By Stephen King

1. Read the extract below, state where the character is.

2. Do you think she is familiar with and feels comfortable in the environment judging by the first sentence of the extract? What stylistic devices help you to form your opinion?

3. Is the extract a description, a narration or an exposition? Give your reasons.

4. Speak about the image of the woods.

a) What method of characterization is used: direct or indirect?

b) Is the image rendered through the author’s or the character’s eyes?

c) Analyse the stylistic devices used to create this image; group them in accordance with the impression they produce. Does the impression change throughout the extract? Support your opinion with the necessary stylistic devices.

d) Has the author succeeded in creating an image of something alive while describing the woods? What means did he use for the purpose?

e) What effect is produced by gradation in the last line of the extract?

Trisha had never felt as much like a town girl as she did while that miserable, terrifying day was winding down toward dark. The woods came in clenches, it seemed to her. For a while she would walk through great old strands of pine, and there the forest seemed almost all right, like the woods in a Disney cartoon. Then one of those clenches would come and she would find herself struggling through snarly clumps of scrubby trees and thick bushes (all too many of the latter the kind with thorns), fighting past interlaced branches that clawed for her arms and eyes. Their only purpose seemed to be obstruction, and as mere tiredness slipped toward exhaustion, Trisha began to impute them with actual intelligence, a sly and hurtful awareness of the outsider in the ragged blue poncho. It began to seem to her that their desire to scratch her – to perhaps even get lucky and poke out one of her eyes – was actually secondary; what the bushes really wanted was to shut her away from the brook, her path to other people, her ticket out.

From Come Together

by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees

1. Read the extract below and state whether it is the first, the third or anonymous narration.

2. Is it a dramatic or interior monologue? Give your reasons and illustration from the extract.

3. Say in one sentence what situation is described in the extract.

4. Find proof that the girl is extremely displeased with the way she looks. What stylistic devices do the authors resort to for the purpose?

5. What trope is used to show the girl’s attitude to Jack [her boyfriend]? Do you think she has quarreled with him?

6. What is the girl’s problem now? How is she going to solve it? What stylistic device is used for expressing her decision?

7. Analyse the last paragraph and say whether she is going to put her idea into practice. Find the trope to back up your opinion.

Make-up doesn’t work!

It’s con!

It’s Friday morning and I’ve put on so many stripes of concealer under my eyes and across my nose that I look like Adam Ant, but the bags under my eyes are still glaringly obvious. Why can’t I sleep any more? It’s not fair. I used to be the Martini girl of sleep: I could do it anytime, anyplace, anywhere. It’s all bloody Jack’s fault. If this unrelenting insomnia carries on, I’m going to start doing Valium.

I scowl at myself in the mirror. There is no point. I already look like the girl on the anti-drugs poster.

From Come Together

by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees

8. Read the extract below and state whether it is the first, the third or anonymous narration.

9. Is it a dramatic or interior monologue? What makes you think so?

10. Say in one sentence what situation is described in the extract.

11. Divide the extract into logical parts.

12. Analyse the first part of the extract and prove that the young man is glad to see the girl he is dating. Use the necessary stylistic devices for illustration.

13. Do you think he is surprised at his impression about the girl? To answer this question analyse the sentence “Last time I saw her…” to find out what the girl looked like during their previous meeting, and compare it with the part that begins with “Now, though…”

14. What stylistic devices create the effect of contrast? How does the girl look now in the young man’s opinion? What stylistic devices can you present to prove it?

15. How does he feel about the girl?

Amy’s standing there with a kind of wide smile that makes it impossible not to smile right on back. This kind of rattles me. A good sort of rattle, though, it has to be said – more baby than snake. Last time I saw her, what with all the freaking out she was doing about her recently deceased sex life and her unrequited crush on Matt, her lips had been all squished together like for want of a kinder description, a pair of mating slugs. Now, though – well, I have to, and am more than glad to. Admit – they’ve got a K and an I and an S and an S written all over them. Clothes-wise, she’s wearing a funky little black skirt and grab-me grey top. She looks good. Seriously. Beautiful. And confident. She holds my stare and, as she does, my nerves come surging back.

