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Pip didn’t want to tell the truth about what happened at Satis House (playing cards with Estella whilst Miss Havisham watched) because he didn’t think they’d understand Miss Havisham’s weirdness.
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Instead he makes up a funny weird story about his visit in which he claims he went in a coach in the house and drank wine and ate fancy food and played with swords.
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Mrs Joe and Pumblechook believe Pip’s story because they know Miss Havisham is a bit weird and neither of them have met or seen her.
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Joe is angry when Pip tells him the truth because he doesn’t want Pip telling lies. He also explains that he has nothing to be embarrassed about because if he works hard then he can educate himself and achieve things.
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Pip’s expectations have changed because he now knows he can control his fate through hard work.
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(OWN ANSWER)
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Pip is dissatisfied with Mr Wopsle’s school because he realises it is a sham. The teacher sleeps the whole time, the children constantly fight each other, there are no resources in the room that are usuable and the children recite things that they don’t actually understand properly.
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Pip and Joe find bank notes in Joe’s pocket when they get back from the pub after Pip’s school. Pip knows the money is from the convict because the stranger in the pub who put the money in Joe’s pocket had secretly shown Pip the stolen file.
Tag Archives: higher
Great Expectations Chapter 6 & 7 notes
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At the beginning of C6 Pip feels bad because he lied to Joe.
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Pip doesn’t feel ashamed for stealing Mrs Joe’s food because he doesn’t love her. However, he loves Joe and so the lies make him feel bad.
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Mr Pumblechook declares that the convict climbed the outer walls and used his bedsheets to clamber down the chimney and exited out the same way. This suggests Pumblechook is very imaginative and also pompous as he won’t let anyone challenge his idea.
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Pip was to be apprenticed which means learning a trade over a period of years.
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Pip is educated at an evening school. The teacher constantly falls asleep as the kids learn very little. They pay for this lack of education. The owner recites to them suggesting education was rote learning rather than learning how to think critically for yourself.
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We learn that Joe’s childhood was very difficult. His father was a drunk who beat up his mum and him. His mum tried to take him away several times, but his father always found them and brought them back. He hadn’t really gone to school much as it cost money, but he became apprenticed as a blacksmith so he could start earning.
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Joe is motivated to stay with Mrs Joe because she reminds him of his mother. Also he sees himself in Pip and wants him to be cared for.
Great Expectations Chapter 5 notes
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The suspense of Chapter 4 is resolved as Pip does not receive the blame for stealing the pie. The militia enter and ask for help in making irons to catch the escaped convicts.
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The Sergeant is very polite and upright. He says all the right things, although he says more than he has too.
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The convict realises that Pip did not tell on him and cannot understand why he kept silent about him.
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The two convicts are angry at one another because they were tried and convicted of the same crime. Convict 2 blames Convict 1 for being there, Convict 1 simply wants to harm Convict 2.
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Joe says he was happy that the convict got food for his night on the marshes. This shows Joe is a caring person.
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The reference to the ship as a ‘wicked Noah’s ark’ is because there are so many convicts packed onto the ship and instead of being taken somewhere nice they are going to do hard labour.
Great Expectations Chapter 3 & 4 notes
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Pip meets another convict when he sets out to make his delivery who he thinks is the man employed to eat him.
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It is surprising when Convict 1 reacts to the news of Convict 2 as it suggests there never was another man with him and Pip has been scared for no reason.
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Mr Wopsle is the clerk for the church and he says that ‘Swine were the companions of the Prodigal (Jesus)’ Mr Wopsle says it to suggest there is something wrong with Pip. Dickens includes it to make a joke about Mr Wopsle eating pork whilst talking about pigs.
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It is ironic that Mrs Joe does not attend church as she claims to be a devout Christian. She claims she does not attend so she can get more work done as Joe and Pip aren’t in the house.
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Mrs Joe and Joe host Christmas dinner. They invite Mr Wopsle the church clerk, Mr Hubble the wheelwright and his wife, and also Mr Pumblechook who was a grain merchant and Joe’s uncle.
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Mr Wopsle and Mr Pumblechook are both prideful and entitled men who have a lot to say without actually saying very much.
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At this point in the novel it is suggested that Pip would become a blacksmith apprenticed to Joe.
