LANGUAGE ANALYSIS - PAST PAPER QUESTION

DR. ZINC

My friends had advised me, if I was at a loose end and required entertainment, to wander down to the public gardens to see Dr. Zinc in action. When I got there I saw a bizarre, cadaverous figure, gesticulating wildly at a small audience that had gathered around him. He behaved in a theatrical manner, intoning some well-prepared soliloquy and throwing himself around like a tree in a gale. He wore a melancholy expression and his straggly hair hung down untidily. I joined the crowd to hear what this eccentric fellow had to say.

Re-read the descriptions of:
Dr. Zinc in paragraph 1
Explain the effects the writer creates by using these descriptions. Support your answer by selecting words and phrases from these paragraphs.

Broadly, Dr. Zinc comes across as a strange and hyperbolized person. The writer describes him to be ‘eccentric’ and a ‘bizarre, cadaverous figure’. The word ‘eccentric’ implies to unusualness and ties in with ‘bizarre’ which creates a sense of abnormality or oddity. ‘Cadaverous’ suggest that Dr. Zinc was extremely thin and almost skeletal like which again shows an exaggerated and unrealistic feature. His behavior is amplified and overstated when the writer describes him to be ‘gesticulating wildly’ in a ‘theatrical manner’. ‘Gesticulating’ yet again augments exaggeration and ‘theatrical’ creates an image of an actor in the mind’s eye. The writer further describes his body language in using ‘like a tree in a gale’. There is an overall image of magnified body movements, maybe even amusingly so. The word ‘intoning’ connotes a sense of repetitive chanting, which is almost like a priest reciting a prayer. The ‘straggly hair’ hints a sense of untidiness and dishevelment.   

BOOKS vs MOVIES

Books have been made to movies since nearly forever. Be it Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, Lord of the Rings or Lord of the Flies, animation or actual movies, books have been made into visual content. But as an avid book reader, I personally think that this spoils the “magic” of reading.

Firstly, you can let your imagination run wild and take the better of you when reading. The figurative language, colored with hues of adjectives, adverbs, similes, metaphors, personification, etc. can transport you into a world of creative fantasy. A movie will hardly let you envisage, showing exact images, which do not allow any imaginativeness.

Furthermore, most movies do not stick to the original storyline of the books. One of the most common and criticized movies to date that deviated majorly from its book’s plot are the Harry Potter movies. After much critique from audiences all over the world, the final book was made in two different movies to stick to the original plot.

Nevertheless, movies are generally preferred to books. Most people feel that watching a movie interpretation of a book is far more convenient than actually reading the book. But just because it is easier does not mean that you keep yourself away from at least even attempting to read the book. As said before, the storyline can be tampered with, giving inaccurate facts about the book.

In conclusion, I would reinforce my point that no matter how well directed the movie; the book always beats it hands down. Besides, reading should also be encouraged in comparison to watching movies.

ONE TOO MANY VAMPIRE ROMANCE NOVELS?

Being part of the female population, by my very nature it is natural to have an affection for romance, love and everything that comes under it. A man’s exceptional courage and nobility, a woman’s undying and irrevocable love for the man, a set of difficulties and hardships that the two faces and a happy ending is something that anyone possessing oestrogens enjoy. And it is this ardor for romance novels that took me to the particular section of the bookstore Borders a few days back, giving me a surprise that I know I should have seen coming.

As I stepped in to the section, my vision was engulfed in shelves upon shelves of romance novels all with the exact same theme – VAPMIRES! While some screamed “THE TWILIGHT SAGA – get all 4 today!” the others equally showed books with titles written in creepy red writings, manned with front covers of lips dripping with blood.

While vampire romance novels give an edge to an otherwise candy coated or tear jerker book, I think it is fair to say that way too many books carry the same theme. Not only is it restricting reader’s choices, but it is also limiting creativity as writers all over the world publish more and more books with the same idea.

While some of them, such as the Twilight Saga, the Vampire Diaries and Vampire Academy have been great hits, the former even a best seller, I personally feel that the topic has been used and written about enough. Whatever happened to Jane Austen and Nicholas Sparks?

