Harvest

Question 1

Summary

Answer 1

• family walking down a country lane (mother, Jessica (8), Joanna (6) Joseph (baby). Jessica is in charge because Joanna prefers not to think for herself. (Picture of a relatively intact family - setting a tone which will quickly be disturbed).
• family has just got off bus after shopping in town. Don’t have a car as father drove it away (Howard’s (father) abandonment shows this is actually a broken household).
• walk along a huge wheat field.
• as they continue making their way home, a man suddenly appears, seemingly out of nowhere.
• man kicks dog. Joanna realises her mum is fighting the dog. Joanna’s mum screams at her to run. Her mother dies. Jessica too, is stabbed and curls with with the dead dog. The baby dies in the buggy. Joanna runs.
• Late, after dark, Joanna is found and picked up by by a stranger. Joanna thinks she should’ve rescued the baby. Thirty years later, “the thing that drove her to distraction was that she couldn’t remember what the dog was called. And there was no one left to ask.”