PREPARING FOR THE ‘UNSEEN’ PASSAGE
Paper 3 of A-Level Literature focusses on the theme of the relationship between the mind and self. This is, luckily, a very broad topic that students can enter from various points. There is no one way of reading a passage in terms of its treatment of psychological and identity issues. You can score your highest marks in the ‘Unseen’ section of Paper 3, provided you have prepared well for it.
But what skills do you need to do well in this section? Are there tasks you can perform to sharpen your analytical approach to the ‘Unseen’ text?
A typical question in this section goes like this:
Write a critical appreciation of the passage, commenting on the ways in which it explores the topic of the mind and self.
Should you read the Paper 3 ‘Unseen’ Text differently from the way you did in your O-level exams?
Yes, and No.
In O-Level Literature, your task was to work out the main concerns of the ‘Unseen’ poem or passage and relate this to the text’s use of language, form and structure. Usually the main theme would have been identified for you in the question prompt. In A-Level Literature, you will be expected to respond to the ‘Unseen’ text from a perspective that will be decided ahead for you and which may be extraneous to the explicit concerns of the text.
For instance you will be asked to place a text within the thematic and stylistic concerns of a specific historical era (Paper 2) or to look at two texts from a comparative perspective (Paper 1).
In Paper 3, you will be expected to explore texts in terms of psychological and identity concerns, even if these don’t appear to be the main themes of the text.
However, you CANNOT IGNORE the base reading of the text as this provides the context from which you launch your exploration of ‘mind and self’ concerns in the text.
Illustration: Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “War Photographer”
For example, take Carol Ann Duffy’s famous poem "War Photographer" . An independent first reading of it would suggest it’s a poem that contrasts the trauma a war photographer-journalist experiences covering wars in the troubled spots of the world against the casual and short-lived empathy a First World audience feels in seeing his work. The choice of a rural English setting makes us think of the vast difference between complacent, happy countryside living in England vs that of rural folk in war-torn countries. The poem also suggests the guilt the First World photographer feels about earning his income off the sufferings of war victims in poor regions of the world. Readers will feel the injustice of First World residents living in ‘La-la land’, uncaring about the atrocities happening to fellow humans elsewhere.
These are social themes. In looking at the poem again, this time from the ‘mind and self’ angle, you need to explore how the poem depicts the personal and psychological dimensions of war photographers.
In Duffy’s poem you might focus on the way the war photographer feels alienated in his rural English hometown, and the disorienting mental effects he experiences of shifting between the miserable war zones and the peace zone of the advanced countries.
You would also discuss the poem’s depiction of trauma, of the photographer being haunted by images of extreme human suffering and death. The poem’s imagery of ghosts, memories and of photographs being developed in the dark room could be viewed as expressions of the photographer’s shadowy, fragile sense of self and reality.
You may also want to explore how his work as a war photographer disrupts his sense of English identity and belonging, making him feel ‘Other’ at home. The image of himself as a priest “preparing to intone a Mass” in a room with the red light, which is associated with brothels, effectively conveys the photographer’s split sense of self as a spiritual leader who raises awareness of the evil in the world and as a pimp who lives off the suffering of others.
However if you plunge immediately into looking for ‘mind and self’ issues in the poem without that first independent reading, your analysis is likely to be superficial and generalised, lacking contextual specificity. You would not relate the text to identity issues arising from a globalised world and to guilt over First World exploitation of Third World suffering or even to the way the rural English mindset is constructed in the poem.
A 2-STEP APPROACH
Hence, the FIRST STEP IN APPROACHING THE ‘UNSEEN’ TEXT is to read the poem/passage attentively for itself, trying to work out the situation/event featured, the location, the people involved, the conflict being addressed, and what message or insight the writer wishes to convey. Is the conflict one about competing ideas or values, or an internal conflict or one between the persona and society? This goes some way in giving depth to your reading. You may also wish to annotate the text, making notes on literary devices, form and techniques used and comment on interesting use of language.
STEP TWO is harder and requires you to be creative. You now need to relate your understanding of the poem, its context, theme/s, conflicts to the topic of MIND & SELF. The passage may be directly about issues of identity and mental processes or it may be about something less directly related.
