From The Explorer's Daughter Flashcards
‘Spectral play of colour’, ‘butter-gold’, ‘glittering kingdom’, ‘existed at all’
Make the place seem utopian and magical - contrasts with the fact that they’re going to hunt there, also engages reader. Calm and tranquil environment; even the movements are gentle. Juxtaposition
‘Looking as if they were going to merge…’
Anticlimax, builds tension
‘Scrambling’
Dynamic vocab
‘Pods’, ‘fjord’
Semantic field vocabulary
‘Butter-gold’
Compound adjective, imagery
‘Glittering kingdom’
Metaphor
‘Existed at all’
Build tension
‘Mischievous tricks of the shifting light’
Personification, engages reader
Notes on the second paragraph
Informative/factual, contrasts greatly with the first paragraph which is very descriptive. The change in focus reflects how the piece fulfils 2 roles; it is informative and also expresses the writer’s feelings
Notes on the third paragraph
Builds tension, used to question the morality vs necessity of the hunting by using more factual information to back up what isn’t the conventional western viewpoint on hunting
‘Small ancient dwelling’
More fairytale imagery. provides cohesion within the text
‘Particular predilection’
Alliteration
‘Instinctively’
Almost animalistic term, emphasises difference between the people in the passage and the audience she’s writing for
‘Every hunter’
Emphasises importance of the hunt and reinforces the facts in the previous paragraph
‘It was like watching a vast, waterborne game’
Simile, creates sympathy for the narwhal; treats it’s likely death as game.
It makes the hunt seem like a sport and shows that you need to be skilled and have precise techniques in order to ‘win’
‘Hunters spread like a net’
Simile, narwhal’s survival is unlikely and creates suspense
‘Watched their progress intently’, ‘crucial’
Build tension
Notes on the fourth paragraph
Less factual, account of what happened
Notes on the fifth paragraph
Balances views of hunter and narwhal by giving more factual information about the narwhals when up until that point is has all been about the hunters. Informative paragraph to break up the action
Notes on punctuation in paragraph six
Dashes used to fragment text, creates tension and gives a sense of the writer’s thought process
‘My heart leapt for both hunter and narwhal’
Shows conflict in her feelings
‘Could only’
Definite and persuasive
‘To dive, to leave, to survive’
Tripling, persuasive
Notes on final paragraph
Tries to convince herself and the reader that it’s fair for the hunter to kill the narwhal. She’s writing for a typical western audience so she needs to persuade them to believe something that isn’t necessarily a typical western view.
‘True,…’
Anticipating rebuttal
‘Battering seals for their fur…’
Typical images that make people unhappy with the idea of hunting
General notes on the passage
Never explicitly states her opinion but presents arguments for both sides of the debate. This leaves room for the reader’s own views. However, she subtly persuades the reader to support the hunter
‘Two hours after…’
Temporal phrase, shows how hunting takes a long time
‘Glinting off man and whale’
Implies that humans are more in touch with nature than they actually are
Notes on the genre of the piece
The piece is a recount, the tone of that is someone with more knowledge and is written for a non specialist. The piece is also a discursive essay which poses a discussion about ethics
‘On the side of which we now sat’
Relates the factual information back to their situation
‘Pointing in every direction’
Hyperbole
‘Little use for the narwhal itself’
Informed opinions
‘(A single narwhal can feed a team of dogs for an entire month) + (although the ivory was found to be brittle and not hugely satisfactory for a weapon)
More conversational tone, factual but less formal. It is used to persuade the reader of the writer’s expertise in order to make the reader agree with her conclusion
‘Narwhals are intelligent creatures’
Creates sympathy
‘They talk to one another…’
Personification, creates sympathy
‘Gently picked up his harpoon’
Oxymoron, also shows that they’re not hunting out of cruelty
‘This dilemma stayed with me the whole time that I was in Greenland’
Shows how important this is for her as it has stayed with her a long time
‘One cannot afford to be sentimental’
Implies that the environmentalists in the west are naive
‘Hunting is still an absolute necessity in Thule’
Reinforced supported opinion
