Year 13 - English - Unfamiliar Text Practice - Limestone & We Are The Tenants

“Limestone”


Question - Explain how the structure of the piece relies on the motif of the journey (recurring references to journeys). Give details from the text to support your answer.



Limestone is a story from the perspective of Clare, a woman who left New Zealand to go work in a corporation in Ireland. From the passage we have been given, Clare discusses how she is looking forward to coming home as she has been gone for such a long time, and that she’s over her job. The prose uses language features conveys this idea in a way to gives depth and meaning to Clare’s mundane life. The use of figurative language and parts of speech describes what Clare is going through and how she’s ready to leave it all behind. An example of this is in the second paragraph, where it reads; “She settles into her seat, buckling herself into the twenty-first century.” My take on this sentence is that she hasn’t been home since the 20th century, and this is the first time she is returning home after the year 2000, and she’s ready to leave the life of business behind her. The use of the metaphor here reinforces this idea. Another example of figurative language in this passage is in the first paragraph. The sentence reads; “She slides into her seat: a window seat so she can look out as the plane climbs over Europe…” This sentence is setting a picture of a plane flying over Europe by saying that it is climbing it. This use of personification paints a much more vivid image in our heads of the plane flying over Europe as it heads for Singapore to make their connection to New Zealand.

Another language feature used in this passage is the use of diction. The tone of this story is that Clare is hopeful and is looking forward to going home after the last couple of years being a mundane slog through life. The tone of the words reinforces this idea when in the first paragraph which describes Ireland’s landscape and wildlife. It begins by talking about how Ireland is a “pristine place of forested hills and snow-topped mountains through which wind the rivers that are named for the old goddesses - Rhine and Danube and Volga - legendary and beautiful from 30,000 feet.” The use of adjectives in this opening sentence describes how Ireland looks for people who don’t live there and highlights the best parts of it. The forested hills, the snow-topped mountains tell us that they are some of the best parts of the country and are worth moving to. The second part of the paragraph, however, would disagree and highlight some of the bad parts. For example, the sentence continues on by stating that Ireland isn’t “shorn of their clutter of rusted cargo boats and effluents and chemical spills and millennia of quarrelsome human history.” This sentence is the other part of Ireland and forms a stark contrast between the beautiful descriptions of the landscape, and the sad realism of it. This contrast is added  after this sentence where it reads “A landscape through which people and all other beautiful animals like bears and bison and shaggy-maned little ponies - roam unhindered by frontiers and the residues of past unkindnesses, a place where memory is short.” This describes how there are two sides of the spectrum which is present in Ireland; the side which has breathtaking sights, the other that would literally take your breath away with how polluted it is. The language techniques like adjectives and listing are paramount to defining the tone of this paragraph in particular, and the tone would shift when the topic changes from what Clare is moving away from to what she is currently doing. These language features describe how Clare’s initial journey to Ireland was full of hope and wonder for the future as she was moving to beautiful scenic Ireland, and the sense of looking forward to leaving it behind as she tries to forget the last few years of mundane work.

“We are the tenants”


Question - With close reference to the text, discuss the poet’s use of imagery to describe the North.

While Limestone is a story about looking forward to coming home to something familiar, We Are The Tenants is a story about dreading going to a land where they have never been before with no other options. We Are the Tenants by Kapka Kassabova is a story about immigrating to New Zealand from "the North".  The use of imagery in this poem paints a picture of a dark, grim reality that some people go through when going through the immigration process. For example, in the first stanza, when it reads: "The hills are packed like cement, the cemeteries lush with centuries of flesh." This description of the North has implications that it isn't quite a nice place, with questionable living conditions and a very negative connotation. Another example of this is also in the first stanza, where it reads: "The seagulls glide, inordinately large and slow, over the vigilant stone, hungry for lost souls." This example describes how there is a morbid atmosphere around and that describing the seagulls as some sort of reaper and really emphasizes this sense of no hope for these people. Kassabova used this technique very effectively.

