Wine of Astonishment

http://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2012/02/26/reading-the-wine-of-astonishment/  (part 1)

http://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2012/03/04/reading-the-wine-of-astonishment-2/  (part 2)

Old Story Time

'Old Story Time'
Beryl Clarke, Contributor

I am picturing, even as I write, an old man, still sprightly, full of humour or should I say 'joke' as he begins the drama of Old Story Time. How do you see him, and have you thought of the setting in which these characters meet now to listen to Pa Ben, as well as of the community in which they live? From your reading, and I do hope you have done your first reading either by yourself or in class, you must have some ideas about setting.

Their village is small but it boasts a school, a post office and a church; there is also a river. These aspects of the setting are all relevant to the way the play develops. Len does well enough in his local school to earn a scholarship to high school, and the post office becomes a place of great interest to Len's mother when he is studying abroad as she anxiously waits to hear from him. The minister of the church is a 'brown' man and he is socially important and greatly admired by Miss Aggie because of his colour. It is her deepest desire and greatest wish that her son should marry the pastor's daughter. This, as you know, puts Len in a pickle. The river has its place here, too. Do you remember where Miss Aggie finds Len when she returns from market? Yes - he is in the river playing with Pearl.

The pieces of furniture we see in the beginning tell us that Miss Aggie is poor. As part of the staging, notice that the same pieces of furniture are used for different purposes in different scenes. While this makes for ease in scene changes, it may also hint at the diverse uses that are made of what one has because of being poor.

At the start of the play we meet no one in the village who is financially well-to-do. Those who gather to hear and participate in sharing the drama are simple folk. Pa Ben, who does not appear to work or to have much money; Miss Aggie is a haggler, then there is her son, Len, and his schoolmate Pearl. Miss Aggie's house is made of wattle and daub, a type of building which by this time was disappearing from the housing landscape in Jamaica. This small group comes together to open the pages of our history. I believe that you will learn much about us from Old Story Time.

You should not be surprised at the themes that are explored in our play for they reflect the Jamaican character then, and to a great extent today. While we will not begin to examine them in this week's 'class', please identify them for future discussion.

My mind goes once more, as it has before, to the question of the playwright's reasons for choosing this title. You may have thought of it, too. The word story conjures up certain ideas. A story is a make- believe account, a fairy tale; it can also be a factual account, as in a media report. A story may be created from truths and/or real occurrences. In other words, while the characters in the story are not real, what they do and say are what real people do and say. So, in this play we do find out about the racial situation at the period in which it is set, the belief in obeah, a bit about the education system and about teenage pregnancy. This title, therefore, suggests that the audience sitting in the theatre watching Pa Ben, Miss Aggie, Len, Pearl, Mr 'Mongoose' McFarlane, Lois and Miss Margaret will learn something about our past. I believe, too, that the word 'story' hints at the humour that is very much a part of the Jamaican consciousness. All of us enjoy a good story, both to tell it and to listen to it.

This play focuses on the dream of a poor mother to have her one child, a son, rise out of the poverty and the low social status into which he was born. She is convinced that their black skin is a hindrance to achievement and upward mobility and sees education as his only way to a successful future. In addition, she believes that he can cement his improved position by marrying a brown-skin girl with 'tall hair down her back'. Like many Jamaican mothers then and now, she struggles and she makes sacrifices to give Len the support he needs.

Some instances of humour that we meet are painful even though they provoke laughter as we watch her try to do her best. It might seem ridiculous to us to hear that she does not even want a black fowl in her yard, but you should realise that her attitude is the result of living the reality of being black and receiving a certain kind of treatment. Do speak to persons who were born in the '30s and '40s, perhaps even before, and you will find out how much skin colour mattered and its effect on one's self-confidence.

Helpful sites. Use well

notes on poems
http://vincyclassroom.com/2012/04/22/cxc-english-b-poetry-tutorials-for-csec-2012/

Sample question and answer
http://vincyclassroom.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/cxc-poetry-a-question-and-sample-answer.pdf

Prescribed poems and short stories for the CSec Examinations

Prescribed Poems for the 2012-2014 Examinations

*  Contemplation upon Flowers – Henry King

*  Once Upon a Time – Gabriel Okara

*  Forgive My Guilt – Robert Coffin

*  West Indies, U.S.A. – Stewart Brown

*  Sonnet Composed Upon Westminster Bridge – William Wordsworth

*  Orchids – Hazel Simmons-McDonald

*  The Woman Speaks to the Man who has Employed her Son – Lorna Goodison

*  It is the Constant Image of your Face – Dennis Brutus

*  God’s Grandeur – Gerard Manley Hopkins

*  A Stone’s Throw – Elma Mitchell

*  Test Match Sabina Park – Stewart Brown

*  Theme for English B – Langston Hughes

*  Dreaming Black Boy – James Berry

*  Epitaph – Dennis Scott

*  Dulce et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen

*  This is the Dark Time, My Love – Martin Carter

*  Ol’Higue – Mark McWatt

*  ‘Le Loupgarou’ – Derek Walcott

*  South – Kamau Braithwaite

*  To an Athlete Dying Young – A.E. Housman

*McWatt, M., Simmons-McDonald, H (Ed) (2005). A World of Poetry for CXC Oxford Heinemann Educational Publishers (pp. 177-78)

