Writingfromlifesample [PC].Pdf

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha Before reading

Looking at style – comparing two texts The extracts that follow are from Anita and Me and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. They are both about the relationship between the narrators and their mothers.

• Read and annotate the texts with anything which strikes you as important or interesting. Concentrate particularly on the way they are written.

• In pairs, compare your annotations and talk about what struck you about them. Tell each other as much as you can about the characters and their relationship. Are you in agreement about your impressions of the characters?

• Now look back at the passages. Talk about how you formed your opinion of the characters.

• Share your ideas as a whole class and make a note of anything you notice about Roddy Doyle’s style in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

Anita and Me Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Mama rarely raised her voice but when she did get I ran all the way, up Barrytown Road, all the way, angry, she looked like one of the ornamental statues past the cottages where there was a ghost and an I had seen on my Auntie Shaila’s shrine. The old woman with a smell and no teeth, past the goddess she resembled most when in a strop, the shops; I started to cry when I was three gates away one that both terrified and fascinated me, was Kali, from our house; around the back, in the kitchen a black-faced snarling woman with alarming door. canines and six waving arms. Every hand contained Ma was feeding the baby. a bloody weapon and she wore a bracelet of skulls – What’s wrong with you, Patrick? around her powerful naked thighs. And her eyes, She looked down for a cut on my leg. I got my T- sooty O’s of disbelief and also amusement that shirt out to show her. I was really crying now. I someone insignificant had dared to step on her wanted a hug and ointment and a bandage. shadow. – A jelly – a Portuguese man of war got me, I told Mama could look at me like that sometimes, when her. she had caught me tearing carefully sewn ribbons She touched my side. off my dresses, cutting up earthworms in our back – There? yard with her favourite vegetable knife and most – Ouch! No, look; the mark across. It’s highly usually, when I was lying ... She was always furious poisonous. at the pointlessness of it all; stealing was – I can’t see –. Oh, now I do. understandable if distressing, violence anti-social I pulled my T-shirt down. I tucked it into my pants. yet sometimes unavoidable, but lying? ‘Why do you – What should we do? she asked me. – Will I go do this, Meena?’ she would wail, wringing her hands next door and phone for an ambulance? unconvincingly, a parody of a Hindi movie mama. – No; ointment – ‘You are only four/seven/nine ... Isn’t your life – Okay, so. That’ll mend it. Have I time for me to exciting enough without all these stories?’ finish feeding Deirdre and Cathy before we put it Well naturally the answer was no, but I did not want on? to make mama feel this was her fault. Besides, I – Yeah. enjoyed her anger, the snapping eyes, the shrieking – Great. voice, the glimpse of monster beneath the mother; I pressed my hand hard into my side to keep the it was one of the times I felt we understood each mark there. other perfectly. Of course, no one else outside our small family ever saw this dark side of mama; to everyone else, she was the epitome of grace, dignity and unthreatening charm. She attracted admirers effortlessly, maybe because her soft round face, large limpid eyes and

39 © English & Media Centre 2000 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Anita and Me Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha fragile, feminine frame brought out their protective instincts. Tragedy, amusement and bewilderment would wash across her face like sea changes, flowing to suit the story of whoever she was listening to, giving them the illusion that they could control the tides. She was as constant as the moon and just as remote, so the admiration of the villagers was always tempered with a deferential respect, as if in the company of minor royalty.

About the novel and the writer Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha takes us into the world of a ten year old boy growing up in the late 1960s in the fictional Irish town of Barrytown. Like Anita and Me, the novel is written in the first person. However, unlike in Anita and Me, there is no adult voice commenting on and setting in context the experiences of the child. In this novel we are inside the mind of the child, seeing the world through his eyes. This perspective is reflected in both the stories and themes of the novel and also in the style, for example, word choices, images and structure. Connections between sentences and different episodes in the novel can seem surprising. The structure is determined by the way Paddy thinks, his logic and the associations he makes. Once tuned into the way he thinks, the novel is an engaging and addictive read, and Paddy a very sympathetic character.

As well as writing novels (for example, The Barrytown Trilogy) Roddy Doyle has also written for television and the cinema: – a television film called The Family – the screen play for the film of his own novel, The Commitments.

The beginning Extract 1

The association game • In pairs play the association game, following the instructions below.