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Suspense is built at the end of Chapter 4 as Pip has stolen a pie to give to the convict which was to be presented as the pudding at Christmas dinner. He is now stressing about how he will not get the blame for his act of thievery.
Great Expectations Chapter 1 & 2 notes
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When Great Expectations opens Pip is in the graveyard looking at his Mum and Dad’s gravestone.
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Dickens hooks his reader immediately by having Pip attacked by an escaped convict.
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Pip is afraid that if he doesn’t return with a file and food for the convict then he will be disembowelled by the convict’s friend.
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Mrs Joe calls the stick ‘Tickler’ because she used it to hurt people rather than actually make them laugh. It shows she has a twisted sense of humour.
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The story is told from Pip’s point of view. He is reflecting on his own history. This was unusual at the time as the majority of novels were written in the present tense with a third person voice – not in first person, past tense.
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Pip is technically Joe’s brother-in-law, as Joe is married to Pip’s big sister. Joe and Mrs Joe are raising Pip, although Joe is more like Pip’s best friend.
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There is physical comedy in Pip getting tipped over the gravestone, even though this is threatening behaviour from the convict. It is also physically funny when Pip is chased around the kitchen and Joe acts as his protector from Mrs Joe.
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At the end of Chapter 2 Pip runs from the house to give the convict the stolen supplies on a very bleak morning. (dramatic epithet)
The Kite Runner sample essays
These are the 2017 Exam questions all answered. You can look at them side by side on the word document or paragraph by paragraph on the powerpoint.
You should be noticing by now that all the evidence and analysis is the same, give or take, and that the points and link backs are only changing depending on the requirements of the question but their overall idea is the same!!!
Carol Ann Duffy 10 marker quotes
Here’s the quotes I would go for in the exam for the 10 marker. Depending on the question, you would word your analysis slightly differently.
Havisham
‘Beloved sweetheart bastard’
‘ropes on the backs of my hands I could strangle with’
‘don’t think it’s just the heart that b-b-breaks’
Valentine
‘It promises light like the careful undressing of love’
‘it will blind you with tears’
‘Lethal’
War Photographer
‘spools of suffering set out in ordered rows’
‘Rural England’
‘A hundred agonies in black and white/ from which his editor will pick five or six’
Originally
‘as the miles rushed back to the city, the street, the house, the vacant rooms’
‘my tongue/ shedding its skin like a snake’
‘Where do you come from?/ strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.’
Carol Ann Duffy – Mrs Midas Questions
Mrs Midas (2016 paper)
37. Look at lines 1–12. By referring to at least two examples, analyse how the poet’s language conveys the contrast in atmosphere between stanza 1 and stanza 2. (4)
NOTE THE WORD CHOICE OF ‘AT LEAST TWO EXAMPLES’ HERE. THIS MEANS YOU COULD GO FOR QUOTE PLUS STRONG ANALYSIS X2 OR QUOTE PLUS WEAK ANALYSIS X4 OR 2+1+1.
The first stanza is very calm whereas the atmosphere in the second stanza is excited and dangerous.
The calmness is created through scene setting and word choice in the first few lines. The speaker uses the word ‘unwind’ to show that she is done for the day and is chilling out now as this tells us she is releasing all the pent up energy from her day and work (1 mark). This idea of the household and the people in it calming down for the end of the day is also repeated when the house is personified as ‘relaxing’. It gives a sense that the whole house is letting go of all the worries from that day. (1 mark)
In contrast the second stanza creates excitement and danger, especially with the use of personification to describe the poor twilight lighting. It says ‘the way the ground seemed to drink the light of the sky’. This image uses word choice to suggest a grim impression of the fading light. It sounds intimidating and like there is a fight going on between dark and light. The way the ground is personified as ‘drinking’ also makes it seem like a monster that is trying to devour things around it. This all seems dangerous because the night is made to seem bad. (2 marks)
38. Look at lines 13–24. Analyse how the poet’s language in these lines creates an unsettling mood. (2)
One way in which the poet makes the mood unsettling is through her word choice which she uses to create a list of how Midas looked. Duffy says ‘strange, wild, vain” to describe the look on Midas’s face. Each of these has negative connotations. If he is ‘wild’ then he can’t be controlled, if he is strange then he has become something odd and weird and unfamiliar. If he is vain then he is only concerned with himself. The listing of these adjective also suggests that the speaker is struggling to find the right word to describe her husband. (STRONG 2 marks)
OR
Mrs Midas inserts what she said to Midas into the poem to show her reaction. “What in the name of God is going on?” She is asking him a question. Her word choice of ‘name of God’ shows that she feels upset and distressed by what she is seeing – her husband turn things to gold. She is stressed because it doesn’t make sense and shouts out this question showing her unsettled mood. (2 marks)
39. Look at lines 25–36. By referring to at least two examples, analyse how the poet’s language presents the character of Mrs Midas. (4)
THE POINTS BELOW ARE EACH WORTH 2 MARKS. YOU WOULD ONLY NEED 2 OF THEM TO GET YOUR 4 MARKS.
