From The Class by Eric Segal

1. Read the extract below and state its theme.

2. How is the fast moving time depicted in the first paragraph? What simile contributes to the effect? Pick out more stylistic devices which serve the same purpose.

3. How does the second paragraph introduce the theme of the extract?

4. What happened to Norman Gordon on the afternoon of his General Exams in History and Lit.? What tropes and figures of speech are used to portray his inner state?

5. How can you account for the ironic ring of the extract despite the tragic event? How does it show the author’s attitude to his personage? What role does it play in revealing the message of the extract?

Like the stretto in a fugue, spring term accelerated the tempo of a melody already racing to its conclusion. May seemed to enter even before April ended. Those who just completed senior theses barely had time to catch their breaths before taking General Examinations.

Some of the Class availed themselves of this, their final opportunity to have a nervous breakdown.

On the afternoon of his General Exams in History and Lit., Norman Gordon of Seattle, Washington, was found wandering on the banks of the Charles – providentially by his own tutor.

“Hey, Norm, did you finish writing this early?”

“No,” replied the senior who had kept a straight-A average till now, a maniac glow in his eyes. “I’ve decided that I don’t like my major at all. In fact, I’m planning not to graduate. I’m going out west to start a cattle ranch.”

“Oh,” said the tutor, then gently led him to the Health Department.

And psychiatry picked up where education had left off.

But in a sense young Gordon had succeeded in his unconscious aspiration: he had managed to avoid having to leave the four-walled shelter of a paternal institution.

From The Blue Note by Charlotte Bingham

1. Read the extract below and say what it is about. What was it that made the characters happy? What stylistic device introduces the characters’ realization of their remaining alive?

2. What figures of speech used in the first paragraph represent hardships which the characters had to overcome in the wartime?

3. What does the author mean by ‘the Yellow Peril” and “the Red Peril”? Name the trope used here.

4. What stylistic device links the two paragraphs? Is its usage advantageous? Give your reasons.

5. What expressive means make the second paragraph sound even more optimistic?

6. Analyze the cases of parallel constructions and insertion in the second paragraph and explain their purpose.

7. Comment on the use of italics in the extract.

8. What kind of repetitions does the author use in the extract? How do they render his message? What is the message?

Afterwards they said there was never to be a time quite like it again. It was not just the exuberance, and not just the fun of it either; it was the sudden realization that they were actually alive. That despite the war, doodlebugs, rationing, dreary clothes and even drearier food, despite the A-bomb and the H-bomb, despite Korea and Malaya, despite Russia and the Berlin Wall, despite the terrible treat of Communism and Marxism, the Yellow Peril and the Red Peril, despite almost everything they knew or had been told about the doom of days gone past, and the doom of days yet to come, despite all that – they were still living, and on the earth.

And what was more, and what was better, they were young, and some of them were not just young, but beautiful. Not that it mattered, beautiful or not beautiful, pretty or not pretty, handsome or not handsome; it did not matter a single, solitary little damn not once they came to and realized that after all that – all those dead people, all those fathers that had not come back, uncles who had never returned, mothers whom they had never known – they were actually alive.

But first – they had to grow up.