- Information
- AI Chat
Mod C samples w notes - Creative Piece HSC English Advanced
advanced english (ENGADV)
University of Sydney
Recommended for you
Related Studylists
Mod C Forms of Writing, Stimulus Brainstorm.Preview text
MOD C Question from CSSA 2020 Paper
“He listened to them all for another fifteen minutes... until he was overcome by the sensation that Life was an enormous rucksack so impossibly heavy that, even though it meant losing everything, it was infinitely easier to leave all the baggage here on the roadside and walk on into the blackness.”
Part A: Use this sentence as stimulus for a piece of persuasive, discursive or imaginative writing that further evokes the emotion expressed in the extract. (10 marks)
... btw the “emotions” that I picked up on and noted during planning time were “realisation” and “anagnorisis”. These are not really emotions, they are more like states, but I made it work :~)
He sat in a state of despair and defeat by the roadside, crouched in a dark, isolated corner beneath a flickering streetlamp, head in arms, arms on knees. Past the roadside, the river carrying the remnants of his story lay glistening under the soft, pale moonlight, the water moving in rhythmic, methodical currents into the vastness of the remaining city. He imagined he could still see the embers and the ashes those burnt pages left behind, but after all, he was imagining. His story, the sleepless nights, his fingertips tapping away at the rusty keys of the typewriter, all gone. All gone to waste.
He listened to the voices in his head, as they persisted for the last fifteen minutes, the voices that fought and reconciled, then fought and reconciled in his mind again. One of the voice’s was his father’s, husky and filled with disappointment and resentment, telling him that he should have never written the story. The story about his father and his endless struggles and violent experiences with war. The other voice, gentle and feminine, with a hint of sadness, was more distant, Linda’s, his girlfriend’s. She told him that he didn’t have to fight alone and that she would always be there to support him and walk the path of Life, but only if he opened himself a little more. She began to cry in his head, the soft, muffled sobs worsening his headache by the lonely roadside. Linda continued to plead and ask him to get help, or rather, allow himself to be helped. The remaining voice was his own. While the other voices talked nonsense and gibberish in his mind, his own voice let itself be suppressed.
He looked up, squinting his bloodshot eyes into the distant river that carried his blood, sweat and tears. Nope, the embers and ashes were gone. So was his father, who had burnt the story using a homeless man’s lantern. His back was numb, not only from the cold, piercing wind clawing at his short, dotted with ash and reeking of smoke, but also from the enormous rucksack he carried; Life itself. It was so impossibly heavy, he concluded, by the roadside, as his father’s and Linda’s voices continued filling and overflowing his mind. He concluded that this rucksack of Life was too heavy, the childhood trauma, the poor relationships he had with people close to him, the extremely suffocating expectations from his father – all of it was too much.
That’s when the voices in his head stopped. No more father. No more Linda. No more white noise and empty cries. It was silent. There, by the roadside, he suddenly became overcome by the sensation that the heavy rucksack of Life could just be left there, and it would simply be infinitely easier to leave all the baggage and walk into the blackness. The blackness of a new life. An empty rucksack that is easier to carry on his back. He would leave it all behind and forget it all, just like his forgotten story now contained within the river, and he would start over. Yes, he’d walk on into the blackness, but whether it be black or white, an empty canvas is still an empty canvas, he thought with a smile.
He got up effortlessly, his old rucksack of Life laying limp beside him.
Part B: Explain how at least ONE of your prescribed texts from Module A, B or C has influenced the aesthetics of your writing in Part A. (10 marks)
In my imaginative piece, I attempted to further evoke the emotions of realisation and anagnorisis contained within the stimulus. I have taken inspiration from Nam Le’s “Love and Honour” to do so.
I employ objective correlative to describe the setting in which the narrator is in, “beneath a flickering streetlamp... pale moonlight... water moving in rhythmic, methodical currents”. This is to evoke the mood of despondence and loss associated with the burning of his story, similar to how Nam Le uses objective correlative to describe Nam’s untidy living space to evoke a sordid and bleak mood.
