Group Commentaries in HL

Yesterday the twelfth grade HL class, which is in the middle of a unit working on commentary writing, looked at how to structure a linear essay about  a prose passage. Before we began, I passed around copies of these photos for them to look at in three's:

"Christmas, 1950s", by Saul Leiter

"Snow 1960" by Saul Leiter

Comments on the photos were good, starting with Fakher's "The person doesn't like to go outside" referring to the photographer. Shams thought the second one was probably in a restaurant and hotel, since she could discern that the writing said "seats and dining room". Anas noted, for the Christmas image, that the viewer gets the sense that it's cold ouside but warm inside. I hoped to emphasize that even when we don't know exactly what's going on, we can still discern a feeling and a certain beauty in a piece of art. The prose passages are often like this - sprinkled or even dominated by ambiguity in image or meaning. These images appeared in a March 2014 issue of the New Yorker.

Thus, I hoped, we were prepared to look at the following passage:

He slipped lightly downstairs into the dusky street, counting his money and smiling. It was the best hour of the day in Alexandria — the streets turning slowly to the metallic blue of carbon paper but still giving off the heat of the sun. Not all the lights were on in the town, and the large mauve parcels of dusk moved here and there, blurring the outlines of everything, repainting the hard outlines of buildings and human beings in smoke. Sleepy cafes woke to the whine of mandolines which merged in the shrilling of heated tyres on the tarmac of streets now crowded with life, with white robed figures and the scarlet dots of tarbushes.

Lawrence Durrell, Mountolive

Their task was to decide how to break up this passage for analysis, and what literary elements they would highlight in each section. They did this in groups of three, and the magic of three's presented itself. Reem, one of the strongest commentators in the class, helped Fakher and Ibrahim develop their own good ideas for interpretation. Anas worked with Bisan, who has great ideas but struggles to present them as clearly in writing as she can in speech. 

Reem noted that when the persona in the passage "slipped lightly downstairs" it is as if he "slipped into a painting", since the rest of the passage flows with colours and smudged edges. "He is quickly enveloped in the dusky street," she wrote. Fakher noted that in the middle of the passage the main character seems to have faded into the larger movements of the city, where buildings and humans are painted "in smoke". 

Shams saw that the city was waking up quite gradually, since the "whine" of the mandoline was like the whine of an animal or human waking reluctantly from sleep. Yasmin wrote that the "metallic blue of carbon paper" suggested the specific colours and papers that artists use to paint their own images, so maybe our man is a painter who sees the city through the artist's lens. 

I am hopelessly smitten by literary prose. I find passages like this positively seductive, and wish I could teach paper 1 all year. Well, no I don't because I wouldn't be able to teach The Duchess of Malfi which we have started this week to great effect. Monica is here planning and teaching with me, and I'm so excited about the upcoming month of intense teacher training that her presence represents (on top of what the job offers naturally).