Iannis Metaxas - Prime Minister April -August 1936 and dictator of Greece from August 1936 until his death in January 1941.
As a student of English Literature moving A2 you need to sharpen your analytical reading skills by practising on brief passages; this will enable you to analyse broader passages and chapters more skilfully on your own.
Where appropriate you could analyse the passages for any of the following:
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Narrative viewpoint and voice: the attitude(s) of the narrator/speaker and direct and reported speech.
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Tone – and whether the narrator is emotive, objective, reflective, judgemental, etc.
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Intrusive narrating – whether de Bernieres is giving his opinions and ideas about a character, event, etc.
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imagery: explore its deeper meanings.
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Dialogue and description – how used and the balance between the two.
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Language and its purpose, i.e. irony, for humour, to impress, to reflect mood, etc.
• Themes or ideas and how these are explored.
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How characters are developed or remain flat.
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The use of style – whether the passage is active or passive and the meanings you can deduce from that.
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Other stylistic devices such as syntax (sentence construction) repetition, rhetorical questions, motifs, foregrounding, references to other texts, etc.
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Structural devices such as parallel narratives, charactisation, etc.
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Form and historical fiction and how passages/chapters relate the attitudes, behaviour, culture and history of the past – but from a modern vantage point of 1993!
Passages for practicing your skills ( in pairs or on your own )
1. Chapter 5, page 33: “ He remembered . . . to the top of page 34, “ . . . an absurd little man”.
2. Chapter 5, page 34: “But I have done my best” to “ . . .evil times have passed”.
3. Chapter 5, bottom of page 34: “Was it not a form of irony” to page 35 “ . . .every subversive fart in Greece”.
4. Chapter 6, page 37: “ I, Carlo Guercio” to “ . . . my mother’s womb”.
5. Chapter 6, page 39: “We were all young together” to “ . . . against people who fought like gods.
6. Chapter 6, bottom of page 39: “ I am not a cynic” to “ Page 40 “ . . . make me sad”.