I then utilise the extended metaphor of life being a heavy rucksack, which is already present in the stimulus, “... his old rucksack of life laying limp beside him” to capture the narrator’s trauma and the overwhelming burden that he is about to release. This metaphor allowed me to accurately portray the emotion and state of anagnorisis that I attempted to convey, which Nam Le has done in his own text. Nam Le uses the extended metaphor of a frozen river being the container of past trauma and negative experiences, and similarly I have used the metaphor of life being a physical sack of burden, to then amplify the narrator’s anagnorisis and realisation by allowing the rucksack to fall off his back.
I employ symbolism in my piece through the voices in my character’s head. Each of the voices, whether they are “husky” or “gentle and feminine” symbolise the burdening impact of his relationships on his own state of mind, and how the pressure of others has then “suppressed” his own voice. Nam Le also employs symbolism in his piece through the riverside setting that reminds Nam Le’s father of the river in which his mother was killed, serving a symbolic purpose in his writing.
Hence, I attempt to evoke the emotions of realisation and anagnorisis in my piece, taking inspiration from Nam Le’s “Love and Honour” to propel my writing choices.
let my face lean towards him, planting a kiss on his forehead, a black, wavy mop of hair covering most of it, before I turned and exited the café, the donuts and coffee lingering on my clothes.
Analysis table for Mod C prescribed text “Love and Honour”
Note: This table really helped me write all my imaginative pieces, like really helped. All the techniques I consciously used in my writing are directly inspired by the techniques used by Nam Le. After all I am no novelist, so the next best thing is trying to replicate the writing and language style of actual authors. Also knowing the context of “Love and Honour” and truly understanding the characters and themes was necessary for me to write a good original piece based on this story.
Form and structure • Short story from Le’s first book The Boat, published in 2018 - Stream of consciousness style and narrative, with incorporated flashbacks Context and purpose • Self-reflexive text may appeal to other writers as they learn the connection between writing and the self - Enable audience to reflect, imagine and understand the ethnic experience of another far removed from their own - For people who appreciate the cathartic nature of writing - Purpose is to show how writing can develop self- consciousness and self-exploration - To question who is allowed to stories (need to be authentic and not exploitative) - Entertainment for audiences who like to read - Most of the book in which “love and honour” is written, was written while Le participated in the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and each story is well-crafted and displays his artistic skill as a student of literature and arts Key influential language features and conventions
- “On the brink of freezing, it gleamed in large, bulging blisters” – the river motif provides complexity and depth to the motivations of Nam’s father, who has strived to bury his past in the river that also features in his retelling of the past and his casual visit to the river in America with his son.
- “I snatched the three-quarters-full bottle of Johnny Walker from the second shelf of my bookcase... The desktop was gritty with cigarette ash”. – the objective correlative , combined with detail helps to evoke a sordid mood and reflect the bleakness of Nam’s life
- “The fields are glass... then dissolved into this new, cold, strange reality: ... almost taken up entirely by my bed; ... dripping water onto hardwood floors.” – usage of punctuation and complex sentence represents the complexity and distortive nature of the dream-like state
- “I smelled animals in him, and fuel, and rain.” – olfactory imagery , enables characterisation of the homeless man and encapsulates his affiliation with nature and the outside world
- “Houses on fire. I almost laughed” – truncated sentences introduce variation in sentence length, building tension in the story-telling
- “.. everything was dark and wet and warm and sweet” – polysyndeton creates intensity and sensory overload, heightening the situation being described
- “.. with her the crisp, bracing scent of all the places she’d been” – diction connote rigid and stilted relationship, with a lack of warmth
Mod C samples w notes - Creative Piece HSC English Advanced
Course: advanced english (ENGADV)
University: University of Sydney
This is a preview
Access to all documents
Get Unlimited Downloads
Improve your grades
