Wake by Tim Winton (Reading to Write)

Hi. 

Like many of us, I'm finding the COVID-19 pandemic an incredibly anxious and trying time. I haven't posted much on the blog lately because it's felt like a low priority, especially as society seems to shrink up into a ball of hibernation around us. School doesn't feel like school at the moment, it's surreal and disassociative, and there's so much to unpack in what's happening but it just makes me feel mentally exhausted.

Anyway. 

Earlier this term my Year 11 Advanced English class read Tim Winton's short story 'Wake'. It's about 9 pages long and can be found in Scission, a collection of short stories first published in 1985. We approached the Reading to Write Common Module by looking at various short pieces as I wanted to broaden the scope of things that students may have read up until this point. This is what we looked at this term before everything unravelled:

• 'Introduction to Poetry' by Billy Collins (Poem)
• 'Brooklyn Snow' by Omar Musa (Poem)
• 'Sticks' by George Saunders (Flash Fiction)
• 'Wake' by Tim Winton (Short Story)
• 'B is For Bullshit', extract from The Lucy Family Alphabet by Judith Lucy (Discursive Writing)
• 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place' by Ernest Hemingway (Modernist Short Story)
• 'Our Trip' by Lydia Davis (Postmodern Short Story)
• '2 B R 0 2 B' by Kurt Vonnegut (Science Fiction Short Story)
• 'SJ' by Ellen Van Neerven (Short Story)

After reading 'Wake' we drilled down into some of the techniques and writing mechanics of Winton's piece. It's not anything revolutionary but I think the students found it useful to look at the story up-close in this way, and it would work well if you're currently teaching via Google Classroom or through some other online platform. The PowerPoint attached below covers motifs, use of semicolons, dialogue rules, and pathetic fallacy. Each slide comes with in-built discussion and questions that can be covered after the story has been read.

'Wake' - PPT (Click to Download)
And the story itself - 'Wake' by Tim Winton.

Hope it helps and best wishes to you all :)

Literary Homelands: The White Tiger

Literary Homelands isn't the most popular of the Extension English 1 Electives but it sure has a lot of grist in its proverbial mill. I've written before about Literary Homelands and how difficulty it would be to escape an Indian perspective in light of its Prescribed Texts. It's with this in mind that I gravitated towards Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger as the extended Prescribed Text to go alongside Eileen Chong's Burning Rice and Andrew Bovell's adaptation of The Secret River.  

The White Tiger is a fantastic text - ripe for so much discussion and such a breeze to read. It explores postcolonialism in the 21st century, the idea of multiple overlapping homelands connected to a class system, the impact of globalisation and transnationalism on Indian culture and society, and the power relationships between the priviliged and the silenced. It's a perfect text for exploring the Elective.

Below is a series of annotations on the novel done in the same style as similar documents found on this blog for Dracula, The Lost Boys and The Secret River. The first column features quotes and textual evidence from the text. Each example is then paired with techniques used by the author and some analysis that ties it to the Elective. 

Study Guide - The Annotated White Tiger