From Vertical Run by Joseph R. Garber

1. Read the extract below and divide it into logical parts. Give reasons for your division.

2. Analyze the opening part. What is the advantage of opening the fragment in such a way? Where is the action set?

3. Do you share the narrator’s opinion on the stated types of time? Which one was welcome by the soldiers? Why?

4. Find cases of metonymy in the fragment and dwell upon their symbolic functions.

5. Are the first two paragraphs contrasting? What is the role of polysyndeton in them?

6. What expressive means help to render the atmosphere of tension in the final paragraph?

7. What idea lies behind the antithesis “ Nothing fazes them … They weep»?

8. Does the author exaggerate man’s behaviour at war? What stylistic devices does he resort to for this purpose?

9. How do you think it feels being a war soldier?

Here in the jungle there are two kinds of time – long time and slow time. Long time is what you usually get. You sit beneath a tree or in a hooch or in a field tent, or maybe you’re tiptoeing Indian file through the boonies, and nothing happens. Hours pass and nothing happens. Then you look at your Timex and discover that it has only been five minute since the last time you looked at it. Long time.

The other kind of time is slow time. There’s a flat metallic snap, the receiver of an AK-47 chambering a round. Then there is fire and explosions and screams and the whine of bullet all around and each one aimed at you for unending eternity. And when, after hours of hot terror, and no little rage, the shooting stops, you come back from hell and glance at your Timex.

Guess what? Five minutes have passed since the last time you looked at it.

Slow time. The clock gets choked with molasses. Men weep at how slow the seconds pass. They are MACV-SOG. Their shoulder patch is a fanged skull wearing a green beret. They are the hardest of the hard, the baddest of the bad. Nothing fazes them. They look at their watches. They weep.

From Vertical Run by Joseph R. Garber

1. What effect do the opening sentences of the fragment produce on the reader? What expressive means serve this purpose?

2. What mood is the main character in? What syntactic means make the character’s thoughts emotional?

3. What do you think was the character’s problem?

4. What simile reveals the character’s attitude to his pursuers?

5. What stylistic device prevails in the second paragraph of the fragment? What device helps to feel the character’s bitter irony?

Madness. Sheer lunacy. As unnecessary as it was unspeakable. All they had to do was explain it to him. He would have understood. He would not have been happy, but he would not have run. If they had told him what Ransome was telling him now, he would have cooperated. They could have offered to take him somewhere to a clean room, sterile, isolated from the outside world. Or they could have put him on a deserted island, or some other safe place. All they would have had to do was let him die with a little dignity. He wouldn’t have resisted. How could he have resisted? Knowing the truth, he would have surrendered.

But instead, they decided to treat him like a rabid animal. We’re licensed operatives, Mr. Elliot, highly trained professionals, and we know what’s best. Besides, we don’t trust anyone enough to tell you the truth. We don’t trust anyone enough to tell them that. We’ll lie to you, and we’ll lie to your friends, and we’ll lie to the people who pay us. That’s our way. Mr. Elliot, and if you aren’t used to it by now, you never will be. So kindly be a good little citizen, and don’t give us any trouble while we clear up our problem in the traditional way.

From Vertical Run by Joseph R. Garber

1. Read the fragment below. What is the stylistic advantage of the first line of the fragment?

2. Specify the cases of insertion and say what purpose they serve.

3. What trope is the first paragraph built upon? What touch does it give to the narration?

4. Does the first paragraph end climatically or anticlimatically?

5. What other figures of speech round up the fragment? What effect does it produce?

6. Is betrayal pardonable, in your opinion? Give your reasons.

One can lie, cheat, steal, and murder, and do so with an untroubled conscience. David Elliot did not, doubt that a.k.a. John Ransome, to take but one example, slept well at night, and was not troubled in his dreams. Anyone can break the commandments, each and everyone of them, and not feel the worse for it. There is no depravity or sin so vicious for which a man, given time and the proper attitude, cannot pardon himself – and for which others, in the end, will no absolve him… but for one exception, the sole offence that is never forgiven, never forgotten. No soldier will forgive a comrade-in-arms who has betrayed him.

