How did you measure up?

1. How did you measure up? JC2 Mid Year Examination The Pinter Passage-Based Qn Review

2. Returning of scripts & checking data entered • Please check that your marks have been added and keyed in correctly. • Initial beside your name after you’ve checked.

3. Requirements • Discrimination and sometimes originality • Informed personal and critical response to the text • Analyses with skill and discrimination ways in which writers’ uses of form, structure and language to create the meanings of the text • Evaluates the effects of the writers’ use of form, style and language with a mature judgement and clear focus on key issues. • Supports with detailed, pertinent reference to the text, using quotation, paraphrase and critical terminology appositely and economically. • Demonstrates sophisticated understanding of the literary context of the text • period / theme/ genre/ historical context. • Responds sensitively, perceptively and personally; is often subtle, concise and sophisticated, with a style that is fluent and gives economic expression to complex ideas; at the upper end this work may be elegant and allusive.

4. Requirements SAME requirements for: • Essay: Addressing the question • Formulating a thesis • A Room with a View • The Birthday Party • Passage Based Question: Close reading of the extract • Making links to the rest of the text • A Room with a View • The Birthday Party

5. Recipe for Success Adding depth (& colour) to your essay

6. H2 Context Qn Write a critical appreciation of the following extract paying attention to the presentation of Goldberg here and elsewhere in the play. Act 2, pg 59-60 Meg. (standing) I want to dance! … Lulu. I’ve always liked older men. They can soothe you. They embrace.

7. Critically analyse an extract from a set text for distinctive stylistic / thematic / character concerns AND to evaluate the significance of the extract with regard to the rest of the text. Focus on the extract first before making cross-references and analyzing other parts of the text for significance! Rules for Passage Based Question

8. Introduction Identify the significance of the extract in context of the play as a whole: • Plot overview & setting • How is this extract crucial to your understanding of Goldberg? • What is the central conflict? • What are some of the key themes that the extract develops?

9. Scene takes place during Stanley’s birthday party • Living room, parallel scenes • Meg & McCann • Lulu & Goldberg • Crucial transition from the original presentation of GB in Act 1 to his hapless, vulnerable presentation on Act 3 • Characterization of GB takes a subversive turn from moral leader to sexual deviant • Raises questions on the reliability of identity and moral rights of figures of authority

10. Common Mistakes • Generic description of TBP • TBP is about… • Listing themes and devices without making connections • Between plot and themes • Extract and over arching issues of the play

11. Layered Analysis Adding depth (& colour) to your essay

12. Common Problems  Presentation of GB Not characterization of GB Lacked development of thematic concerns

13. GB as a figure of authority • Tone of easy confidence • Imperatives: Listen to this. • Fillers: Eh do me a favour, just sit on the table a minute, will you? • Action on stage: (He stretches and continues) • In contrast to Meg’s ineffectual cajoling • Stanley. Dance.

14. b. Figure of authority with malicious intent • Stanley’s silent presence on stage • Follows the interrogation • Visual reminder of the viciousness of GB & McCann’s earlier attack • Exploits Lulu’s trust and admiration • Lulu’s accusations of his perverse and offensive sexual exploitation in Act 3

15. Effect & Evaluation • Effect ≠ Concern • Audience horrified, senses the menace • Casts doubt on the reliability of authority • Even if one can accept the vitriolic abuse heaped upon Stanley as a necessary evil for his transgressions • Indignation at authority’s self-serving intentions

16. GB’s insecurity of his own identity • Language: Series of clichés • Dialogue & Parallels • Responds with a ‘pat’ or prepared response when asked about his wife • Replacing ‘mother’ with ‘wife’ • Use of questions • Evades Lulu’s questions • Suggests his inability to create his own, unique narrative • GB is as much a victim, an everyday, little man as Stanley

17. GB as failed father figure • Casting: Older man flirting with a visually much younger woman • Sexual innuendoes in the piggy back and tickling • Blocking: Lulu sitting on GB’s lap • Physical action: They embrace. & Tickling • Parallel to Meg’s absent father • Meg. My father was going to take me to Ireland once. But then he went away by himself. • Bankruptcy of social/familial institution, suggesting an inherent loneliness typical of themodern era

18. Pop goes the weasel • 'Popping' is a slang term for pawning, • Weasel may be a corruption of whistle - in cockney rhyming slang 'whistle and flute' i.e. suit/coat • The Eagle was a London pub, near the City Road, and a later Eagle pub still exists on the site. The lyrics of the rhyme - Up and down the City Road,in and out of The Eagle,that's the way the money goes, pop goes the weasel • describe spending all your money on drink in the pub and subsequently pawning your suit to raise some more.  • Reminds young ones about excessive poverty due to heavy drinking and depression

19. Disintegration of partnership with McCann • From the duet in the interrogation to the separate parallel conversations in this scene • McCann and Meg having a separate conversation on Meg’s childhood • Even representatives of the Establishment are not in control of their circumstances • Pathetic existence of mankind as a whole

20. Conclusion Re-present the focus of the extract & Qn • Jovial mood of a birthday party only apparent in GB and Lulu’s flirtatious exchanges • Stanley’s silence and Meg & McCann’s conversation lends the party gravity, sense of sorrow • Rapidly declining into the mayhem and darkness of the end of Act 2

21. Back to Basics:Phrasing literary analysisThe bread & butter of Lit.

22. Using quotation, paraphrase and critical terminology Lulu says, almost with a sense of wide-eyed devotion and admiration, that “I trust you.” [Use adjectives & synonyms] All the more significant [Vary connecting phrases] is the brevity of this confession by Lulu: those three, simple words accord GB all the power and liberty that he needs to later commit his sexual transgressions towards Lulu.

23. Using quotation, paraphrase and critical terminology Lulu says, almost with a sense of wide-eyed devotion and admiration, that “I trust you.” [Quotation] All the more significant is the brevity of this declaration by Lulu: those three, simple monosyllabic [Critical terminology]words accord GB all the power and liberty that he needs to later commit his sexual transgressions towards Lulu. [Paraphrase plot related reference]

24. All my life I’ve said the samePlay up, play up and play the game.