Extract Handouts

Extract 1: From The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
by Stephen King

1. Read the extract below and divide it into logical parts.
2. What mood is imposed by the first sentence of the extract? What stylistic device is used to produce this effect?
3. Is the impression sustained by the next sentence? Why not? What details create the atmosphere of serenity? What have you learned about the character of the extract from this sentence? Come out with as much information as possible.
4. Why is the first impression of trouble resumed in the sentence “By eleven o’clock…”? What stylistic devices set this mood back? Where is the character now? (What happened to her?) Is she in real danger? What stylistic devices make you think so?

The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. At ten o’clock on a morning in early June she was sitting in the back seat of her mother’s Dodge Caravan, wearing her blue Red Sox batting practice jersey (the one with 36 GORDON on the back) and playing with Mona, her doll. By eleven o’clock she was trying not to be terrified, trying not to let herself think, This is serious, this is very serious. Trying not to think that sometimes when people got lost in the woods they get seriously hurt. Sometimes they died

Extract 2: From The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
by Stephen King

1. Read the extract below and ascertain how many characters are involved in it. What are they? What have you learned about them? Describe the situation. What details make you think so?
2. What mood is set by the first sentence of the extract? What stylistic devices help to produce this effect?
3. Who is the main character of the extract? Is the atmosphere of the extract rendered impartially or through the character’s eyes? What stylistic devices determine this? What is her attitude to the situation she is involved in? Use the necessary stylistic devices for illustration and support of your opinion.
4. What is your impression about the main character?

She was tired of listening to them argue, tired of sounding bright and cheerful, close to screaming at her mother, Let him go, then! If he wants to go back to Malden and live with Dad so much, why don’t you just let him? I’d drive him myself if I had a license, just to get some peace and quiet around here! And what then? What would her mother say then? What kind of look would come over her face? And Pete. He was older, almost fourteen, and not stupid, so why didn’t he know better? Why couldn’t he just give it a rest?

Extract 3: 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.
a) What method of characterization is used: direct or indirect?
b) Is the image rendered through the author’s or the character’s eyes?
c) 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.
d) Has the author succeeded in creating an image of something alive while describing the woods? What means did he use for the purpose?
e) 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.

Extract 4: 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.

Extract 5: 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? What makes you think so?
3. Say in one sentence what situation is described in the extract.
4. Divide the extract into logical parts.
5. Analyse the first part of the extract and prove that the young man is glad to see the girl he is dating. Use the necessary stylistic devices for illustration.
6. Do you think he is surprised at his impression about the girl? To answer this question analyse the sentence “Last time I saw her…” to find out what the girl looked like during their previous meeting, and compare it with the part that begins with “Now, though…”
7. What stylistic devices create the effect of contrast? How does the girl look now in the young man’s opinion? What stylistic devices can you present to prove it?
8. How does he feel about the girl?

Amy’s standing there with a kind of wide smile that makes it impossible not to smile right on back. This kind of rattles me. A good sort of rattle, though, it has to be said – more baby than snake. Last time I saw her, what with all the freaking out she was doing about her recently deceased sex life and her unrequited crush on Matt, her lips had been all squished together like for want of a kinder description, a pair of mating slugs. Now, though – well, I have to, and am more than glad to. Admit – they’ve got a K and an I and an S and an S written all over them. Clothes-wise, she’s wearing a funky little black skirt and grab-me grey top. She looks good. Seriously. Beautiful. And confident. She holds my stare and, as she does, my nerves come surging back.

Extract 6: From Vertical Run by Joseph R. Garber

1. Read the extract below and divide it into logical parts. Give reasons for your division.
2. Analyze the opening part. What is the advantage of opening the fragment in such a way? Where is the action set?
3. Do you share the narrator’s opinion on the stated types of time? Which one was welcome by the soldiers? Why?
4. Find cases of metonymy in the fragment and dwell upon their symbolic functions.
5. Are the first two paragraphs contrasting? What is the role of polysyndeton in them?
6. What expressive means help to render the atmosphere of tension in the final paragraph?
7. What idea lies behind the antithesis “Nothing fazes them … They weep»?
8. Does the author exaggerate man’s behaviour at war? What stylistic devices does he resort to for this purpose?
9. How do you think it feels being a war soldier?

Here in the jungle there are two kinds of time – long time and slow time. Long time is what you usually get. You sit beneath a tree or in a hooch or in a field tent, or maybe you’re tiptoeing Indian file through the boonies, and nothing happens. Hours pass and nothing happens. Then you look at your Timex and discover that it has only been five minute since the last time you looked at it. Long time.
The other kind of time is slow time. There’s a flat metallic snap, the receiver of an AK-47 chambering a round. Then there is fire and explosions and screams and the whine of bullet all around and each one aimed at you for unending eternity. And when, after hours of hot terror, and no little rage, the shooting stops, you come back from hell and glance at your Timex.
Guess what? Five minutes have passed since the last time you looked at it.
Slow time. The clock gets choked with molasses. Men weep at how slow the seconds pass. They are MACV-SOG. Their shoulder patch is a fanged skull wearing a green beret. They are the hardest of the hard, the baddest of the bad. Nothing fazes them. They look at their watches. They weep.