Example: "I Have Been Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost
Read the poem here. On a first reading, it appears to be a first-person account about despair. This poem is thus directly related to the theme of ‘mind and self’ since despair is a mental state. You don’t need to try too hard to connect your first reading of the poem to ‘Mind and Self’ themes. The poem also raises our awareness of how walking alone in the night is a perfect literary symbol to convey human alienation. The terza rima form of tercets connected by interlocking rhymes and ending in a couplet as ABA BCB CDC DED EE are used to convey the speaker’s sense of imprisonment by despair.
But how do you make the leap from STEP 1 to STEP 2, relating your first reading of the poem to “mind and self” concerns?
Try to find at least three or four talking points that relate the poem to ‘mind and self’ issues. Think about how to bring the striking formal and stylistic features you’ve already noticed in your first reading into your discussion of these ‘mind and self’ talking points.
Here are some suggestions:
i. Consider how the persona presents despair as a mental state.
Exploring the use of the night as symbol, look at how despair is associated with lack of knowledge/understanding, with formlessness. Relate this to references to light, moon and rain imagery.
Discuss the use of repetitions of words and actions, and the use of interlocking rhymes to portray the entrapment of the mind in despair.
Look at how despair is depicted as limiting the speaker’s perception in that he projects his sorrow onto his environment, for e.g., the reference to the “saddest city lanes.” Use of pathetic fallacy.
ii. Consider the connections the poem makes between despair and alienation, to being alone and cut off from society. Is despair the effect of alienation or does it cause a disconnect from society?
The repeated assertion of depression as a friend, an acquaintance, in the title is significant.
The significance of the voice that s/he hears, the watchman
The significance of the city setting—the persona’s solitude ironically occurs in a place that is densely populated.
The line about the moon not being able to tell whether “the time is wrong or right”—is this about the mind being locked out from spiritual comfort?
iii. Focus on the struggle of the self against the despair.
How does the trope of walking signify the self’s attempts to establish control over despair?
How do the sound effects and the terza rima rhyme scheme convey the conflict between the self’s need for control and the overwhelming mental state?
A sonnet usually poses a problem that is resolved at the end. Is there a resolution of the mental conflict here at the end of this 14-line poem?
iv. Discuss the way the persona uses this habitual despair to build an identity for himself/herself.
The anaphora of “I have” is significant to the expression of identity.
If identity is about uniqueness of the self, how does the persona present himself/herself as being out of the ordinary?
How does the poem develop this identity over different stanzas?
What if the ‘Unseen’ Text doesn’t mention the mind at all?
Sometimes the ‘Unseen’ text’s issues appear to lack any immediate connection to a ‘mind and self’ thematic. Then what do you do? I’ve chosen an extreme example for us to work on.
Example: “Route 62” by Helen Moffett
This next poem “Route 62” by South African writer Helen Moffett appears to be about the natural environment. In it, the persona describes a mountain range, differentiating its spirit and emotional being from that of human life. Through the use of personification, we get the sense that nature is far older than modern human civilisation, and thus wiser and calmer. We can infer the speaker’s desire for the peace that he senses in nature, its slow pace of change, its stability. The contrast between the English language of “Route 62” and the African “Karoo” landscape could be read as a reference to the way only the natural landscape of Africa holds the key to re-connecting to an African cultural heritage. There doesn’t however appear to be any depiction of the speaker’s own inner state or of any internal conflict. All appears calm.
But don’t forget that literary texts are themselves mental creations of writers or of their persona, that writers often resort to creating myths in their work to appease their own anxieties, to resolve their inner conflicts, to provide their mental answers to society’s problems. A poem is a MENTAL ARTEFACT where writers use words and images (the language of the mind) to respond to life’s dilemmas.
This is why poetry-writing is often used as a form of psychological therapy as it helps the person explore and appease their own mind.
Also remember that IDENTITY is a CONSTRUCTION, a MYTH or story we tell ourselves and others about WHO WE ARE. In literary texts, identities are being constructed all the time, be it that of characters or of narrators and poetic personas.
If we bear all this in mind, then there are some ways we can proceed with reading ‘Mind and Self’ issues even in a poem like “Route 62”.