– Everyone in the class writes down the same word at the top of their own piece of paper (for example, football, school, holidays). – Once you are told to begin, look at your start word and write down the first thing that comes into your head, for example, ‘homework’. – Continue in the same way for one minute. Do not stop to think; do not cross anything out. – After one minute stop writing and, with your partner, talk about the connections and stories behind your association chain. Are your associations the result of your experiences or memories? Are they shared by other people? Do they reveal something about the type of person you are?

• Share your conclusions with another pair or with the whole class.

Talking about how children see the world In the autobiographical novel, Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee, there is a lovely moment when five year old Laurie starts school. The teacher tells him to ‘sit down for the present’. He waits and waits and in the end goes home bitterly disappointed because he hasn’t been given a present. This kind of childhood misunderstanding has happened to all of us.

• Before you read the opening to this story talk about what’s special or different about the way small children see the world. Try to recall a moment from your own childhood which suggests this different perspective. You could think of: – a moment of confusion or misunderstanding – a time when you did something and didn’t realise you would be punished for it – a time when something important happened that you only really understand properly now, when you think about it from a more grown up point of view.

Roddy Doyle reading the opening – Video Clip 2.1 2:00 • Listen to extract 1 being read out loud. It is taken from the very opening of the novel. The first part of the passage is read by Roddy Doyle in video clip 2.1.

We were coming down our road. Kevin stopped at a gate and bashed it with his stick. It was Missis 1 Quigley’s gate; she was always looking out the window but she never did anything. – Quigley! – Quigley! – Quigley Quigley Quigley! Liam and Aidan turned down their cul-de-sac. We said nothing; they said nothing. Liam and Aidan had a dead mother. Missis O’Connell was her name. –It’d be brilliant, wouldn’t it? I said. – Yeah, said Kevin. – Cool. We were talking about having a dead ma. Sinbad, my little brother, started crying. Liam was in my class in school. He dirtied his trousers one day – the smell of it rushed at us like the blast of heat when an oven door was opened – and the master did nothing. He didn’t shout or slam his desk with his leather or anything. He told us to fold our arms and go asleep and when we did he carried Liam out of the class. He didn’t come back for ages and Liam didn’t come back at all. James O’Keefe whispered, – If I did a gick in me pants he’d kill me!

41 © English & Media Centre 2000 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

– Yeah. – It’s not fair, said James O’Keefe. – So it’s not. The master, Mister Hennessey, hated James O’Keefe. He’d be writing something on the board with his back to us and he’d say, – O’Keefe, I know you’re up to something down there. Don’t let me catch you. He said it one morning and James O’Keefe wasn’t even in. He was at home with the mumps. Henno brought Liam to the teachers’ toilet and cleaned him up and then he brought him to the headmaster’s office and the headmaster brought him to his auntie’s in his car because there was no one at home in his own house. Liam’s auntie’s house was in Raheny. – He used up two rolls of toilet paper, Liam told us. – And he gave me a shilling. – He did not; show us it. – There. – That’s only threepence. – I spent the rest, said Liam. He got the remains of a packet of Toffo out of his pocket and showed it to us. –There, he said. – Give us one. – There’s only four left, said Liam; he was putting the packet back in his pocket. – Ah, said Kevin. He pushed Liam. Liam went home. Today, we were coming home from the building site. We’d got a load of six-inch nails and a few bits of plank for making boats, and we’d been pushing bricks into a trench full of wet cement when Aidan started running away. We could hear his asthma, and we all ran as well. We were being chased. I had to wait for Sinbad. I looked back and there was no one after us but I didn’t say anything. I grabbed Sinbad’s hand and ran and caught up with the rest of them. We stopped when we got out of the fields onto the end of the road. We laughed. We roared through the gap in the hedge. We got into the gap and looked to see if there was anyone coming to get us. Sinbad’s sleeve was caught in the thorns. – The man’s coming! said Kevin, and he slid through the gap. We left Sinbad stuck in the hedge and pretended we’d run away. We heard him snivelling. We crouched behind the gate pillars of the last house before the road stopped at the hedge, O’Driscoll’s. – Patrick – , Sinbad whinged. – Sin-bahhhd –, said Kevin. Aidan had his knuckles in his mouth. Liam threw a stone at the hedge. – I’m telling Mammy, said Sinbad. I gave up. I got Sinbad out of the hedge and made him wipe his nose on my sleeve. We were going home for our dinner; shepherd’s pie on a Tuesday.

First impressions of the characters • Working in pairs take responsibility for making notes on one of the characters listed below. Talk with your partner, then in class discussion report back your first impressions of this character.

