Lessons have been running as promised this week, during the normal, pre exam leave, times and they will continue to do so up to the actual exam. Please try your best to attend and please bring any specific queries or concerns you may have.

In the mean time here are a few tips and reminders to help guide your revision.

Section A  - Unseen non-fiction analysis. Family Relationships.
Remember you need to establish early on in your analysis what the purpose, audience and context are of your piece and to then provide detailed analysis of how LANGUAGE, STRUCTURE and the chosen FORM are manipulated to target this audience and fulfil the identified purpose.

Whilst doing this you must constantly be looking at what ATTITUDES and VALUES are conveyed and how.

An easy 3 step way to do this is:
a) identify the attitude (be careful, they may alter) eg. "There is a clear attitude of nostagia for her childhood."
b) identify where this is shown eg "This is clearly evident in the phrase, "My laughter, my loves, my longings. All gone."
c) use terminology to explain how the effect is created. eg. " The powerful combination of an asyndetic list with an alliterative selection of abstract nouns is key to conveying this feeling of wistful nostagia for what has passed. The poetic phonetic feature gives the things that have gone an almost mystical significance, whilst the elliptical sentence which follows has a ringing sense of finality, suggesting an attitude of sadness at their loss."

The following link to the Guardian Family Section Archive will provide you with a huge amount of relevant material to practise on, and in a variety of different forms. PLEASE MAKE THE MOST OF THIS.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/family

Section B - Comparative essay - Ibsen and Miller
The question will always be wiorded along the lines of "Examine how your playwrights explore the idea/significance of.................in their plays.

We have already looked at several possible areas for comparison but please make plans for the following, if you have not already done so:

• money and wealth
• relationships
• the outsider
• the public and the private
• guilt
• secrets/lies/deception
• games
• change
• redemption
• responsibility
• the home
• work

The best way to plan is to divide your sheet in two and jot down any ideas on these themes for the 2 plays. Remember to think laterally. ie. look at how these themes and ideas occur within the text and in terms of production and reception.

Draw links and comparisons across the plays in your plan.

VERY IMPORTANTLY - work out where amongst your points you are going to build in references to:

• Context of production
• Context of reception
• Theatrical context
• Any quotes from outside the text, which may prove useful.

ALSO please look at as many on line reviews of the latest production of "All My Sons" as you can. This is particularly useful to get ideas re the relevence of the play today and therefore context of reception.

FINALLY an interesting point is made in the production programme about America after the war. As Miller and Chris suggest, despite the horrors of the war an essential goodness was evident on which to found a new post-war America. However, America's actual response was a consummerist boom, a movement to the suburbs and the re-establishment of women as secondary figures. 20 million refrigerators were purchased between 1945 and 1949. This would appear to support and justify Joe's lie and therefore Miller's criticism of Joe can be easily identified as being a broader criticism of society.


See you next week.

Mr Petrie