The use of figurative languages like similes and metaphors adds to the already grim mood and morbid tone to this poem. An example of figurative language that supports this idea is in the final stanza when it reads: "We are the tenants of imaginary floors. No matter how high windows, the ocean of the North remains invisible, like the kingdom of the Pied Piper who will sound, one day, the horn of our departure." The stanza has multiple uses of figurative language and embodies the poem's deathly mood. For example, the use of the simile in this sentence describes how they are being forced out of their homes by someone bigger than them. The Pied Piper, in German legend, was a man that was hired to lure the rats out of people's homes. He wasn't paid for his services, so he instead lures their children out of their homes too. This myth relates to the people in We are the Tenants, who have been forced out of their homes and into somewhere where they don't want to go. Another example of figurative language in this text is metaphors. The use of metaphors is used to extend their description of the North gives it some scary characteristics An example of a metaphor in this text is at the end of the second stanza and the start of the third stanza. It reads: "...the hills answer back with seagull cries and the chimneys of other times prop up the sky..." The hills answering back with seagulls is a metaphor because the poem is saying that they are literally answering back when they can't. It's telling us that the cries of seagulls are coming from the mountains, which the use of a metaphor gives this a more eerie feeling and a negative connotation. 

Compare + Contrast: 

Question - Compare and contrast the attitude to departure and arrival presented in each text. Give details from the texts to support your answer.

Limestone is a story of departure and leaving for home, whereas We are the Tenants is a story about the arrival in a foreign land with an unknown future ahead of them. Each story has its own unique feeling and tones to them to signify what the main characters are feeling and what connotation to get from the text.

Limestone is a story about Clare, who is leaving Ireland to return home to New Zealand for the first time since the turn of the 21st century. The passage is looking at New Zealand in a positive light, giving a sense of belonging and familiarity to it, even if she hasn't been home in a while. We get this idea when in the third paragraph, which reads: "She has a sudden longing for home: that dream of primeval beaches scattered with driftwood, and dark forests, and plains burned to a tawny hide in late summer. That dream she knows to be corrupted by reality: the beach is already threatened with subdivision and the trees with clear-felling, and the tawny plains are bordered by the dry beds of intricate vanished trees." This long sentence describes how Clare remembers New Zealand, and what she knows it will have become in the time she was gone. The adjectives that are used when describing what she remembers New Zealand being gives her a sense of happiness and tells us that she remembers this beautiful country. The word "primeval" describing the beaches means that the beaches, for the most part, have been preserved and have proved the test of time. Now, they are "threatened by subdivision". Limestone is a text of both longing for home but also being unprepared for what to expect, not knowing what it has become, so Clare is just patiently waiting to see what is waiting for her after her long flight home.

We are the Tenants is a different story. A story about moving to a foreign country, and shows little to no hope for them. The author describes New Zealand as this scary land of no hope, as this place controls their every move. The way it describes arriving gives a sense of dread with the uses of metaphors. In the first paragraph, it reads: "The seagulls glide, inordinately large and slow, over the vigilant stone, hungry for lost souls." This sentence describes the seagulls that can be seen when going through the oceans into the country and reminiscent of some spotter for the reaper, the ones who look for those people who are short on luck and won't last long in this foreign country as they "look for lost souls." Another example of language techniques describing the feeling of dread toward the country is the use of a simile in the first paragraph. It reads "The hills are packed like cement..." "The people smile with missing teeth like hosts of a drunk party." The hills being packed like cement make it sounds like the immigrants imagine the mountains like big, tall walls, keeping them from straying too far from the outside world.  The people smiling with missing teeth like hosts of a drunk party give the sense that the people they are being left with have no intention of helping them, and would rather just watch everyone stumble around. These language techniques give We are the Tenants this feeling of dread and forlorn hope as these people enter a world with an unforeseen future.