Analysing texts, Year 9: form, tension and symbols

A ballad

提示Folk singers carried these tales from village to village long before they were printed.

为什么The typical stanza has four lines, with the second and fourth rhyming, and a steady beat that makes it easy to sing and to remember. Choosing this form tells the reader to expect a tale, usually a dramatic one, told plainly.

free

提示The poet has been let off the usual rules of pattern.

为什么Without a set pattern, the poet decides where every line ends, so the line breaks do the work that rhyme and metre do elsewhere. The form often suits a speaking voice or a mind thinking aloud.

Galloping horses

提示Tap the beat on a table: DUM-da-da, DUM-da-da.

为什么The poem describes a cavalry charge of 1854, and its rhythm drives forward like hooves, so the reader feels the speed before a single animal is mentioned. The form is doing the work of the meaning: change the beat and the charge would slow to a walk.

That something is missing or unfinished

提示The ear waits for a partner sound, and none arrives.

为什么Once a poem has set up a pattern, the reader expects it to continue. Breaking it at one point makes that point stand out, and here the unanswered sound matches the friend who is not there. When a poem breaks its own rule, ask why it does so at that moment.

quatrains; couplet

提示One is a group of four lines; the other is a pair.

为什么Three four-line units and one two-line unit make fourteen lines. The three units usually develop an idea step by step, and the final pair delivers a twist or a summing-up. The point where the argument turns is called the volta.

They speed it up

提示Notice how quickly your eye reaches each full stop.

为什么Each full stop arrives almost at once, so events seem to pile on top of one another and the reader has no time to settle. Writers save this for moments of panic or action, where it works best after longer, calmer sentences.

Making the reader wait builds tension

提示Think how a drum roll works before the winner is announced.

为什么The reader already knows something is coming, so every extra detail stretches the moment before it arrives. Delay only works when a threat has been set up first; description with nothing at stake is just description.

A cliffhanger

提示Picture the hero left dangling by the fingertips over a long drop.

为什么It withholds the one thing the reader most wants to know and puts a gap, such as the end of a chapter, in the way. Novelists such as Dickens, who published in instalments, relied on it to bring readers back.

Climax

提示On a story mountain it is the peak.

为什么Everything before it builds towards this moment and everything after it winds down. Finding it is the first step in charting tension: you can then ask how the writer raised the pressure on the way up.

pace

提示Runners and walkers set one too.

为什么Writers control it with sentence length, the amount of description and how much time each scene covers. A chase told in three lines is fast; one evening told across a chapter is slow.

A motif

提示Composers use the same word for a short tune that keeps coming back.

为什么A symbol can appear once; this is defined by repetition. Each return invites the reader to compare it with the last, which is how a writer can show change without stating it.

The girl's lack of freedom

提示Ask what the creature behind the bars and its owner have in common.

为什么The evidence is the parallel: both are shut in, and the writer keeps drawing attention to the cage. A symbol reading needs that kind of support from the text; here the repetition and the matching situations supply it.

Her changing state of mind

提示The flower beds rise and fall in step with something inside her.

为什么The image returns three times and means something different each time: contentment, then neglect and grief, then hope. Tracking a repeated image is a matter of asking what has changed since it last appeared.

Nothing in the text supports it

提示Ask what proof the pupil could put a finger on in the story.

为什么A detail becomes a symbol when the writer gives you a reason to read it that way: repetition, emphasis or a clear link to a character. Without that, the curtains are just curtains.