IPL AUCTIONS

The IPL ‘s (Indian Premier League) auction was held on January 8^th 2011, in Bengaluru and just like the auction 3 years earlier, this one proved to be just as thrilling, exciting, and to the most part, shocking. I don’t think anyone who follows cricket will disagree with me on the fact that auctions held to choose players into a team is necessary, but really, auctioning off players? Doesn’t it sound unfit in the context of such great individuals?

Well players like Adam Gilchrist thought so when he expressed his dislike to being sold to a team. Regardless that each player is sold at millions, it still gives a sense of a market ambiance– very unlike the standards associated with an international game such as cricket.

Furthermore, there are players who go unsold, who not only face humiliation but are also subjected to demoralization. This season’s auction saw an appalling number of veteran players such as Sourav Ganguly (India), Chris Gayle (West Indies), Brian Lara (West Indies), and James Anderson (England) going unsold, which immensely scandalized the entire cricketing world.

In conclusion with an ambivalent opinion, despite all the criticism that the IPL auctions have faced, I really don’t see it getting eradicated.  And as a hardcore IPL buff, I can hardly wait for the season to begin!

DIARY ENTRY 4

26 November 2011

Its 7:30 pm here now, and I don’t think I have endured a longer day.  I haven’t done anything except sit in a corner and keep to myself, only taking a break when my mum gave me the usual granola bar to much on. That was my meal for a day. So it was pretty much natural that by now I was starving.

My sister was getting worse with her longing to get out. My mother frustrated with her and with herself, spent most of the time trying to soothe my sister. I also caught her crying a bit as she put my sister to sleep. My father just mostly sat round trying to keep himself busy. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to get rid of the unvarying panic from his head. Sometimes I wondered if I was more like him than my mum even though I had been told by everyone I ever met that I was a carbon copy of my mum. There is no one now to make comparisons, no one to even laugh or talk to. Somehow even though we are the only ones left for each other, the silence amongst us had intensified rather than diminish. I think,

Wait, I hear something. I don’t know what. There should be no sounds here. Noone comes here. I…………………….

DIARY ENTRY 3

25 November 2011

I can feel the tension rising in this confinement. I don’t know if it is the constant, never ending fear, or the frustration in not knowing what is happening out there in the world. We have had no communication with the outside world for 2 days and the silence has only scared us all the more. Sometimes I wonder if I could just slip out of her for a few minutes just to know what is happening. But my survival instincts tell me to stay put.

I have only heard or seen on television the horrors of being captured and tortured. It feels like a lifetime away; times when fear and terror were no better than fiction; when life went on in a breeze. But today, I have wondered already countless times as to how it would be if w were found out. I wondered how much it would hurt. If it was sometime before this incident, such a thought would have been laughable. But now, it seems like a pretty solid ending to my life. I haven’t set much on nightmares being the rational person I am, but now I feel a growing sense of dread.

I can see my sister getting annoyed in this captivity, her restlessness, her urge to get back on with her normal life. For her this is something beyond her understand-she doesn’t get the need to flee from a neighboring country. But she is only 5- I cannot blame her. But today I saw my mother tensing over a lot too. I myself feel trapped and confined in this small space. But we have no other way out and we all know that.

I wonder how many people out there feel the same way too. If there are any. 

DIARY ENTRY 2

24 November 2011

Sitting here in this cramped space, i wonder how normal NORMAL would be for me. I don’t think I will ever be able to look at anything in the same way again. It’s one of the more stranger ablilities of the human mind I think-it learns how to adjust, and how to forget, in time.

It’s been an entire day and a half since my family and I took safety in this shelter, but it somehow feels like I have been here much longer. Not because I have adjusted to the place like my second home or anything. But because I realize now that I have no other option. It seems like I have hit a dead end with life; like all I have left to do is inch by every second more, desperately trying to keep myself alive, waiting for the souds of footstep on the other side of the tiny wooden door.

The whole day passed at the same slow pace in endless monotony; my father and my mother sitting on one end of the room, talking quietly, my sister crying noiselessly in mom’s lap. We had given up trying to contact my relatives; dad suspected that the invaders must have bombed the entire communications line. Again, there is noting for us to do but wait.

It is 11:42 pm; my watch, which I never take off, is the only source of time in this place. I think I will sleep now, because that seems like the only way to escape this constant fear- fear for yourself, fear for the ones you love, fear for what will happen to the world you spend your entire life building for yourself.