be the narrator’s purpose for writing his extract?
2. How would you describe the language and what can you say about the style in which it’s written?
3. What do we learn about Keenan’s character and how is this communicated to the reader?
4. What is interesting about Keenan’s reaction to it and what does it tell you about his feelings about his own identity?
5. What genre of writing is this? How would you use the templates used in class to approach a commentary in the exam? (TSLTT) and (W-W-W-W-W)
**************************************************************************************
COME NOW INTO THE CELL WITH me, and stay here and feel if you can and if you will that time, whatever time it was, for however long, for time means nothing in this cell. Come, come in.
I am back from my daily ablution. I hear the padlock slam behind me and I lift the towel that has draped my head from my face. I look at the food on the floor. The round of Arab bread, a boiled egg, the jam I will not eat, the slice or two of processed cheese and perhaps some hummus. Everyday I look to see if it will change, if there will be some new morsel of food that will make this day different from all the other days, but there is no change.
I set down my plastic bottle of drinking water and the other bottle. From bottle to bottle, through me, this fluid will daily run. I set the urine bottle at the far corner away from the food. This I put in a plastic bag to keep it fresh. In this heat, the bread rapidly turns stale and hard. I pace my four paces backward and forward, slowly feeling my mind empty, wondering where it will go today. Will I go with it or will I try to hold it back, like a father and an unruly child? There is a greasy patch on the wall where I lay my head. Like a dog I sniff it.
I begin, as I have always begun these days, to think of something, anything upon which I can concentrate. Something I can think about and so try to push away the crushing emptiness of this tiny, tiny cell and the day's long silence. I try with desperation to recall the dream of the night before, or perhaps to push away the horror of it. The nights are filled with dreaming. The cinema of the mind, the reels flashing and flashing by and suddenly stopping at some point or place, where with strange contortions and twists it throws up some absurd drama that I cannot understand. I try to block it out. Strange how in the daytime it is only the dreams that we do not wish to remember that come flickering back into the conscious mind.
The guards are gone. I have not heard a noise for several hours now. Until tomorrow, there will be silence in this tomb of a place so far down under the ground.
Then it begins. I feel it coming from out of nowhere. I recognize it now, and I shrink into the corner to await its pleasure. What will it be today? That slow down-dragging slide and pull into hopeless depression and the heart's weariness. The waters of the sea of despair are heavy and thick and I think I cannot swim through them. But today is a day of euphoria. Up snakes and down ladders, my mind is manically playing games with me and I cannot escape. Today it is teasing me, threatening me, so far without the full blast of its fury. I squat and rock backward and forward, reciting half-remembered nursery rhymes like a religious mantra. I am determined I will make myself more mad than my mind.
Blackness, the light has gone. There will be none for 10 hours. They have given me candles. Small, stubby candles. I will not light them. I fear the dark, so I save the candles. It's stupid; it's ridiculous. There are a dozen or so hidden under my bed. I will not light them, yet I hate the dark and cannot abide its thick palpable blackness that weighs upon my flesh. I can feel it against my skin. I am going crazier by the day. In the thick sticky darkness, I lie naked on the mattress. The blanket reeks, full of filth. It is pointless to try to shield myself from the mosquitoes, their constant buzz, buzz, buzz everywhere, as if it is inside my ears and inside my head. In the thick black invisibility, it is foolishness to hope to kill what you cannot see but only feel when it is too late, upon your flesh.
The night buzzing of these insects is so insidious, I cannot take much more. I thrust my body back upon the mattress and pull the filthy curtain over it to keep these things from feeding on my flesh. I cannot bear the heat and smell of this rag over my body like a shroud. I must content myself, let the mosquitoes feed and hope that having had a fill of me they will leave me alone to find some sleep in this night heat.
Thank You sir Its nice to hear from you on the blog everyday. I Was just going to ask you for a sample.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing.. it's interesting story, article.. keep more sharing please
ReplyDeleteNursery Schools Mumbai