Liam Aidan Kevin James O’Keefe

the narrator Sinbad Mr. Hennessey

What to look for in a narrative? • As a class brainstorm all the different things you could look for when you read and comment on a narrative. See how many things you can come up with in no more than a minute and jot them down. Use this first idea as a starting-point:

How the writer sets the scene

• Use your brainstormed list of issues to help you talk about the extract. What do you find interesting or challenging about it? Does it meet your expectations of what a narrative should be like?

Establishing the voice of a child To help you focus more closely on the way Roddy Doyle establishes the voice and point of view of Paddy, look back at the extract and try to answer the following questions.

– How can we tell the setting and situation of the story from the way it is written? – How can we tell the story is being told from the point of view of a child? (Look, for example, for nicknames and slang.) – How does the sentence structure reflect the way children speak? For instance, small children telling anecdotes often connect ideas using the connective ‘and’ or ‘and then’. They produce long streams of speech in this way. On the other hand, they also make very short, simple utterances, without lots of complex clauses. See if you can find examples of either of these features in the extract. – How would you describe the way it is written and why (for example, formal, informal, like speech and so on)?

Writer’s notebook – continuing the extract • Try continuing the extract for a few more paragraphs, imitating Roddy Doyle’s style. Share what you have written in small groups and talk about what extra insights this gave you into the writer’s narrative techniques.

On the narrative – Video Clip 2.2 2:00 • Now listen to video clip 2.2 in which Roddy Doyle talks about how he tried to write the story in a style which would reflect the ways a ten year old sees the world. Jot down the points you find most interesting, for example, his recognition that for a ten year old having a dead ma is ‘an achievement almost’.

• Some of the techniques he uses are listed here. As you read through them, look back at the passage and find an example of each one.

He describes without commenting or explaining.

He relies on the reader’s understanding of the world to fill in the gaps.

He focuses on tiny details to show what is important to Paddy.

He doesn’t distinguish between the things an adult would dismiss as trivial and those things they would recognise as important.

He lets the character of Paddy ‘meander’.

43 © English & Media Centre 2000 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

He tries to use the language a ten year old would use.

He uses dialogue to create character and show relationships.

Models of critical writing • Use your notes to write two paragraphs on what you have noticed about Roddy Doyle’s style in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

• Join up with one or two other people and look at the model below. Talk about the similarities and differences between your paragraphs and those in the example.

Roddy Doyle takes the reader straight into the mind of a ten year old boy by showing us the world of Barrytown from his point of view and in his language. The boys’ reaction to the death of their friends’ mum illustrates this: it would be ‘brilliant’ and ‘cool’; neither boy voices the distress it would cause. The silence between them, what is left unsaid, suggests to the adult reader that both Paddy and Kevin are more worried by the death than they are prepared to admit. Connections between the subjects Paddy thinks about seem awkward and hard to follow at first. However, by structuring the passage through the associations Paddy makes, Doyle gives us insight into the way his mind works.

• As a whole class talk about the example and the characteristics and conventions it displays, using these headings to help you: – tense (present or past) – use of quotations and other evidence from the text – paragraphing – ways of signposting the ideas for the reader – vocabulary.

Brotherly love Extract 2 Talking about memories of childhood • In pairs or as a group share memories of things you did as a child which you now realise were dangerous, silly or strange. Try and think back to where it took place, who else was there, why you did it, how you felt at the time, what happened at the time and afterwards. Include any of the tiny, apparently trivial details which help fix things in your memory, for example, the smell of the dinner cooking, what was on telly, who won the football, the feel of new school shoes or the weather.

Roddy Doyle reading ‘Brotherly love’ – Video Clip 2.3 1:50 • Now read extract 2, or listen to it being read aloud by Roddy Doyle in video clip 2.3.