Some talking points to explore:
i. How the persona uses setting to construct South African identity.
The allusions to Little Karoo and Route 62 are to South African landscape. A Karoo is a semi-desert region and the Little Karoo is near the Swartberg Mountain range. Route 62 is a scenic road that connects Cape Town to Port Elizabeth.
The two allusions (“Little Karoo” and “Route 62”) contrast the European from the African. The Karoo landscape is used to differentiate South Africa from the West, the African word “Karoo” itself spelling out its Otherness in contrast to the English words “route 62”. In addition, Route 62 is differentiated from the iconic American Route 66, a highway running from Chicago to California that has been made famous in American pop culture, from tv shows to songs.
South African identity is also seen as being a hybrid of WESTERN MODERN LIFE (Route 62) and of tradition, of an OLDER, NATIVE CULTURE as exemplified by the mountain range, of a pre-colonial history. The persona may also be signalling that s/he is unable to access that culture (as indicated in the mountains’ sense of time not “resonat[ing] in our bones” ).
ii. How the persona’s mind seeks to escape the fast-paced, transitory nature of modern time by seeking refuge in the slower pace of geological time
There are many allusions to time in the poem: “history”, “adolescence”, “summer afternoons”, “breathe in time”, “centuries”, “geology’s clock”, “tick” and “tock”. If Route 62 is interpreted as a reference to modern time, its motorway speed, and contemporary human time is still in the ‘adolescent’ hormonal stage, then the poet’s wonderment at the slowness of the time of the mountains suggests a desire for a time when life is less transitory, more stable and enduring.
Discuss how this slow old time and the awe of it is created through the use of run-on lines and other rhythmic elements as well as the tone of admiration in the narrative voice.
iii. How the persona creates a MYTH OF THE SELF as being connected to the natural world (perhaps as a response to urban alienation)
The use of personification in describing the mountain--dreaming, the depiction of the heat as being like a mother “draping” a blanket over the mountains, and of the earth as having passed its stage of “adolescence”—connects humans to the natural world.
In addition, the mountains are also depicted in animal metaphors, as having “flanks”, suggesting that all aspects of the natural world, the heat, the wind, the mountains, the animals and humans exist in unity.
iv. How the writer’s/persona’s mind uses aesthetic form, particularly sound effects and language to concretize a dream or fantasy of peace
The poem opens with the question about what mountains dream about. That question is not answered. But it is clear that for the persona the mountains represent his/her own dream of peace.
Consider how punctuation, especially in the last two lines, is used to represent the slow time of peace. The use of alliteration, of liquid sounds, and long vowel sounds also contribute to providing a sense of a tranquil, ‘sleepy’ time.
Note: Moffett’s poem is similar to the work of British Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge. This Romantic, imaginative approach to nature has tended historically to be the mind’s counter-response to the destruction of old community relationships, lifestyles and landscapes by modernisation, especially by industrialisation and urbanisation. So although nature is the object of contemplation, the creative act is very much the POETIC MIND’s attempt to appease longings for old-world connectivity to displace that feeling of alienation felt in modern civilisation.
OTHER ‘MIND AND SELF’ TALKING-POINTS
If the ‘Unseen’ text doesn’t immediately suggest ‘mind and self’ issues to you, you may wish to use some of the questions and themes offered here to explore the text.
How does the text present a specific state of mind or emotion?
Fear, hope, despair, self-doubt, guilt are among some mental states presented in literary texts. Discuss what insight the writer provides of these mental states and the formal and stylistic means that are used to present these mental states.
How are the narrator’s or character’s past life and memories used to construct the identity of the self in the present?
We rarely remember events and actions from our past without it changing the way we view ourselves, our difference from others. How does the narrator or character regard the impact of their past in shaping their values and attitudes? Pay attention to the way tone and attitude is evident in the way language is used to present memories.
How is identity constructed in relation to place?
The country, city or area we live in often constitutes an important aspect of the way we see ourselves. We ally ourselves with a place or see ourselves as the ‘Other’ to it, as belonging elsewhere. Much of this is our mind’s imaginative response to the external world. Consider how the narrator’s or character’s mind constructs setting as expressing a cultural universe, as symbolising aspects of a national or personal identity or both. Sometimes different places are used to show the development of an identity over time.
