Answering Writer's Craft Questions (Narrative Passage)

The candidate should concentrate on the purpose of reading - understanding and appreciating a writer's use of language.

The reader is expected to identify and comment on how the writer has presented information in the text, how the writer has used language to make points or for effect.

In particular, this means that the reader should be familiar with a few language ideas.

Extracts and answers

Extract 1

This short extract is from a story called 'Tunes for Bears to Dance To', by Robert Cormier. In the story, Henry works for a Mr. Hairston, who runs a shop.

"Potatoes to bag up," he called over the shoulder of a customer, and Henry made his way down to the cellar, where a bin of potatoes awaited him. He always tried to hurry the job because the cellar was dark and damp and he often heard rats scurrying across the floor. One day, a grey rat squirted out of a bag of potatoes and Henry had leapt with fright, his heart exploding in his chest. He was afraid of a lot of things - the closet door that never stayed closed in his bedroom, spooky movies about vampires - but most of all, the rats.

The question is in two parts, with a quotation used as an introduction.

Question

"...a grey rat squirted out of a bag of potatoes..."

(a) What is unusual about the writer's use of the word 'squirted' in this sentence? 2 - 0

(b) Why is it a particularly suitable word to use here? 2 - 0

 (a) The word 'squirted' is usually associated with liquids and the rat's movement is being compared to liquid being forced out of a container, like a tube or a bottle.

Explanation:

This means that the word is being used figuratively, that an unusual comparison has been made to make the picture more interesting, more colourful, easier to understand, and so on. This means that a figure of speech has been used by the author, such as metaphor, simile, personification, and so on.

(b) The word is suitable (i.e. effective) to use here because it successfully suggests that the rat moved quickly, it was small, it moved suddenly, it appeared as something nasty. It is also onomatopoeic and the word is alliterative (i.e. from the figure of speech called alliteration) when seen with the word 'scurrying' used earlier in the same line of the paragraph.