Help with English Lit? :S

I'm in my first year at sixth form and one of the subjects I chose to do as an A-level was English Lit. I enjoy it, especially when it's about novels. However I'm currently in the process of doing essay questions on the techniques used by Hosseini in The Kite Runner. I understand that I need to write about form, structure and language but I'm confused as to how and often I find myself simply talking about characterisation or the story itself. Has anyone got any useful tips to help me? And if anybody did do The Kite Runner as an A-level and who has some sort of study notes to help me through learning the techniques used in each chapter, please could you message me?


Thanks

I'm in my first year at sixth form and one of the subjects I chose to do as an A-level was English Lit. I enjoy it, especially when it's about novels. However I'm currently in the process of doing essay questions on the techniques used by Hosseini in The Kite Runner. I understand that I need to write about form, structure and language but I'm confused as to how and often I find myself simply talking about characterisation or the story itself. Has anyone got any useful tips to help me? And if anybody did do The Kite Runner as an A-level and who has some sort of study notes to help me through learning the techniques used in each chapter, please could you message me?


Thanks

Hi there. It's not wrong if you're led to talk more about characterisation and the story itself. To be honest, most people are drawn to novels for this reason. What your exam wants from you, I suspect, is a 'closer' reading of these things, which basically means unpacking the story and the characters in more detail. Showing how Hosseini creates The Kite Runner (as a novel) is what is required, and how these creative techniques are adapted to serve the characters and story, and how the characters and story complement the choice of techniques used to mould them.

So if you take a particular character: do they serve to introduce the reader to specific themes? If so, how? What is their tone, or manner, or character? How might their speech (language) be a reflection of this?

What does the point of view of the narrator add to the story? If it's third-person, is any attempt at omniscience being demonstrated? Or if it is first-person, how might the limited knowledge imparted to the reader (through the subjective narrator) impact on our overall impression of the story?

Start from what grabs you most, in the story. Even if the question is asking you about style or techniques, you won't offer a fully 'complete' answer unless you show why these stylistic things help our understanding of the overall novel as a whole. Think of it (the reading/study process) like this:

Attention to Character/Story/Theme ----> Attention to Style/technique used to create these -----> Enhanced appreciation of character/story/theme from analysis of the style and technique.

You are always starting from the outside, and working your way in (to the nuts and bolts of the text), and then retreating backwards - outwards - again, with that enhanced knowledge to help you appreciate and understand the overall text more. At least, in A-Level (unless it's a comparative study module which requires you to concentrate on a specific theme), understanding of the one text is the most important thing. Language and stylistic apparatus is only interesting for what it does. What it is might be interesting at other junctures in your 'critical career', but not, I suspect, for A-Level Lit.

Is that helpful at all?