No betrayer will forgive himself.

From The Web by Jonathan Kellerman

1. Read the fragment below and say what parts it falls into.

2. Point out the suspense at the beginning of the first part. Is the reader’s attention grasped instantly?

3. Find the chiasmus and dwell on the effect produced. How did the main character feel about the lizard?

4. What syntactic means are used to describe the lizard?

5. What synonyms are used by the author to describe the way the lizard’s behaviour? What is the aim of rendering one and the same meaning through the three synonymous verbs?

6. Does the first part of the fragment stand in contrast to the second part? Prove it.

7. Pick out cases of irony in the second part of the fragment. How do they hint at the characters’ relations?

8. Point out the case of pun. Why is its use advantageous?

9. Is the image of lizard sinister or innocent or humorous? Is it symbolic?

10. What stylistic device rounds up the fragment? What idea lies behind it?

A rasping noise woke me. Scratching at one of the screens.

I sat up fast, saw it.

A small lizard, rubbing its foreclaws against the mesh.

I got out of bed and had a closer look.

It stayed there. Light brown body speckled with black. Skinny head and unmoving eyes.

It stared at me. I waved. Unimpressed, it scratched some more, finally scampered away…

I told her about the lizard. “So don’t be alarmed if it happens again.”

“Was he cute?”

“Who said it was a he?”

“Girls don’t peep through other people’s windows.”

“Now that I think about it, he did seem to be ogling you.” I narrowed my eyes and flicked my tongue. “Probably a lounge lizard.”

She laughed and got out of bed. Putting on a robe, she walked around, flexing her wrist.

“How does it feel?”

“Better actually. All the warm air.”

“And doing nothing.”

“Yes,” she said. “The power of positive nothing.”

From The Class by Eric Segal

1. Read the extract below and state its theme.

2. How is the fast moving time depicted in the first paragraph? What simile contributes to the effect? Pick out more stylistic devices which serve the same purpose.

3. How does the second paragraph introduce the theme of the extract?

4. What happened to Norman Gordon on the afternoon of his General Exams in History and Lit.? What tropes and figures of speech are used to portray his inner state?

5. How can you account for the ironic ring of the extract despite the tragic event? How does it show the author’s attitude to his personage? What role does it play in revealing the message of the extract?

Like the stretto in a fugue, spring term accelerated the tempo of a melody already racing to its conclusion. May seemed to enter even before April ended. Those who just completed senior theses barely had time to catch their breaths before taking General Examinations.

Some of the Class availed themselves of this, their final opportunity to have a nervous breakdown.

On the afternoon of his General Exams in History and Lit., Norman Gordon of Seattle, Washington, was found wandering on the banks of the Charles – providentially by his own tutor.

“Hey, Norm, did you finish writing this early?”

“No,” replied the senior who had kept a straight-A average till now, a maniac glow in his eyes. “I’ve decided that I don’t like my major at all. In fact, I’m planning not to graduate. I’m going out west to start a cattle ranch.”

“Oh,” said the tutor, then gently led him to the Health Department.

And psychiatry picked up where education had left off.

But in a sense young Gordon had succeeded in his unconscious aspiration: he had managed to avoid having to leave the four-walled shelter of a paternal institution.

From The Blue Note by Charlotte Bingham

1. Read the extract below and say what it is about. What was it that made the characters happy? What stylistic device introduces the characters’ realization of their remaining alive?

2. What figures of speech used in the first paragraph represent hardships which the characters had to overcome in the wartime?

