Question A – Part 1• Students need to think about how the story is being managed by the writer.• It might be appropriate to write about:• Places• Time - how it is being manipulated, whether it is condensed, accelerated, elongated and

where the story starts and finishes in terms of time• Narrator/narratee – whose thinking or speaking processes are being represented? How

reliable is the narrator?• Sequence/Structure – what is the order in which events are told?• Generic conventions/poetic forms – are they operating?• Voices – who speaks to whom and when? (is the speech direct, indirect, free indirect?) Is the

speech attributed?• Language – is there anything telling about the language that the writer uses?

• It is best for students to focus on the larger features of narrative like voice or structure rather than discussing the effects of individual words.

Mimesis - showing

• Not • Dialogue

Diegesis - Telling

• Information related by the narrator which is not dialogue and describes the action or setting, comments on or reports character’s thoughts or actions

FormMimesisDiegesisPlot – what is happening in the story and what is the cause?Thoughts – Direct thought Indirect thoughtSpeech – direct indirectProximityCharacterisation - Transparent/Round?Quest narrativeTragedyRomance

StructureIn what order do events happen?How the chapter fits in the overall structure?Flashbacks?Flashforwards? Foreshadowing?Patterns?Repetition?Exposition? Climax? Resolution? Closure? Degrees ofGaps?Shifts? Jumps?Regular? Disrupted?

LanguagePoeticEducatedVerboseDescriptionColloquialMetaphoricalSymbolismContrastIronyImageryViolent languageNamesDialogue

Narrative perspective/VoiceHomodiegeticInternal focalisationRetrospectiveFirst person narratorChoric voicesOther character voicesSelf concious/Naïve narratorDistance Other narratorsReliabilityActiveObserver

SettingGeneralSpecificTime of year/month/daySymbolism of setting – connotations/links to or reflections on characterUse of settingDescriptions of setting

A03/A04How do you interpret a character? Action?What do the critics say?Contexts of tragedy/romance?Moral contextModern contextGender contextMysteryNick’s portrayal of him versus realityClassAmerican Dream – Roaring 20s

Paragraph on the author's form/language.

• An example of this would be from The Great Gatsby where you could comment on Carraway's 'educated and poetic prose' and 'technically fluent style' and how this shapes the readers view of Carraway. Other things to comment on could be the language used in relation to the narrator's feelings. Is the narrator happy or melancholic? Then comment on how this is significant. Does the narrator's language change during the chapter, or does his tone change? If so then comment on this and say how it adds significance to the chapter. Further, you can comment on any of the above then relate it to its purpose/destination; does the component you talk about affect anything later on in the novel?

Paragraph on the structure of the chapter. You should use this paragraph to talk about whether the chapter is told

chronologically or not, and how does this then shape the reader's view of the novel. Comment on whether the author

has purposely created gaps in this chapter or missed out a certain time period, or suddenly gone from Spring to Summer in the chapter, etc. Commenting on time and how it passes in the chapter can sometimes be quite a unique, but effective thing to talk about in the question. These are all significant components of how the author tells the story - if these are present, then pull them out and comment explicitly on how they shape meanings.

Is there a cyclical structure to how the chapter is told? How does the structure of this chapter go on to affect other chapters later on or previously in the novel? Obviously, you don't need to

comment on all of these ideas, the best way is to just pull out one or two of these points then expand on them.

Paragraph on the narrative perspective.

• This is something that will vary quite a lot dependent on the text you are doing. Personally, this was fantastic to use for Gatsby as it features a narrator whose reliability can be questioned, so there is lots to write about. Aspects to include in this paragraph are things like what form of narration is present - is it first person, is it a modified first person narrator (like Nick Carraway is) etc. It is best to state what type of narration is featured at the start of your paragraph. Then, you can comment on whether the narrator is reliable, or if he is biased. Comment on how the narrator deals with integrating with other secondary characters, and the effect this might have on his narration/storytelling. Comment on any use of different view points during the narration, and how this is significant to the story, and what implication might come about because of this. Always link these back to the 'overarching' story - how they give effect to the rest of the novel.

Paragraph on setting.• This can be a shorter paragraph that would be nice to end on.

Commenting firstly on where the narrator has started off in this chapter and where he ends up (in context of the setting) and why this may be significant. An example of how to utilise setting in this question would be: 'The settings of the chapter are mainly Daisy and Tom's house and New York, as well as the Valley of Ashes as the site of Myrtle's death. Carraway describes the day as hot and stuffy calling it "certainly the warmest, of the summer". This weather provides a suitable atmosphere for the argument between Tom and Gatsby; the conversation gets heated which is reflected by the "large and stifling" room in which it takes place.' So by commenting here on the weather and linking this in nicely with the overall setting, you can see how it would begin to shape up in an essay. Of course that isn't the whole paragraph, you would follow this up with another couple sentences at least, but you get the idea.

• Fitzgerald uses the opening of his prose “The Great Gatsby” in order to introduce us to the narrator Nick. Nick begins the narrative by suggesting that he is tolerable person, and that his father has taught him to “reserve judgement”. Yet, later on in the opening he describes how only Gatsby was exempt from his “unaffected scorn”, this contradiction suggest that Nick may not be a reliable narrator. Nick also suggests that “life is much more successfully looked at from a single window”. This could be revealing that Nick is a very attentive narrator, however, a more plausible reading would suggest that the Nick is narrow minded and only sees events from a single perspective. Fitzgerald uses the opening to highlight Nick unreliability as a narrator, we must therefore watch out for any prejudice within the narrative, “while Nick is trying to write Gatsby, we are also reading Nick”, the opening is a chance for Fitzgerald to reveal that the truth is not straight forward in the narrative.