The Brave New Worlds of Great Texts

Hook Students In With a Strong Start

I t is too safe for students to spend their time in just one world. Too many people live lives circumscribed by boredom and insularity, rendering them unable to see beyond the limits of their immediate horizons.

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The job of first sentences of a novel (or the opening shots of a film) is to seize us immediately by the throat and launch us over the threshold into these new creations. When a student is embarking on a critical analysis of any text they need to know how to approach this universe and form what questions to ask. What are the writers
up to? What strikes us about this first? What makes us want to continue on? How does a great opening steer our responses and set up the tone and what we need to see? What new dawn will the special shock voltage of a powerful opening lead us towards?

The lines selected below are designed to have an impact on all of us, and as such, are useful starting points to negotiate new horizons. What specific questions might guide learners to explore them? What questions are being raised about life in this existence and how is the new context developed and the answers delayed?

1984
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” How does Orwell’s opening line create a slight disorientation in perspective and an immediate discordance that sets us up for the novel’s unsettling narrative of the future?

David Copperfield
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” In what ways has Dickens extended his arm toward the door, asking us to enter what promises to be an unusual neighbourhood?

Anna Karenina
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” How can the narrator know this? What realm of experience may have led to this observation and do we agree with its assessment?

The Trial
“Someone must have slandered Josef K, for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.”

How does the tone Kafka sets up indicate that he has constructed a universe of deception, ambiguity and bewilderment?

Brighton Rock
“Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.”
Greene’s first sentence slices straight into us but how does its construction suggest that we too are trapped in this ruthless and claustrophobic existence?

Their Eyes Were Watching God
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” How does Hurston manage to suggest an entire story folded up inside this line? Whose reality might she be describing?

The Crow Road
“It was the day my grandmother exploded.” Banks is a master of memorable starts that suggest very different worlds to be entered. Where might it go next?

Given the visual literacy of many learners, a useful adjacent activity can be to show the opening sequences of a few select films and ask how the first few minutes impact on what the audience will expect the story to be about? What conventions are working to establish the intended or likely consequences of existence here?

Amelie
A film that shows off its quirky sense of humour by immediately introducing its eccentric characters by their peculiar likes and dislikes, which indicate the mood and context of the reality they inhabit.

Joyeux Noel
The opening sequence shows brainwashed school boys in France, England and Germany reciting phrases they have been taught about the glories of their country and the evil of their enemies (and that God is on their side).

Great Expectations
The black and white evocation of the bleak East Kent marshes and Pip’s nightmarish encounter with Magwitch in the churchyard sets up a terrifying opening environment.

A Matter of Life and Death
The start immediately captivates our attention with the last man in a burning bomber telling a radio operator how he is planning to jump without a parachute rather than face being burned alive.

Jaws
An underwater camera lurks underneath the water, taking on the persona of the shark itself, complemented by silence, then an eerie theme tune, suggesting the deceptiveness and danger of what is beneath the surface.

It’s our responsibility to make students take a look at other such realities and introduce them to the possibilities and excitement of
alternative existences. Literature and film offers learners a more genuine and open diversity than their real-life neighbourhood can provide – and may allow them to fully appreciate lives they have never seen.

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Ian Warwick


Ian Warwick founded London Gifted & Talented as part of the groundbreaking London Challenge, which has transformed education across the capital city since 2003. He has co-wrtiten ‘Educating the More Able Student’ and ‘World Class’
in 2016 and has two new books on ‘Redefining More Able Education’. He has recently completed a book on learning called Unfinished Perfection, which focuses on Da Vinci and explores strategies for improving creativity and innovation.