Textual Analysis

Textual Analysis

Textual Analysis is about you responding critically to an unseen

piece of literature. You will be assessed by being asked specific
questions on a short text – which can be a poem, a prose extract,
or a drama extract.

Just like in Close Reading, you will be tested on your

understanding, analysis and evaluation of the text.

Understanding – These questions will test your ability to

demonstrate understanding of the main concerns and significant
details of the text.
Analysis – These questions test your ability to examine and
explain how aspects of structure, language and style help
convey meaning and create impact.
Evaluation – These questions test your ability to demonstrate a
degree of personal response to the ideas in the text and assess
the effectiveness of the writer in conveying a view or experience.

There are many elements of the Textual Analysis NAB that are
the same as Close Reading.

You should revise:

 Simile
 Metaphor
 Personification
 Alliteration
 Onomatopoeia
 Sentence Structure
 Word Choice

Poetry

When you look at a piece of poetry, what features are important to

consider?
 Textual Analysis

Below are four extracts from well-known poems.

 Do you notice anything special about the way these are

written?
 Do they aim at any particular effect?

1. O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeting.
(Shelley: Ode to the West Wind)

2. The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled…
(Coleridge: The Ancient Mariner)

3. Every branch big with it,

Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute.
(Hardy: Snow in the Suburbs)

4. Well now, look at our villa, stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain’s edge as bare as the creature’s skull.
(Browning: Up at a Villa – Down in the City)

Consider the following short poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson and the
practice questions that follow.

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with hooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
 Textual Analysis

As you read the poem it is helpful to highlight language features

and images as they strike you.

Q. What impression of the eagle is created in stanza one? (U)

A. That it is a strong/superior creature.

Q. How does the poet create this impression? (A)

A. Word choice
‘clasps’ – sense of power and strength
‘Close to the sun’ – high up. Looking down on everything else.
‘lonely lands’ – creates sense of isolation, singularity of eagle.
Sentence structure
‘he stands’ – comma before this phrase isolates it, underlines the
way the eagle appears to be apart, aloof.

Q. How does the poet suggest the eagle is like a ruler, in the
opening line of stanza 2? (A)
A. He refers to the waves ‘wrinkles’, crawling beneath him as if they
were like servants bowing before their master or king.

Q. How effective is the last line of the poem? (E)

A. It is very effective. The simile used suggests the eagle diving
down on its prey ‘like a thunderbolt’ suggesting that it is powerful
and unexpected like part of a storm.
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Poetry Practice

In this poem by Margaret Taylor, a woman walks home alone on a

dismal wet evening. Her sense of loneliness is reflected in her
surroundings.

Loneliness

Nightmare town,
The streets silent, dark
Sabbath empty
Follow me home:
I walk slowly
And the rain-wet stones
Wink under the sodium flares,
I hear them snigger
As I bend my head to the rain:
I must have walked this road
This endless road
A thousand years,
Yet I never meet a soul,
Even the paper scraps
Draw themselves aside,
The houses draw up,
From their dank gardens,
But their prim laces never stir –
Oh God is there no one in this town?

Margaret Taylor

Questions

1. What impression is created by the opening words of the

poem? 2

2. Consider lines 2-4.

How does the poet convey the woman’s feelings as she walks
home?
2
3. Why might the woman ‘walk slowly’?
1
4. Consider lines 6-8.
The poet is trying to capture the woman’s sense of
vulnerability. How effective do you find the imagery used in
these lines?
4
5. The woman ‘bend(s)’ (line 9) her head to avoid the rain being
blown into her face. What other reason might there be for her
bending her head?
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1
6. Consider lines 10-12.
a. Identify the techniques used by the writer to suggest
the long-term nature of the woman’s loneliness.
2
b. How does the poet’s use of punctuation help support the
meaning of these lines? 1

c. The journey might be said to be a metaphor for the

woman’s life.
What does this statement mean?
2
7. Comment on the writer’s use of the word ‘soul’ (line 13)
rather than a more literal word such as person.
1
8. Consider lines 14-18.
How do these lines emphasise the woman’s sense of rejection.
2
9. The last line has a different tone from the rest of the poem.
How effective do you find this as a conclusion to the poem?
2
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Prose

In this extract from Touching the Void, the writer, Joe Simpson, sets
the scene for the true-life story of a mountain climb that goes
disastrously wrong.

