Supplementary Reader / Long Fiction
What the domain tests
This domain covers the prescribed supplementary reader - The Third Level, The Tiger King, Journey to the End of the Earth, The Enemy, Should Wizard Hit Mommy?, On the Face of It, Evans Tries an O-Level and Memories of Childhood - together with the long fiction set for the course, H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man. Expect short answers on incident and motive and longer answers on theme, irony, satire and character function.
Core rules and concepts
- Vistas stories are built on a twist or a satiric target. Identify both: the surprise ending explains the story's method, and the target explains its purpose.
- For the novel, hold the chronology and the chain of consequence. Griffin, a brilliant scientist, makes himself invisible but cannot reverse it, robs his own father (who then commits suicide), burns his landlord's house, takes refuge in Iping, uses the tramp Marvel, robs the clergyman's house, seeks help from Dr Kemp, announces a reign of terror, murders Wicksteed, and is killed by a crowd at Port Burdock, becoming visible again in death.
- Know each character's function, not just a description: Kemp is the rational scientist who refuses complicity; Marvel is the exploited and finally lucky common man; Mrs Hall and Teddy Henfrey represent ordinary curiosity and suspicion.
- Answer theme questions with a claim plus two textual anchors.
Worked example
Q: Why is the ending of The Tiger King ironic? Reasoning: the prophecy said the king would die by a tiger, so he hunted ninety-nine and believed he had outwitted fate. The hundredth 'tiger' is a wooden toy bought for his son; a sliver from it wounds his hand; infection kills him. The irony is double - the means he used to escape the prophecy became the means of its fulfilment, and the autocrat who terrorised his state dies of a cheap toy. Link this to the satiric target: vanity, superstition and absolute power.
Traps that cost marks
- Merging plots or characters from two different stories.
- Explaining the twist but not what it satirises.
- Retelling a Vistas story scene by scene in a five-mark answer.
- Confusing the novel's order of events, especially Griffin's crimes before Iping.