AQA GCSE The Woman in Black 2016 *official thread*

Nice. Can you give one for me?

How is Mr Jerome/ fear presented:

"I heard the pulsation of blood in the channels of my own ears. Mr Jerome looked frozen, pale, his thought moving as if it were unable to utter'
'Mr Jerome grabbed my wrist and held it in an agonisingly tight grip, and, looking at his face, was certain that he was about to faint, or collapse with some kind of seizure.'

Mr Jerome is described as being "unable to utter" a word as he slowly slips further in his apparent "seizure". Here, the repetition of the 'u' sound mimics the wailing sounds of pain Mr Jerome's character is experiencing and the repetition of the 't' sound (i.e. within "to" and the assonance in "utter", cuts through this wailing pain, almost silencing such sounds bluntly (hence Hill does not take the alliteration further and ends in a final full stop and begins a new paragraph thereafter). This superficially creates sympathy for Jerome who is forced to momentarily suffer in silence and is "unable" to speak. Hence, Hill presents Mr Jerome's fear as almost being disproportionately great (for Jerome does not even see the ghost but merely hears of it) with his fear and actions almost influencing and being ingrained upon the language of the text through the alliteration that empathetically silences the reader along with Jerome's character.

What approximate grade would you guys give this?

Really good, easy a*, basically a-level analysis- I like the analysis of the sounds, I don't know if 'u' or 't' sounds have a specific name as in plosives/fricatives etc.. but if you knew the name you wouldn't have to say "'u' sound" which I always feel sounds a bit disjointed. Obviously, you wouldn't write this sort of depth in an exam, and in some places your lexis gets a bit convoluted and its hard to follow (if I'm imagining I was an examiner reading this at speed). Otherwise, yeah its great
(hope that was useful)

Yeah, the reason for the complexity and incoherence was because my ideas are so complex that they're difficult to articulate (even for someone with my scope of vocabulary) and because of what you said about 'u' sound etc. I don't think its plosive as that is more harsher sounds like 'b' or 'd' or 'p' and fricatives are more like 'f' sounds or 'c' so I had to resort to the more provincial: 'u' sounds

I wasn't criticising it, just being Devil's Advocate to try to help you, anyway, yes I know what they are - I was just wondering if there was a term to describe 'u' sounds, (the equivalent of which being fricative/plosive). Also, what other books are you studying?

My honest apologies if I came over a bit too brash. I sometimes come across defensive subconsciously - just one of my many hamartia. I am also studying To Kill a Mockingbird and I am doing the Character and Voice section in Poetry. What about you?

I'm not studying the poetry section unfortunately, so Of Mice and Men, The Woman in Black, Macbeth and Pride and Prejudice. And don't worry about it, (extra points for your muted reference to Aristotle's 'Poetics', I'm impressed).

I'm down for helping, haha, need all the practise I can get

Yeah, the reason for the complexity and incoherence was because my ideas are so complex that they're difficult to articulate (even for someone with my scope of vocabulary) and because of what you said about 'u' sound etc. I don't think its plosive as that is more harsher sounds like 'b' or 'd' or 'p' and fricatives are more like 'f' sounds or 'c' so I had to resort to the more provincial: 'u' sounds

What can I say, I love literature and Aristotle is truly on a pedestal in my mind. I absolutely love Macbeth, it is by far my favourite Shakespeare play and in terms of the Monday English exam:

The short 'u' sound is a close back rounded vowel- in all fairness, you could probably talk about it being an affricate, and this shows, perhaps, in the phrase 'unable to utter', that phonology is used to reflect not only the loss of words directly of Jerome, but also the indirect stuttering from the reader, giving an effect that it is a difficult situation to describe. Furthermore.... this is referred to throughout the book, by the repeated reference to the sounds heard such as in the chapter "In The Nursery", where Kipps' surroundings are having a great effect on him, all of which shows the alienating situations in Crythin Gifford, and the loss of senses commonly portrayed in the Gothic genre, showing the way in which Hill is regarding the genre and mocking it, by so often highlighting the sounds and how these surroundings affect the psychological, direct beings of the characters.

But is Hill really mocking the genre? To me, it seems more like a sort of fabricated attempt to copy it. I would probably analyse 'unable to utter' by emphasising its alliterative incongruity, which creates a kind of hypnotic feel, or something unnatural- as if Jerome is in thrall to the woman in black's power and it's her malice that entraps his psyche, preventing him from revealing all to Kipps

You're making me worried about the grade boundaries now.

Hahah, don't be, I've never even heard of an affricative and your analysis was stellar,and extremely thorough, well in a* - we are going into a-level territory for analysis which they don't expect at gcse

You mean an affricate Affricatives are a WHOLE different story!

And besides, we're debating English Literature.
That's when you know you're a member of TSR!

Oops must've mistyped it, of course that's exactly what I meant, hahah
That's very true, to be fair I only really joined to see how badly I was annihilated by the biology paper so that's my excuse - but it's suprisingly addictive (in a nerdy, shameful kind of way, like how I secretly enjoy question time)

Don't worry. I can name the winning University Challenge teams for the last 21 years...

But this site is rather addictive.

It's like my friend and I set aside Thursday nights to go onto the AQA website, search a past paper in a subject we have NEVER done before...such as Anthropology, or Using Spatial Techniques- we do the paper in exam conditions and use the mark schemes to see how we did.
We've been doing this for 7 months.

Some people could say that's irrelevant, but 15 years from now when you're doing a pub quiz and they ask who won University Challenge in 1998, touché

And that's absolutely brilliant, but what's more brilliant is that Anthropology actually exists as a gcse, what has AQA come to..