Sinbad wouldn’t put the lighter fuel in his mouth. 2 – It’s halibut oil, I told him. – It isn’t, he said. He squirmed but I held onto him. We were in the school yard, in the shed. I liked halibut oil. When you cracked the plastic with your teeth the oil spread over the inside of your mouth, like ink through blotting paper. It was warm; I liked it. The plastic was nice as well. It was Monday; Henno was in charge of the yard, but he always stayed over at the far side watching whoever was playing handball. He was mad; if he’d come over to our side, the shed, he’d have caught loads of us in the act. If a teacher caught five fellas smoking or doing serious messing he got a bonus in his wages; that was what Fluke Cassidy said and his uncle was a teacher. But Henno only watched handball and sometimes he took his jacket and his jumper off and played it as well. He was brilliant. When he hit the ball you couldn’t see it till it hit the wall; it was like a bullet. He had a sticker in his car: Live Longer, Play Handball. Sinbad’s lips had disappeared because he was pressing them shut so hard; we couldn’t get his mouth open. Kevin pressed the fuel capsule against his mouth but it wouldn’t go in. I pinched Sinbad’s arm; no good. This was terrible; in front of the others, I couldn’t sort out my little brother. I got the hair above his ear and pulled it up; I lifted him: I just wanted to hurt him. His eyes were closed now as well but the tears were getting out. I held his nose. He gasped and Kevin shoved the capsule half- way into his mouth. Then Liam lit it with the match. We said we’d get Liam to light it, me and Kevin, just in case we got caught. It went like a dragon.

• Talk about your responses to: – the main incident – Paddy’s feelings and concerns – the things Paddy (the narrator) does not comment on – the way the passage is written (word choices, imagery, commentary, dialogue, structure).

The reader makes the meaning One of the key features of Roddy Doyle’s style in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is how simple it is. The reader plays a very important role, filling in the gaps and making sense of what Paddy does, says and thinks.

• Working in pairs, go through the passage marking the places where there seems to be a gap in the story. Then talk about what else could have been included at this point. For example, at the end of the passage, we do not know what happened to Sinbad when ‘It went like a dragon.’ We could have been told:

– what happened – Sinbad’s reaction – what the teacher said – whether he had to go to hospital and so on.

• Try writing two or more sentences describing what happened next. Read the end aloud with those sentences added, then talk about why you think Roddy Doyle decided to leave the gaps in the story. Why did he end it as he did?

On ‘Brotherly love’ – Video Clip 2.4 1:55 • Spend a few minutes predicting what you think Roddy Doyle might say about his portrayal of childhood in this extract. Use the sentence openings suggested here to help you get started.

In this extract I show childhood as .... My aims were to ... I wanted the reader to feel ... I tried to create this picture/achieve these effects by ... I ended this section with ‘It went like a dragon.’ ...

• Now watch video clip 2.4 to see what the author himself says about his representation of childhood here and his reasons for writing the passage in this way. Compare what Doyle says with your predictions. How successful do you think he has been?

Writer’s notebook – changing the point of view The description of the lighter fuel incident is told using first person narration. This means we see it through Paddy’s eyes and share his thoughts and feelings. We know, for example, about his feelings of anger and shame. However, we can imagine what the other people involved must have felt. The point of view chosen by the writer affects the way the reader responds to the story and the characters.

• Explore the effects changing the point of view can have by tackling one of the activities suggested here.

1. Choose a character, for example Sinbad, Kevin, Liam or Henno and re-write the scene from their point of view.

2. Re-write the incident using a third person narrator. Although you cannot show what happens from the point of view of any one of the characters, you can describe what all of them feel as well as what they do and say. For example:

Paddy Clarke (1st person) Re-written version (3rd person) Sinbad’s lips had disappeared because Sinbad’s terror was clear: he was pressing his mouth he was pressing them shut so hard; we together so hard his lips had disappeared. Paddy did couldn’t get his mouth open. Kevin pressed the fuel capsule against his not seem to care. He pinched his brother’s arm, mouth but it wouldn’t go in. I pinched aware that he was being made to look a fool. The Sinbad’s arm; no good. This was terrible; curl of Kevin’s lip and the way he thrust the fuel in front of the others, I couldn’t sort out into Sinbad’s terrified face clearly revealed his anger my little brother. and frustration. © English & Media Centre 2000 46 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

• Use the original passage and your re-written version as a focus for discussing the advantages and disadvantages of both first and third person narration. Record your ideas on a chart like this one:

First person Third person

Main characteristics

Advantages

Disadvantages

Effect on the reader

Writer’s notebook – a special relationship • Use this extract from the novel as a model to write a short piece of your own about your relationship with a brother, sister or friend. Some things for you to think about when planning, drafting and revising your work are suggested here.

– Base the piece round a specific memory, perhaps the one you talked about in the activity on page 46. – Use an incident to tell the reader something more general about your relationship. – Avoid using adjectives and adverbs: choose your nouns with care. – Be inventive in the similes you use; they should help the reader picture the scene and establish the voice of the child. – Give the reader just enough information to fuel their imagination. – Structure the piece so that the conclusion is at the point of highest tension. – Be ruthless when you are editing – cut it down to the bare minimum.