Beneath the Mountain Lakes

I was lying in my sleeping bag, staring at the light

filtering through the red and green fabric of the dome
tent. Simon was snoring loudly, occasionally twitching
in his dream world. We could have been anywhere.
There is a peculiar anonymity about being in tents.
Once the zip is closed and the outside world barred
from sight, all sense of location disappears. Scotland,
the French Alps, the Karakorum, it was always the
same. The sounds of rustling, of fabric flapping in the
wind, or of rainfall, the feel of hard lumps under the ground sheet,
the smells of rancid socks and sweat – these are the universals, as
comforting as the warmth of the down sleeping bag.

Outside, in a lightening sky, the peaks would be catching the first of

the morning sun, with perhaps even a condor cresting the thermals
above the tent. That wasn’t too fanciful either since I had seen one
circling the camp the previous afternoon. We were in the middle of
the Cordillera Huayhuash, in the Peruvian Andes, separated from
the nearest village by the twenty-eight miles of rough walking, and
surrounded by the most spectacular ring of ice mountain I had ever
seen, and the only indication of this from without our tent was the
regular roaring of avalanches falling off Cerro Sarapo.

I felt a homely affection for the warm security of the tent, and
reluctantly wormed out of my bag to face the prospect of lighting the
stove. It had snowed a little during the night, and the grass crunched
frostily under my feet as I padded over to the cooking rock. There was
no sign of Richard stirring as I passed his tiny one-man tent, half
collapsed and whitened with hoar frost.

Squatting under the lee of the overhanging rock that had become our
kitchen, I relished this moment when I could be entirely alone. I
fiddled with the petrol stove which was mulishly objecting to both the
temperature and the rusty petrol with which I had filled it. I resorted
to brutal coercion when coaxing failed and sat it atop a propane gas
stove going full blast. It burst into vigorous life, spluttering out two-
foot-high flames in petulant revolt against the dirty petrol.

As the pan of water slowly heated, I looked around at the wide, dry
and rock-strewn river bed, the erratic boulder under which I crouched
marking the site at a distance in all but the worst weather. A huge,
 Textual Analysis

almost vertical wall of ice and snow soared upwards to the summit of
Cerro Sarapo directly in front of the camp, no more than a mile and a
half away. Rising from the sea of moraine to my left, two spectacular
and extravagant castles of sugar icing, Yerupaja and Rasac,
dominated the camp site. The majestic 21,000-foot Siula Grande lay
behind Sarapo and was not visible. It had been climbed for the first time
in 1936 by two bold Germans via the North Ridge. There had
been few ascents since then, and the true prize, the daunting 4,500-
feet West Face had so far defeated all attempts.

I turned off the stove and gingerly slopped the water into three large
mugs. The sun hadn’t cleared the ridge of the mountains opposite and it
was still chilly in the shadows.

“There’s a brew ready, if you’re still alive in there,” I announced

cheerfully.

Questions

1. Consider lines 1-12.

a. What does the writer mean by ‘a peculiar anonymity’?
(line 5) 2

b. How does this structure of the last sentence in

paragraph one (lines 9-12), develop this meaning? 2

2. Consider lines 13-21.

a. What impression is created by the writer’s reference to
‘even a condor cresting the thermals above the tent’
(line 14-15)? 1

b. How does the writer create a sense of isolation about

the camp site? 2

c. ‘regular roaring of avalanches’ (line 21)

How effective is this metaphor in developing a sense of
location? 2

3. Consider lines 22-27.

a. ‘I felt a homely affection for the warm security of the
tent’ (line 22).
Explain what is meant by this expression. 2

b. How does the writer’s word choice in the remainder of

this sentence continue this same sentiment? 1

c. Choose one example of descriptive detail from the

remainder of the paragraph and show how it contrasts
with the atmosphere of the opening sentence. 2
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4. Consider lines 28-34.

a. ‘I relished this moment when I could be entirely alone.’
How does the writer’s word choice convey his pleasure
at this point? 1
b. Why do you think he feels this way? 1
c. By examining the writer’s word choice, show how he
creates the impression of a struggle between himself and
the stove. 4

5. Consider lines 35-46.

a. What clue is given in lines 35-37 as to why they may
have chosen this particular site? 1

b. Choose two expressions from lines 37-46 that help you

understand the scale and splendour of the mountains
surrounding the camp-site and explain why you have
chosen them. 4

c. How does the writer make clear in lines 43-46, the

difficulties involved in climbing the Siula Grande? 3

6. Consider lines 47-51.

Why do you think the writer feels cheerful? 2
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Drama

Drama conventions

Don’t forget that a drama text (a play) has different conventions

from poetry and prose.

