Opening lines - once again

An IGCSE paper will ask students to comment on the opening lines. Look at some opening sentences here:

“A cradle won’t hold my baby.”

—Daniel Woodrell, “Uncle”

The opening sentences say a lot here. 

Is the "cradle" too small?

Is the "baby" too big?

Is it that the "baby" is very naughty or cranky or boisterous?

These opening lines say little and leave much unsaid for the reader. Thev have set a path for the story to unfold. 

Opening lines of a story

It is with a clear purpose that an author starts a story. To get to the end. However, the author has a broad framework in time. This is the end towards which s/he will work.

Let's look at the opening lines of "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”


What can we identify in here:

It has humor - that men who have wealth need a wife.
It has sarcasm - to say that this is a universally acknowledged truth.
It uses a clause in between - "that a single man in possession of a good fortune" to lay emphasis on wealthy men.


One opening line allows us to look at deeper meaning. 

The People Before

Some people have a commercial association with a place while others are rooted, grounded to land they grow up around. For some land is a matter of sale, purchase and profit. For others it is a concern of memories, feelings and relationships.

This was the primary difference in attitude of the father and the Maori’s towards land in the short story the People Before.

For the father the place had a commercial value. They had “bought it for a song” shows the value of the land only from money point of view. For him it was important that the land was cheap.

For the Maoris on the other hand, the land had a lot of value. They come back to the place for an old man to die for he had been born on that land.

"Rosa" in The Prison

"Rosa was too plain" for Tommy.

A simple study of verbs associated Rosa reveals use of "trusted nobody", "screamed", "wouldn't let up screaming".

An easy way to understand how a character has been designed is to look at words associated with the character. 

Rosa, for example, was a violent person herself. So the words associated with her reveal!

More about characters in the next post. The father in "The People Before".

Why is "The Prison" a prison!

The way a prison has a jailer, a cell and punishment, so does Tommy's life in "The Prison" by  Bernard Malamud.

Tommy's life was a"screaming bore". This sentence itself says a lot about the character and his life.
Can you imagine your life which is boring. A life where you have to get up and do the same thing everyday! A life where there is no change - the change that you attempt is not allowed.Tommy - hated his wife, the place he worked, the work he did, the hours he worked. His life had to be a bore!
Why does the author use the word "screaming. Simple because it was so obvious that he was completely fed up of his life!


 It is only "except for an hour off each afternoon when he went upstairs to sleep". That was the relief that he got. This too is reminiscent of a prison where the prisoner is allowed a break for a short while and within the premises!


More coming....................

Names of characters!

The names of characters are also chosen with a purpose. The name “Ward” in Billennium also has a reason. The writer wants to focus on the small space that a “ward” represents. It is a division within a given space. And that is what the story is about. Spaces – smaller spaces within that.

What is loss of innocence?

Maturity does not happen one fine day. It comes in doses. And doses of hardships, bitter experiences. Small incidents project how tough or cruel life is, people are. We do not grow up in one go. Experiences, rejection, failures, challenges, tests, relationships, each such incident of life which is tough and new helps us grow. Learning is a default function in all this.

In literary language this growing up, gaining maturity is called “loss of innocence”. Not that writers make life easier and state so explicitly in their stories. But a harsh incident, confronting bitter truths indirectly shows development in character. This development in character is “loss of innocence” in most cases. Especially, in cases of children experiencing such incidents.

In “Of White hairs and cricket” for example, the narrator does not want to pluck out white hair from his father’s head. He detests the Sunday morning ritual. However, when he sees his friend’s father near death on the makeshift hospital bed, he faces the bitter truth of aging followed by possible death. In the end he is more than willing to do what he had started out not doing. He does not want his father to grow old. He does state it to his father but deep inside he wants life to go at the pace it was earlier. This is the process that shows growth in character and the child grows up. He loses his innocence.

Ravi of “Games at twilight” wants to be the winner. He hides in a shed, loses trace of time. By the time he comes out to declare himself the winner he realizes that his cousins have moved on to playing other games. While he was crafting his dreams of being the winner, his disappearance had not been missed. On the contrary his playmates were making merry. Two things happen here. He realizes that he had not been missed. He also realizes that his victory was lost. He has to confront these two truths. He grows up. Ravi, thus, loses his innocence. Though the writer does not state it in so many words.

The job of understanding the writer’s purpose is of the reader. The loss is not stated it is implied. We, the readers, have to recognize and define loss of innocence.