From Taking on the World Flashcards
‘Agonized for hours’
Shows she’s a perfectionist, she needs to be because her situation is dangerous. Also fairly emotive; worse than just being worried
‘Halyard’, ‘reef’, ‘jumar’ etc
Semantic field vocabulary, lack of definitions within the text show that she either expects the reader to already know the vocab or look it up’
‘Despite the loss in dexterity’
Builds suspense
‘I knew’
Definite future tense, very certain, builds suspense
‘Mast slices erratically’
Dynamic verbs to build a sense of danger and tension
‘Tugged and tugged’
Repetition for emphasis
‘Wind whistled’
Alliteration and personification
‘It had to come’
Persuading herself and the reader, semi-informal language
‘Kiddo’
Uses it to give herself encouragement, emphasises the danger and gravity of the situation, repeated later in the text for cohesion. She speaks to herself in 2nd person
‘I had my heart in my mouth’
Idiom, emphasises fear
‘Like a million dollars’
Simile, emphasises joy
Notes on date
Christmas, the fact that she is performing a very dangerous task on this day emphasises her isolation
‘Hardest climb to date’
Foregrounding that this will be tense and dangerous
‘Christmas eve’ at beginning + Christmas at end
Gives text cohesion
Notes on the genre
Autobiographical - writing to inform and recount
‘I had worked through the night preparing for it’
Expert and methodical - long build up to climb shows the importance of it
‘When it got light’
Shows that she’s been awake for a long time
‘I kitted up in my middle-layer clothes’
Fairly technical
‘The most dangerous thing’
Superlative
‘It would not be difficult to break bones up there’
Understatement
‘A world over which I had no control’
Dangerous and alien environment
Repetition of ‘you’ in third paragraph
Second person to engage audience and build tension
Notes on third paragraph (explanation of thought process and worries etc)
Explaining to a non-specialist
‘I climbed down. …’
Details how she had to stop her first attempt which emphasises danger and build tension
‘I knew that I would not have the energy’
Only 1 chance, foregrounds how she will only have one possibly try
‘Slices’
Connotations of danger
‘I would wrap…’
‘Would’ used in the frequentive aspect, implying she had to do it a lot
‘Shuddering’
Personification
‘Which I could feel us surf down’
Her and her boat; identifies with it
‘And hoped’
Shows that she isn’t in control
‘Eyes closed and teeth gritted, I hung on tight, wrists clenched…’
List of physical actions
‘Conjure up more energy’
Metaphor - drawing on reserves of energy that aren’t actually there
‘The halyard was heavier and heavier …’
Telling story in real time to increase the tension
‘Hike’
Implies that it was arduous
‘Squinted’
Implies that she is weak and has no energy
‘The size and length of the waves emphasised by this new aerial view’
Her subjective perception
‘The albatross’
Use of the definite article to encompass all albatrosses
‘Whip’
Violent metaphor
‘It had to come, quite simply the rope had to come free’
Interspersing the primarily past tense account with direct thought to make the reader empathise with her
‘The most dangerous part’
Superlative
‘I fumbled’
Shows she is not in control
‘Whatever happened now I had the whole mast to climb down’
Continue suspense
‘Like a million dollars’
Simile