3. What does the author mean by ‘the Yellow Peril” and “the Red Peril”? Name the trope used here.

4. What stylistic device links the two paragraphs? Is its usage advantageous? Give your reasons.

5. What expressive means make the second paragraph sound even more optimistic?

6. Analyze the cases of parallel constructions and insertion in the second paragraph and explain their purpose.

7. Comment on the use of italics in the extract.

8. What kind of repetitions does the author use in the extract? How do they render his message? What is the message?

Afterwards they said there was never to be a time quite like it again. It was not just the exuberance, and not just the fun of it either; it was the sudden realization that they were actually alive. That despite the war, doodlebugs, rationing, dreary clothes and even drearier food, despite the A-bomb and the H-bomb, despite Korea and Malaya, despite Russia and the Berlin Wall, despite the terrible treat of Communism and Marxism, the Yellow Peril and the Red Peril, despite almost everything they knew or had been told about the doom of days gone past, and the doom of days yet to come, despite all that – they were still living, and on the earth.

And what was more, and what was better, they were young, and some of them were not just young, but beautiful. Not that it mattered, beautiful or not beautiful, pretty or not pretty, handsome or not handsome; it did not matter a single, solitary little damn not once they came to and realized that after all that – all those dead people, all those fathers that had not come back, uncles who had never returned, mothers whom they had never known – they were actually alive.

But first – they had to grow up.

From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong

1. Why do you think the fragment opens with the description of the main character's wristwatch? What mood is set in by the opening paragraph?

2. Analyse the images of the wristwatch and the wind. How are they introduced in the fragment? What is their role?

3. Specify cases of metonymy, metaphor, and simile; say what purpose they serve.

4. Pick out the case of allusion and speak on its function. What effect does it create in the fragment?

5. Comment on the role of syntactic devices used in the fragment

6. What kind of girl is protrayed by the author? Is her image positive or negative? Give yor reasons.

7. What idea is emphacised by the framing, beginning with: "...meant nothing" and ending by "it didn't matter which any more."

He glanced at his wristwatch, but the face was cracked and the hands bent and the luminous dots meant nothing. And a wind came up and gathered the rain together and blew it directly into his eyes. Where was she – this girl he barely knew? He remembered her waif-like face and the detachment in her eyes and her long legs under the short blue velvet skirt, the white shoes with the thick clunky heels. He remembered how she'd drunk vodka like there was a new Prohibition Law about to be enacted. Sometimes she'd tried to make a fluting sound by pressing he r lips against the neck of the bottle and blowing. He'd seen the shape of her mouth by the light of the instrument panel and been distracted by it. Or enchanted. It didn't matter which any more.

From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong

Read the fragment bellow and answer the following questions:

1. The combination of what tropes and figures of speech introduces Nick in the fragment?

2. Did Nick fancy Darcy? What hints at it?

3. Does the author use direct or indirect method of character drawing while decribing Nick? Give your reasons.

4. What trope makes Nick's description vivid?

5. What syntactic devices convey Darcy's attitude to Nick?

Nick, handsome in a dark, gypsy kind of way – as if he knew ancient secrets, which wasn't even close to the truth – gazed at her across the table. "It's not like you can dance to it, Darcy. You can't even tap your feet.

"I'm trying to down grade you," Nick said. He stretched out his arm and laid his hand on the back of her fingers. He had soft hands. They felt like cotton handkerchiefs that had been dried out-doors on a spring day. He was eighteen and on his way to college in the Fall, and when he graduated he'd work in the family company, which produced something Darcy didn't like, some tissues, towels, toilet rolls, what have you.

From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong

1. Read the extract bellow and say what it is about.

2. What was Boyle's problem was judging by the extract? What lexical and syntactic devices describe his inner state? Specify each case and comment on it.

3. What figure of speech used in the second paragraph and the following dialogue makes Boyle's frustration even more pronounced?

4. What does the sentence: "And conscience was loud-mouthed luxury" imply?

5. Analyse the suspense culminating in Vass's astonishment. What was the reason for it? Why is the word "thirteen" italicised?

