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.