How does dialogue express the mind games that people play in their struggle for identity and power?
This is especially useful in discussing ‘Unseen’ drama texts in terms of examining the verbal and rhetorical strategies characters use to assert power and control over each other.
How does the text’s language express UNCONSCIOUS desires or fears?
Does the language of the text indicate a SPLIT SELF, where the narrator/speaker or character asserts one meaning or idea which is undercut by language that says the opposite?
It is normal in life for people to deceive themselves, to tell themselves empowering stories when, at a more unconscious level, they sense their inadequacies.
Texts often feature this dualism in language. For instance, the speaker may assert her confidence in her own identity but symbols in the text of broken mirrors may speak of the opposite, of an inability to bring parts of the self together, of self-doubt.
It is thus important to look for this splitting of language, where imagery and words express two different levels of meaning.
RECURRING ‘MIND AND SELF’ THEMES
The relationship between SELF AND SOCIETY
Does the text depict how the self is shaped by their society or the struggle of the self against society’s demands? Does it deal with the SELF’s RESISTANCE to socially-imposed identities?
The SELF and the OTHER
Our sense of self is shaped by our social relationships. We perceive our identity in terms of our differences from others (our uniqueness) as well as our similarities to others (which is important to the way we identify with specific groups and communities such as a nation, a race or even a profession). Our identity is thus determined in interactions with others and also by the way others perceive us.
The “Other” is the opposite term to the self. We all tend to view some people as our ‘Other’, as representing values and standards that we reject. Societies too have their ‘Other’, the people they refuse to embrace as themselves often due to racist or ethnic hostilities. The ‘Other’ is often represented as a demon or a monster.
The impact and response to TRAUMA
Many texts explore the various triggers and psychic features of trauma, illustrating its impact on people. Literary devices are used to portray the mindscape of trauma and to differentiate it from other mental responses like shock or surprise.
The PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE (AND HATE)
The individual’s need for love and the anxieties concerning it; how love or its lack shapes the way the mind makes meaning of the world. Hate too is an interesting phenomenon and often shines a light on the self, its felt grievances, deprivations and desires.
THE SUBJECTIVITY of PERCEPTION
How emotion and psychological need shape the character’s perception of the external world.
Negotiating MULTIPLE ASPECTS Of Identity
We have affiliations with different groups in society, so that there are many and competing determinants of identity. For instance, you could be Singaporean but also Malay, and you could identify with a certain social class, age group or even with a particular school. A person’s profession and the company he works for are also aspects of identity, as are the many roles we play (as father, mother, sister, worker, manager, etc). How does the mind negotiate with these many pathways of identity? What happens when a person has to choose between identities? How does the mind resolve such conflicts? What happens during an identity crisis? These are some themes of identity that crop up in literary texts.
The CONSTRUCTION of ethnic, racial, gender, sexuality, social class and national identities
Literary texts are good resources for finding out how our identities are made up of certain customs, elements, and values that we hold dear. However there is often variety in the way these identities are constructed due to differences of opinion. For example, some people define Singaporean identity in terms of world-famous icons such as our public housing flats, Singapore Airlines, Changi Airport and traits such as kiasuism. Others think of Singaporean identity in terms of our multiculturalism and tech savvy, while for others Singaporeanness might mean being politically apathetic, conservative and materialistic. The way we construct our national identity varies according to our class, race, gender and educational background as we experience Singapore differently. This variety in constructing identity holds true too for the way we perceive our other identities. No doubt people have dissimilar ideas on what it means to be Chinese, Indian or Malay, for example. Pay attention to the way characters and narrators/speakers think of their identity.
The role of language, storytelling and myth-making in the construction of identities
We often tell stories of our experiences as a means of indirectly telling people who we are, of presenting ourselves as unique. Nations often use myths and legends to represent their historic origins but we too spin myths about ourselves and our family background. Women all over the world have myths of powerful women who they use as signifiers of the kind of women they can be. The stories that characters tell about themselves should be viewed in terms of the mind constructing the self.
More ‘MIND & SELF’ themes…
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