6. What do you make of Vass's last words? What stylistic device decodes Vass's idea? What idea is this?

Boyle's scalp was tingling. It's all too much now: huge rushes of unfocused energy, thoughts that don't gell, collisions between what's real and what's shadows of doorways, Revenue guys going through his canceled checks on microfiche at the bank, special warrants signed by judges – you could image the whole works […]

Why had he lied to Vass about it? Some vestigial shame? I don't feel shame. Shame's what happens when you hand a megaphone to your conscience. And conscience was loud-mouthed luxury […]

Vass was quiet moment. "What age is she?"

"She could pass for twenty," Boyle said.

"Yeah, but how old is she?"

Boyle stood up. "You stay here if you want. I'm going out."

"Wait –"

"Don't stop me, Rudy." He was all haste now, looking for a jacket, shoes, rummaging around. It was important to hit the streets. When I find her, she's in serious trouble.

Vass said, "You didn't answer my question."

"OK. Thirteen. One three."

" Thirteen? Unlucky number, man. Real evil vibes."

From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong

1. How does the extract open? What tone is the first paragraph written in?

2. Why didn't the main character throw out his late wife's prsonal belongings?

3. What expressive means are used by the author to drive his reasons home to the reader?

4. What seems to be the man's problem, judging by the two sentences of the second paragraph?

5. What was wrong with the man's wife? What stylistic devices make us understand it?

6. What is the author's purpot of using so many names of pills?

7. Comment on the role of the figure of speech which rounds the fourth paragraph. What other tropes and figures of speech convey the man's fury directed at the pills?

8. What stylistic devices bring the extract to the end? Speak on their function.

He wondered why he'd never gotten round to throwing the entire pharmacy out. For the same reason he'd kept all her clothing, all her jewelry, he supposed. Whatever that reason was called. Something the heart stoked up. The demands of love, the deranged idea that you kept the essence of the person by hanging on to their possessions – as if one bright afternoon she might just materialize under a halo in the doorway and say, Sorry I left you alone this long, my love. He didn't need this and he didn't need to look up at Harriet's photograph either, goddamit – that oval face and those solemn eyes with melancholy secrets hidden in them, things she'd never explained, couldn't have explained, monsters trapped in the dead-end labyrinth of her mind.

You drifted from me, he thought. And I fill the cold emptiness any way I can.

Darcy came back in the room. "Here." She was holding out a pll to him. "I'm not sure it's the smart thing to take it with brandy," she said.

He looked at the sky0blue tab. It was called Limbitrol, he remembered. It was only one of a bunch with names that rolled easily off the tongue. Elavil and Surmontil. They sounded like futuristic candies. Here, kids, chew these down. Try some Prozac while you're at it. They'd done nothing for Harriet except drive her deeper into that impenetrable pocket where she'd lived her life. He placed the pill in his mouth and swallowed it with brandy. Quickly. He didn't want the taste of it.

The telephone was ringing. The sound, shrill and unexpected and yet so goddam commonplace, went through Samsa's head like a vibrating ice pick. Darcy answered, then handed the phone to him.

From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong

1. Read the extract below and say what it is about.

2. Do the first and the following paragraphs of the extract stand in contrast? What is described in each of them?

3. What can you say about Samsa’s imagination? What techniques does the author use to depict his flow of thoughts?

4. What ruins the serene picture in Samsa’s mind? What stylistic device is it?

5. Is the simile used in the third paragraph powerful? Why couldn’t Samsa grasp the message of the letter judging by Brodsky’s words?

6. Do you share Brodsky’s stateme? Are you a fatalist?

Samsa went out into the corridor. He walked a few yards, paused a moment to drink from a water fountain. Bending to the spout, he closed his eyes and imagined himself drinking from a mountain stream, the air around him chill and clear and his heart filled with the joy of being, and if he opened his eyes he’d see mountains, deep green valleys, a hawk circling freely and full-winged in the sky. But the water tasted of the chemicals the city treatmentplant pumped int it.

He splashed his face, let water spill down his shirt, then went back to his ffice.

Brodsky tossed a sheet of paper on the desk. Samsa picked up the sheet. He stared at the handwriting and somehow couldn’t get beyond iit to the message it cntained, as if the meanings of the words were imprisoned within the letters.