Initially Mrs Midas is ‘rightly’ shocked at what has happened. She says ‘I started to scream’. Duffy uses sibilance here to highlight the noises Mrs Midas started to make. The choice of ‘scream’ tells us that Mrs Midas was very upset when she saw things being turned to gold as she couldn’t understand it. She is presented as reacting typically to something she is scared of. (2 marks)
Mrs Midas is shown to be quite tough and no-nonsense but also a little bit cool. We get this when it says she ‘finished the wine on my own’. The wine had been opened so they could have a nice dinner, but the ‘on my own’ implies that she is sitting taking in Midas’s changes and drinking the wine to calm herself down. There is also an element of punishing Midas here, as she takes the wine from him. (2 marks)
Her humorous side is also shown here as she tells him at the end of stanza 6 ‘You’ll be able to give up smoking for good’. She has obviously been at him to quit cigarettes, and now he is forced to because they turn to gold in his hands. She is mocking him in order to get her head around what has happened. (2 marks)
40. By referring closely to this poem, and to at least one other poem by Duffy, discuss how the poet explores the attempts of characters to cope with life-changing situations. (10)
In Mrs Midas the life-changing situation being dealt with is that Mrs Midas has to deal with Midas’s new gift of turning everything he touches into gold. The poem explores how Mrs Midas deals with this change by telling us her story from her own perspective and the changes she made in her life to deal with Midas.
In Havisham, the life-changing event is Mrs Havisham being jilted at the altar, in the poem we listen to her rant about the event and her inability to cope with the effect this had on her.
In Mrs Midas Duffy suggests that Mrs Midas has come to terms with Midas’s acceptance of his gift. However, she still feels very sad about it as she says ‘what gets me now isn’t the idiocy or greed/ but the lack of thought for me’. Her word choice here shows how some people might think Midas was stupid or was simply materialistic in wanting to turn things he touched to gold, but for Mrs Midas she gets upset because her husband never thought about her when he did it. For her, his acceptance of the gift was selfish as he didn’t consider that it would mean he could never touch his wife again and he forgot about their love for some gold.
In Havisham, the speaker shows that her way of coping with being jilted was to become bitter and mad. This idea is immediate in the opening sentence when she says ‘beloved sweetheart bastard’. The alliteration of the ‘b’ draws attention to what she is saying, it also sounds like she is spitting out the words because these are plosive and sibilant words – lots of b’s and s’s. The words also set up an oxymoron, she loved her fiancé, but thinks he is scum now because he left her. The opening certainly shows that Miss Havisham has become angry after being jilted.
Another thing which suggests her angry madness is when she describes how she has prayed so hard for her ex-fiance’s death that she has ‘ropes on the back of her hands she could strangle with’. This suggests how aged she is as her veins are popping up on the back of her hands, it could also suggests the stress she has put herself through. The idea as well that she is willing to strangle someone – her ex-fiance in particular – suggests how enraged she is still. This is all she fixates on.
Finally, she tells us that she has been totally broken emotionally, physically, mentally and sexually by the jilting as she tells us in her parting lines ‘don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-breaks’. The word choice and layout of ‘b-b-breaks’ makes it sound as if she has broken down at this point. Also saying that it’s not just a heart that breaks shows that being jilted has affected Miss Havisham in every way it could, it has changed how she thinks and how she feels.
Carol Ann Duffy Revision
Carol Ann Duffy Poetry notes
Below are the annotated notes for each of the Scottish Set Text Duffy poems at Higher.