Short Stories Prescribed for the 2012-2014 Examinations

* Blackout – Roger Mais

*  Shabine – Hazel Simmons-McDonald

* Emma – Carolyn Cole

*  The Man of the House – Frank O’Connor

*  Septimus – John Wickham

*  The Day the World Almost Came to an End – Pearl Crayton

*  The Boy Who Loved Ice Cream – Olive Senior

*  Berry – Langston Hughes

*  Mom Luby and the Social Worker – Kristin Hunter

* To Da-duh, in Memoriam – Paule Marshall

Writing an essay in response to a play

http://www.englishbiz.co.uk/mainguides/play.htm

From the desk of Ms. Munroe- 5th Formers Guide to Writing Literary Essays

by English Munroe on Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 10:49pm ·

 Some of your quries regarding Literary Essay writing answered. ENJOY!

Q.: How should I begin my essay? Should I paraphrase or repeat the question?

A.: Begin your essay in whatever way makes it easiest for you to write. If you simply cannot begin on your own without rephrasing the question, then do so. Your reader will not consciously hold it against you, but keep in mind that your reader is reading hundreds of essays that also begin with the same unnecessary restatement of a question he or she already knows by heart and that you’ve wasted a small amount of time. If you can, get to the point right away. For example, assume a question on a prose passage asks you to “discuss Lovelace’s attitude to Bolo and the stylistic devices he uses to convey his attitude.” If you begin your essay — and thousands will — “Lovelace in this novel conveys his attitude to Bolo using devices of style. This essay will discuss his attitude and also the devices of style he uses to convey it,” all you have accomplished is to have bored the reader briefly. A better start is something like, “In the novel Lovelace regards Bolo with a combination of sympathy and disapproval,” or whatever the attitude is. If you are one of those writers to who writing a first sentence is like setting a first toe in the ocean on the coast of Maine, then use the question to get you started. Better still; begin by addressing the first task the exam calls on you to write about.

Q.: Should I write an outline before I write my essay?

A.: If you write better essays by writing an outline first, then do so. If not, then don’t. The outline won’t be graded or counted in any way. Do whatever makes it easier for you to write well-organized, specific, and relevant essays.

Q.: Should I write a five-paragraph essay?

A.: If, by a five-paragraph essay, you mean an essay in which the first paragraph is introductory and says what you’re going to do in paragraphs two, three, and four, and the fifth recapitulates what you’ve done, then No. Write a five-paragraph essay with the introduction and conclusion addressing the issues in the body. Give support to your argument. You should write in well-developed paragraphs and let their number be determined by what you have to say in answer to the questions.

Q.: How long should an essay be?

A.: Long enough to answer all the parts of the question specifically and fully. There is no extra credit given to a very long essay, especially if it is repetitious or off the subject. A very short essay (one paragraph of only a few sentences) will fall into the scoring guide’s “unacceptably brief” category and receive a very low score. If you’ve said all you have to say about a question, don’t try to pad out your answer. Go on to the next question. A student with average-sized handwriting usually writes one and a half or two pages in the booklets, but many write more and many write less.

Q.: How important is spelling and punctuation?

A.: Very.  If there are so many errors or if they are so flagrant that they interfere with a fluent reading, you will lose some points.

Q.: How important is correct grammar?

A.: The readers realize that you are writing rapidly, and they are tolerant of a lapse here and there. But if your writing suggests inadequate control over English prose, you may be penalized. On the literature exam, essays that are “poorly written” can score no higher than a three, but “poorly written” means much more than an occasional split infinitive, agreement error, or dangling participle

Q.: How important is handwriting or neatness?

It is VERY important that your handwriting is legible. What the examiner understands is what will be graded.

Q.: What are the most important qualities of a good essay?

A.: That it answers all the parts of the question fully and accurately. That it is supported with specific evidence. That it is well written.

Additional notes

I happened upon this blogspot. Check it out.

http://ourliteratureclass.blogspot.com/2012/01/epitaph-dreaming-black-boy-theme-for.html

This should prove very helpful for you guys.