A play is meant to be performed in front of a live audience.

Setting

What do we mean by setting when we talk about a drama text?

How might this setting shown on stage?

What is the setting for A View from the Bridge? How is this shown
on stage?
 Textual Analysis

Read the following extract from the play Bold Girls, by Rhona
Munro. In this scene two friends are talking after a night out.
Michael is the dead husband of one of the friends, Marie. His
photograph hangs on the wall.

Marie: See Cassie, I’ve had better times with Michael than a lot of
women get in their whole lives with a man.

Cassie: And that’s what keeps you going?

Marie: It’s a warming kind of thought.

Cassie holds out her arms to Michael’s pictures

Cassie: (singing) “Thanks – for the memories.”

Marie: Oh Cassie.

Cassie: That doesn’t work, Marie. I’ve tried to keep myself warm
that way. Find some man with good hands and a warm skin and
wrap him around you to keep the rain off; you’ll be damp in the end
anyway.

Marie: Cassie, don’t talk like that; you know you’ve not done half
the wild things you make out.

Cassie: Not a quarter of what I wanted to Marie, but enough to

know it doesn’t work. Grabbing onto some man because he smells
like excitement, he smells like escape. They can’t take you
anywhere except the back seat of their car. They’re all the same.

Marie: If that’s what you think of them that’s all you’ll find.

Cassie gets up to stand, looking at Michael.

Cassie: They are all the same, Marie.

Marie: No.

Cassie: No, not Michael. (Sarcastically) Wasn’t he just the perfect

man, the perfect saint of a man.

Marie: He was no saint.

 Textual Analysis

Cassie: He was not.

Marie: I never said he was a saint.

Cassie: Not much perfect about him.

Marie: We cared for each other! We were honest with each other.

Cassie: Honest!?

Marie: We were. He was a good man.

Cassie: Good!? He was a lying worm like every one of them.

There is a pause

Marie: I think you should go home, Cassie.

Cassie: So he told you about it did he. All the times he made a fool
of you to your face?

Marie: Just go now.

Cassie: I don’t believe you could have kept that smile on your face
Marie, not if he was honestly telling you what he was up to.

Marie: Cassie…

Cassie: Making a fool of you with all those women.

There is a pause

Marie: I heard the stories. Of course I heard them.

Cassie: Did you though?

Marie: He was a great-looking man. He was away a lot. There were

bound to be stories.

Cassie: There were books of them, Marie.

Marie: But if there’d been any truth in them Michael would have
told me himself.

Cassie: Oh Marie!

Marie: That’s trust, Cassie.

 Textual Analysis

Cassie: That’s stupidity, Marie. You haven’t the sense of a hen with
its head off!

Marie: Michael would no more lie to me than you would, Cassie.

Cassie: Well we both did! That’s what I’m telling you Marie! We
were both lying to you for years!

Marie freezes where she is.

Questions

1. Why has the writer used inverted commas around the words,
“Thanks – for the memories” (line 7)? 1

2. Consider lines 1-13.

a. What initial impression do you get of Cassie?
b. How is this created by the writer? 1

3. ‘He smells like excitement, he smells like escape’ (line 15-16)

Comment on the writer’s choice of language here. 3

4. ‘They are all the same’ (line 20)

a. Why is the word ‘all’ in italics? 1
b. How does the stage direction support this purpose? 1

5. How does the writer build as sense of tension as the

conversation continues? 4

6. Explain the different impact achieved by each of the dramatic

pauses (line 32 and line 41). 4

7. ‘Michael would have told me himself’ (lines 47-48)

How does Cassie feel about Marie’s statement? 2

8. ‘Marie: That’s trust, Cassie.

Cassie: That’s stupidity, Marie…’ (lines 50-51)
How effectively does this exchange illustrate the contrast
between the two characters? 2

9. What is the full impact and meaning of Cassie’s final speech

(lines 54-55)? 4