Atonement trailer

Some entertainment:



(Set in 1930s to 1940s- WWII. You should find this familiar. Heh.)

By the way...

Perhaps it's a little callous to announce this on a blog, but I am leaving at the end of this year to pursue a Full-time Research Masters in Literary Studies degree in NUS come January 2008. The course will be two years long, culminating to a thesis, hopefully on critical theory and/or cultural studies. It is something that I had decided that I must do in the course of my life -- something that perhaps was left unfinished when I graduated after completing my honours thesis (I aim to work under my old Honours supervisor again). The timing seems just about right as well, with the 'A' levels out of the way and you guys graduating.

At this moment, it looks also likely that I will be doing a bit of adjunct teaching for one or two IP2 classes next year, so you might still see me around the school. I don't know for certain if I will return to teaching after my degree. We'll see after the two years. My concerns keep revolving around thought and education anyway.

I am grateful for having had the experience of teaching you all, because I have also learnt much about what it means to educate. While it might have seemed like an endless experience of drill and practice to meet the requirements of an examination, I think the 'A' level experience is possibly one of the most impactful experiences one can go through because in undergoing such a task, one starts to realise that no one else is responsible for his/her own learning except him/herself. Or his/her own life, for that matter. And that things don't manifest immediately; hopes can be left unfulfilled if you give up or set unrealistic expectations; life can be quite mundane most of the time, difficult, but sometimes surprising, and possibly easier than previously thought after a lot of preparation and perseverance. One key thing I've learnt as a teacher: sometimes for the good of it all, you just have to let go of the incessant need to fill in answers, to hand-hold, and trust that everyone will all stand on their own two feet. And as far as I can tell, I think everyone will more or less be okay.

So what happens now for the IP4 Litterateurs?

So exams are over, and how many people still read the blog?

I hope that taking lit as a subject has somewhat developed your understanding of how language works or how ideas might be presented and how they might be influenced by the historical-social context of the time, or at the very least, helped you to develop your essay writing skills more just by the sheer amount of practice that you would have done.

Some people might be asking yourselves, 'what now'? You have every right to do whatever you want -- you could throw away your lit texts forever, or re-read them again, or, move on to other books.

Some suggestions (from myself and some other teachers, after casual discussion):

- Tons and tons of "The Onion" for funny stuff; "The Far Side Gallery"
- "On the Road" - Jack Kerouac
- For something more contemporary: "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Coer, or "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers
- anything by Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino (for something more abstract and magical)
- Just in time for the movie adaptations: "Love in the Time of Cholera" - Gabriel Garcia Marquez; "Atonement" - Ian McEwan
- "The Name of the Rose" (or "Foucault's Pendulum", if you can last that long)
- Serious stuff: any Graham Greene novel
- "Lolita" - Vladimir Nabokov
- "A Prayer for Owen Meany"/ "The World According to Garp" - John Irving - quirky, gentle and moving
- "A Clockwork Orange"/ "Brave New World"
- Neal Stephenson's latest or "Snow Crash"
- any one of Nick Hornby's books ("High Fidelity", "About a Boy")
- any one of Arturo Perez-Reverte's mysteries - Spanish fun
- More philosophical, existentialist stuff : "Unbearable Lightness of Being" - Milan Kundera, "Siddharta" - Herman Hesse
- "V for Vendetta"/ "From Hell"/ "The Watchmen"/ "Cerebus"/ Frank Miller's stuff
- "Dave Barry Goes To Japan" or any Dave Barry book for stupid entertaining humour
- "Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Universe" (the series)
- Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"/ William Gibson's "Neuromancer"/ "Pattern Recognition"
- Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland"
- (For something disturbing in modern dystopian way) "The Concrete Island" - J.G. Ballard
- David Mitchell's "No. 9 Dream"/"Cloud Atlas"
- Haruki Murakami
- "Good Omens" (Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett) - hilarious!!
- anything by Oliver Sacks - non-fiction, but really fascinating anyway
- Barabbas (Par Lagerkvist) - "I can quite safely say that this book changed my life when i was 19..."
- "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" (Mark Haddon)
- The entire 'Narnia' series, "cos it's great to be a kid again after all that angsting"
- anything by Pico Iyer - for a glimpse of the world beyond singapore
- Lonely Planet guide to any country they want to visit during their uni holidays - with a highlighter and those little coloured tags that you use to mark out pages :)
- any good cookbook, because messing around in the kitchen is fun
- "A Suitable Boy" (Vikram Seth)
- Maurice" (EM Forster)
- "Circle of Friends" (Mave Binchy)
- Ibsen's plays
- The Temeraire series (Naomi Novik)
- 'fugitive pieces', by anne michaels: "it reads like poetry. though it isn't for everyone - pple who are not into lush luxuriant language may not like it much."

For a meta-textual movie, try watching "Adaptation".

If anyone has reviews or opinions, feel free to share them. :)

Some things to keep in mind before you go in

Key principles:

1. Go for the question that you are most comfortable and confident of doing. This is no time for what you think will be pulling off a brilliant intellectual stunt. Brilliant intellectual stunts are for essays you write in college. It is more likely that you will turn out brilliant essays on the'safer' questions.

2. Strategize. Look at the essay questions between Sections B and C, and choose the proper combination of texts to answer your choice of questions.

3. Don't write too much over your time limit. Roughly keep to 1 hr per question. Once you lose fifteen minutes on the next question, you'd start panicking and then it's not that good an essay.