More notes - from Carlong English B for Csec

In all plays the first scene is very important. Because a play is meant for viewing and not reading, the patron cannot ‘turn back the pages’ and reread something he or she has missed. As a result, in setting the tone and mood of the play, or giving basic background information, the playwright tends to take great care that what is written comes across clearly and grabs the interest of the viewer.

THE ‘STORYTELLING’ DEVICE

Old Story Time is a play in which a character, Pa Ben, tells a story to a group of people. In the story that he tells, he is one of the characters.

Storytelling as a dramatic device became popular in the Caribbean in the 1970s when theatre artists were searching for ways of presenting their work to audiences that would have greater impact on them. At this time, many societies in the Caribbean and Latin America were involved in serious social, cultural and political revolutions as they strove to establish their cultural identities. One of the clearly established Caribbean art forms was storytelling. In the Caribbean, the Anancy story had a specific style in which the storyteller ‘enters into’ the story and becomes one or more of the characters.

In Old Story Time, the playwright hones this storytelling style into a most effective technique. Pa Ben is the storyteller and he is telling his story to a number of people, which includes both the persons in the audience- note that he says to them: “Make yourselves comfortable on them nice chairs...”- and the other villagers who are on stage with them. The villagers play dual roles. They are, at some moments in the play, in the present where Pa Ben is telling a story. At other times they enter the stage as the characters in the story that is being told. They then enact whichever episode Pa Ben has introduced.

Pa Ben’s role is interesting. Like the actors who play the villagers, the actor who plays him has to play two characters. He is Pa Ben of the present, the storyteller, and he is also Pa Ben, the character in the story. This gives the tale he is telling authenticity- he was there when the events were taking place and he was close to some of the main protagonists. But as storyteller he ‘knows’ everything, including things that Pa Ben the character could not know. So we, the audience (and reader), must at all times be aware of this.

The fascinating part of his dual role lies in the fact that as participant in the ‘story’ of the play he has an important function but then, as the storyteller, he has a separate and even more important role in the ‘plot’, that is how the drama develops.

The use of this technique allows the playwright to include many different settings and time periods simply by having the storyteller say somethingthat means ‘the next scene takes place in...’

To facilitate our recognition of Pa Ben’s dual role, and avoid confusion, the playright in his stage directions asks the director to create a ‘space’ for Pa Ben the narrator.

The Playwright's Craft

Techniques

• Storytelling

ü  Use of suspense

• Use of flashback
• Use of elaborate stage directions

ü  To highlight costume

ü  To highlight characterization

• Use of language

Function of each Technique

• Storytelling

ü  One central character used to pass on information to the audience

ü  The story teller is both a bystander as well as involved in the action

ü  The story teller has control over when and how information is relayed as well as how much of it – this creates the suspense

ü  The story teller – allows for the smooth transition in time – whether an incident is elaborated on or merely mentioned.

ü  The perspective from which the story is told is skewed – based on the teller’s intention - typical of storytelling – the aim is to allow the listener to see things from his or her side.

ü  This technique also allows for greater engagement with the audience – as it allows for direct interaction with the storyteller.

ü  other characters – (Ms. Aggy and George) are allowed to tell their side of the story about specific situations.

See notes in text book (latest edition).

• Flashback

ü  Helps in the transition of time – helps in connecting the events of the past

ü  Aids in the use of suspense by the storyteller

ü  Provides information for the audience as well as characters in the play about specific situation.

ü  Eg. Ms. Aggy goes back in time to inform Len about how she met George – this is for both Len and the audience.

• Elaborate Stage Directions

ü   help in understanding the function of costume, and characterization.

ü  Costume aids in shedding light on personality of characters as well as their status in society.

ü  Provide a guide to the characters so they know how and when to behave

ü  Help in the passage of time – it is through these that characters know when and how to freeze and unfreeze so the action can continue.

• Use of Language

ü  Language is used to represent status, educational background and generational gap.

ü  Pa Ben and Ms. Aggy – use words and expressions that are of their generation. Pa Ben invents words to facilitate his storytelling craft – to be impressive

ü  Len transitioned from speaking with Pearl and his mother to a more sophisticated and restrained language.

ü  Lois’ use of language is representative of her exposure and educational background

ü  George manipulates his to get what he wants – difference in how he speaks to Len, Ms. Aggy, Bertie and even Lois – George able to switch register comfortably.

Pa Ben's roles as:

• narrator
• social commentator
• charactor
• director

How the concept of 'Old Story Time' is presented and maintained

• his narrative of the past - how it was done by his father and the rituals involved
• summoning of the village or villagers - repetition of 'ole story time'
• names of events, places and people of the past eg. Pa Zaccy
• use of common courtesies  - eg.  All well all well - 'everybody hearty'