CXC English B Study Guide
Drama
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-tempest/play-summary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czFoUWwd6mI
https://www.bachelorandmaster.com/globaldrama/the-tempest-summary.html#.WtYfcIjwbIU
https://www.bachelorandmaster.com/globaldrama/themes-in-thetempest.html#.WtYftYjwbIU
Ti-Jean and his Brothers by Derek Walcott
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy4AaymZ6HI
https://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/media/Documents/International/Caribbean/97815104143
03_Plays_for_Today_samplepages.pdf
Poetry
An African Thunderstorm -David Rubadiri
From the west
Clouds come hurrying with the wind
Turning sharply
Here and there
Like a plague of locusts
Whirling,
Tossing up things on its tail
Like a madman chasing nothing.
Pregnant clouds
Ride stately on its back,
Gathering to perch on hills
Like sinister dark wings;
The wind whistles by
And trees bend to let it pass.
In the village
Screams of delighted children,
Toss and turn
In the din of the whirling wind,
Women,
Babies clinging on their backs
Dart about
In and out
Madly;
The wind whistles by
Whilst trees bend to let it pass.
Clothes wave like tattered flags
Flying off
To expose dangling breasts
As jagged blinding flashes
Rumble, tremble and crack
Amidst the smell of fired smoke
And the pelting march of the storm.
http://overkruin.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/RUBADIRI-D.-AN-AFRICANTHUNDERSTORM-POWERPOINT-PRESENTATION.pdf
Birdshooting Season -Olive Senior
Birdshooting season the men
make marriages with their guns
My father’s house turns macho
as from far the hunters gather
All night long contentless women
stir their brews: hot coffee
chocolata, cerassie
wrap pone and tie-leaf
for tomorrow’s sport. Tonight
the men drink white rum neat.
In darkness shouldering
their packs, their guns, they leave
We stand quietly on the
doorstep shivering. Little boys
longing to grow up birdhunters too
Little girls whispering:
Fly Birds Fly.
https://www.scribd.com/document/323207667/birdshooting-season
God’s Grandeur- Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright
wings.
http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/hopkins/section1/
My Parents -Stephen Spender
My parents kept me from children who were rough
Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothes
Their thighs showed through rags they ran in the street
And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.
I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron
Their jerking hands and their knees tight on my arms
I feared the salt coarse pointing of those boys
Who copied my lisp behind me on the road.
They were lithe they sprang out behind hedges
Like dogs to bark at my world. They threw mud
While I looked the other way, pretending to smile.
I longed to forgive them but they never smiled.
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/my-parents-poem-analysis-474772
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-theme-structure-poem-my-parents-by-stephan591429
Mirror -Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful,
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Little Boy Crying -Mervyn Morris
Your mouth contorting in brief spite and
Hurt, your laughter metamorphosed into howls,
Your frame so recently relaxed now tight
With three-year-old frustration, your bright eyes
Swimming tears, splashing your bare feet,
You stand there angling for a moment’s hint
Of guilt or sorrow for the quick slap struck.
The ogre towers above you, that grim giant,
Empty of feeling, a colossal cruel,
Soon victim of the tale’s conclusion, dead
At last. You hate him, you imagine
Chopping clean the tree he’s scrambling down
Or plotting deeper pits to trap him in.
You cannot understand, not yet,
The hurt your easy tears can scald him with,
Nor guess the wavering hidden behind that mask.
This fierce man longs to lift you, curb your sadness
With piggy-back or bull-fight, anything,
But dare not ruin the lessons you should learn.
You must not make a plaything of the rain.
https://npillay5b.wikispaces.com/%27Little+Boy+Crying%27
Prose Fiction
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/breatheyes/section1/
To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mocking/
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/to-kill-a-mockingbird/book-summary
Short Stories
Blackout Roger- Mais
https://worldliterature2012.wikispaces.com/file/view/Roger%20Mais%20Blackout%20and%
20Questions.pdf/304818370/Roger%20Mais%20Blackout%20and%20Questions.pdf
Blood Brothers -John Wickham
https://csecenglishmadeeasy.com/2017/03/2017-03-blood-brothers-by-john-wickhamanalysis-html/
The Boy Who Loved Ice Cream- Olive Senior
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=Y2FsdmFyeWRheXNjaG9vbC5jb218
cHJlLWFwLXdvcmxkLWxpdHxneDo2MDNmNTllNTk1ZGJjYWIx
https://prezi.com/oa7z7ray227e/the-boy-who-loved-ice-cream/