4. Plan and organize. It's important that you do this quickly and not take your time because you'd have a maximum of ten minutes to do this. When planning, treat it as a jumpstart to the brain and don't panic/worry if you seem to have little evidence at that point. The brain, as you write along, will throw up something. You just need to have a rough sketch of the overall picture enough to go ahead with the question.

5. Always define the key terms of the question, and go into the various subcategories (e.g. 'alienation': discussion the different kinds of alienation). You will be marking out the scope of your essay discussion once you define your terms.

6. Don't balk at terms that seem difficult. Always define them first -- they might seem more manageable after you have defined them.

7. Answer the WHOLE QUESTION. Leave no term untouched or un-defined.

8. DON'T LOSE TRACK OF YOUR THOUGHT PROCESSES WHILE WRITING. Keep to the plan. (That's why it's important to have a view of the direction you are going to take with the essay during planning). DON'T LOSE FOCUS AND YOU WILL BE FINE. A shorter essay with great relevance and some substance is going to score better than a rambling essay with no argument and substantiation that makes little sense.

9. NO MATTER WHAT, DO NOT FREAK OUT. Trust yourself, even if you feel you're not prepared. It's a lot about confidence and maintaining lucidity during the exam.



THIS IS A PERIOD PAPER. I hope you realise that all the questions, all the texts are supposed to link up with each other in the greater context.

The separate sections:

1. PC -- choice of either poetry/drama, drama/prose, prose/poetry

PC is about PC first and foremost and not mainly about the 20th century context. The texts offered will probably range from more realist style, dealing with social (i.e. class divides)/moral/political issues of the time, to more symbolic, subjective writing with great experimentation in style.

READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY. Sometimes the PC question requires you to focus on a certain aspect of the writing, be it in concerns/themes or style.

Identify key themes and key features. Your observations about the piece needs to support these greater themes and features. Discussion needs to be about theme and style and not either one.

Comment that these key themes and key features are characteristic of the twentieth century. Bring in context as you see fit (i.e. the period of great social change, political turmoil; two world wars as markers).

Look at the year of publication, as stated on the question.

Rough time period line:
1890s - 1910s (Conrad is situated here) -- End of 19th century (Victorians); industrialization was already in full swing, colonialism was in its heyday, development of science/increasing secular belief, proliferation of urban growth
1901 - 1910 King Edward VII ruled England

1910 - 1918 Period leading up to WWI. King George V's reign. We all knew what happened in WWI (thanks to Wilfred Owen) -- first war of that magnitude in terms of fighting area, technology used and destruction. America comes out of its isolationist policy to fight in WWI towards its end.

1920s - period of recovery after the war. The roaring twenties -- economic boom, flourishing of consumer industry (mass production of goods, e.g. Ford's automobiles), increasing decadence, followed by the Great Depression; extreme poverty caused much despair.

1930s - political turmoil. Hitler ascends to power and is determined to recapture German glory; European politicians opt for appeasement; rise of Fascism (dictators ascend to power)/totalitarian control;

"The audience took the fights dead seriously, shouting encouragements to the fighters, and even quarreling and betting amongst themselves or the results. Yet nearly all of them had been in the tent as long as I had, and stayed after I had left. The political moral is certainly depressing: these people could be made to believe in anybody and anything." (from Christopher Isherwood's "Good-bye to Berlin", 1939)

Bishop of Chichester decides to launch a religious drama revival with the comissioning of Murder in the Cathedral.

1940s - WWII. If they thought WWI was bad, WWII was worse. Much worse. Into the 1950s, the beginnings of existentialism (people were questioning about the purpose of life -- life is seen as absurd).

2. The Comparison question

The comparison questions are going to be broad. Look at the key term in question and define it such that you can bring in texts for discussion. Find points of similarity between the texts. Always discuss the two texts with each other and not separately.

Always keep the purpose of the text (purpose of style) in mind. That helps you focus on the similarities.

3. Single essay text question

The key thing is to LOOK FOR KEY TERMS -- ALL OF THEM. Do not miss out any part of the question. Interpret the ENTIRE QUESTION based on your definitions of your KEY TERMS.

Here, your evidence is going to be crucial (since the points, you would have stuffed into your head already by now). Give ARGUMENT THESIS - POINT - ELABORATE ON POINT - EVIDENCE - PC THE EVIDENCE TO TIE UP WITH POINT.


Ok. Good luck.

"Between Two Wars" by Kenneth Rexroth

Remember that breakfast one November --
Cold black grapes smelling faintly
Of the cork they were packed in.
Hard rolls with hot, white flesh,
And thick, honey sweetened chocolate?
And the parties at night; the gin and the tangos?
The torn hair nets, the lost cuff links?
Where have they all gone to,
The beautiful girls, the abandoned hours?
They said we were lost, mad and immoral,
And interfered with the plans of the management.
And today, millions and millions, shut alive
in the coffins of circumstance,
Beat on the buried lids,
Huddled in the cellars of ruins, and quarrel
Over their own fragmented flesh.

One of your last tasks before the exam...

Check out the meaning of 'anomie'.

Reminder for examinations

Reminder for your H1/H2 papers. Please arrive at your test venue early (i.e. 7 30 - 745 am) for the examiners to check your texts.

Please also be mindful that:
1) there should not be any flagging or post-its pasted on your pages
2) there should only be highlighting (other colours acceptable) and underlining, and NO SCRIBBLES.

Good luck for your H1 paper.

Links to Versification and Scansion

Here are two links to websites which will help you revise on things to do with verse and scansion:

Versification in Poetry

Versification

You can also go look at KM for any notes given to the IP3s/JC1s.