“Life’s a bitch sometimes,” Brodsky said.

From Blackout by Campbell Armstrong

1. Read the extract bellow and say what it is about.

2. What mood is set in by the first paragraph?

3. Is the first paragraph suggestive of the mood, which is enhanced in the second and the third paragraphs? Give your reasons. Here you may speak on the role of segmentation in the description of the man's anxiety.

4. What tropes and figures of speech help the author to depict the man's hallucinatory mind?

5. Speak on the rhythm created by the paralle constructions in the closing paragraph. What stylistic devices follow them? Dwell upon their role.

They walked downstairs to the living room. He went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a large cognac, noticing the Scrabble game on the coffee table. "Nick gone home?" He needed to make small talk. Where you didn't have to think. As if you were concussed.

"A few minutes ago."

He swallowed some of the brandy. He sat down, and the room rushed at him all at once as if he had turned over just like the Chrysler. He was dizzy and faint and felt like an astronaut inside a space capsule. There were inversions, strange flips, optical illusions. A voltage spike on the graph of perception. Photographs turning over, Harriet's lovely face upside down on the mantelpiece, the hands of the clock hurrying backwards.

His fingers shook. The brandy in the glass rippled. He closed his eyes. What he saw behind his eyelids was shallow pool of water and the broken branch and something black flapping in the air like a predatory bird, eyes lethal.

From Simply Divine by Wendy Holden

1. Read the extract bellow and assertain its theme. Is it states right at once?

2. What mood is set by the opening paragraph?

3. What was Jane's problem? How did Jane find herself on the staircase?

4. Group the metaphors and epithets used in the extract. Say what effect is produced by each group to serve the author's purpot.

5. Account for the author's choice of the words "click", "yowling", "um" in the extract.

6. PIck out the sentences written in the ironic key. Comment on them.

7. What other stulistic devices jump into the reader's eye? What effect do they rpoduce?

8. Was Jane attracted to the man who helped her re-enter her flat? What stylistic devices contribute to this idea?

9. What makes Jane's defeated expectancy at the end of the extract so pronounced?

Jane went into the bathroom and shot out again instantly. The air was filled with an ear-splitting shriek which she realized, after a few seconds, was her own. To accompany it, a series of crashing thuds from upstairs shook the flat above. But Jane hardly noticed. The last thing to register with any of her senses was the huge spider crouched in the bottom of the bath. Vast, malevolent and murdorous - looking, with terrifying markings on its back, it had evidently marched in from the garden while they were reading the papers.

Still sreaching, Jane bolted through the hall and out into the entrance passageway, leaving the door of the flat wide open. As she paused for breath, she heard it click hut behind her.

"Need any help?"

Head spinning with fear of the hideous beast in the tub and the dawning, dreadful awareness that she was locked out of the flat, Jane stared wildly up the stairwelll to the next floor. The man from upstairs was leaning over the barrister. Grinning at her. Grinning, it had to be said, more widely than the circumstances merited. [...]

"What were you yowling about? What's the problem?"

"Well," Jane muttered, suddenly feeling silly. "Ther's, um,ther's, um, there's a rather large spider in my, um, bath."

"Spiders won't hurt you," said her neighbour breezily. "It won't even move unless you make it. The whole point of a spider is being a spider. They don't go in for sightseeing or aerobics."

"Well, this one got a leotard on, actually," flashed back Jane, remembering the nasty markings and determined to claw back some dignity out of the situation. [...]

Two minutes later he had bounded down again, opened the latch with a credit card, entered the flat, and flipped the spider out of the bathroom window.

"Thank you so much," said Jane, stiff with embarrassment and cold.

"It's a pleasure. I'm Tom, by the way." He flashed her another knee-trembler of a grin.

"I'm Jane."

"Yes," he said. "I know."

"You know?" Her heart swooped in a somersault. He knew her name. Jane surrendered herself to the thrilling thought that he must have more than a passing interest in her to bother finding out what she was called.

"Yes. There's a pile of bills with your name and address on them by your door."

From Dance While You Can

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