From The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

1. Read the extract below, state where the character is.

2. Do you think she is familiar with and feels comfortable in the environment judging by the first sentence of the extract? What stylistic devices help you to form your opinion?

3. Is the extract a description, a narration or an exposition? Give your reasons.

4. Speak about the image of the woods.

1. What method of characterization is used: direct or indirect?

2. Is the image rendered through the author’s or the character’s eyes?

3. Analyse the stylistic devices used to create this image; group them in accordance with the impression they produce. Does the impression change throughout the extract? Support your opinion with the necessary stylistic devices.

4. Has the author succeeded in creating an image of something alive while describing the woods? What means did he use for the purpose?

5. What effect is produced by gradation in the last line of the extract?

Trisha had never felt as much like a town girl as she did while that miserable, terrifying day was winding down toward dark. The woods came in clenches, it seemed to her. For a while she would walk through great old strands of pine, and there the forest seemed almost all right, like the woods in a Disney cartoon. Then one of those clenches would come and she would find herself struggling through snarly clumps of scrubby trees and thick bushes (all too many of the latter the kind with thorns), fighting past interlaced branches that clawed for her arms and eyes. Their only purpose seemed to be obstruction, and as mere tiredness slipped toward exhaustion, Trisha began to impute them with actual intelligence, a sly and hurtful awareness of the outsider in the ragged blue poncho. It began to seem to her that their desire to scratch her – to perhaps even get lucky and poke out one of her eyes – was actually secondary; what the bushes really wanted was to shut her away from the brook, her path to other people, her ticket out.

From Come Together by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees

1. Read the extract below and state whether it is the first, the third or anonymous narration.

2. Is it a dramatic or interior monologue? Give your reasons and illustration from the extract.

3. Say in one sentence what situation is described in the extract.

4. Find proof that the girl is extremely displeased with the way she looks. What stylistic devices do the authors resort to for the purpose?

5. What trope is used to show the girl’s attitude to Jack [her boyfriend]? Do you think she has quarreled with him?

6. What is the girl’s problem now? How is she going to solve it? What stylistic device is used for expressing her decision?

7. Analyse the last paragraph and say whether she is going to put her idea into practice. Find the trope to back up your opinion.

Make-up doesn’t work!

It’s con!

It’s Friday morning and I’ve put on so many stripes of concealer under my eyes and across my nose that I look like Adam Ant, but the bags under my eyes are still glaringly obvious. Why can’t I sleep any more? It’s not fair. I used to be the Martini girl of sleep: I could do it anytime, anyplace, anywhere. It’s all bloody Jack’s fault. If this unrelenting insomnia carries on, I’m going to start doing Valium.

I scowl at myself in the mirror. There is no point. I already look like the girl on the anti-drugs poster.