If you haven't yet read, A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, it really is a must-read. Also, there is a brilliant film adaptation
After reading the novel, you might like to compare it to the film. What are the similarities and differences between the book and the film? Do you like the way the characters were presented in the film or where you disappointed?
The extract below from A Monster Calls is taken from this source:
The extract below from A Monster Calls is taken from this source:
A Monster Calls
The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.
Conor was awake when it came.
He’d had a nightmare. Well, not a nightmare. The nightmare.
The one he’d been
having a lot lately. The
one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming. The one with the hands
slipping from his grasp, no matter how hard he tried to hold on. The one that always ended
with–
“Go away,” Conor whispered into the darkness of his bedroom, trying to
push the nightmare back, not let it follow him into the world of waking. “Go
away now.”
He glanced over at the clock his mum had put on his bedside table.
12.07. Seven minutes past midnight. Which was late for a school night, late for
a Sunday, certainly.
He’d told no one about the nightmare. Not his mum, obviously, but no one else either, not his dad in their
fortnightly (or so) phone call, definitely not his grandma, and no one at school. Absolutely not.
What happened in the nightmare was something no one else ever needed to
know.
Conor blinked groggily at his room, then he frowned. There was something
he was missing. He sat up in his bed, waking a bit more. The nightmare was
slipping from him, but there was something he couldn’t put his finger on,
something different, something–
He listened, straining against the silence, but all he could hear was
the quiet house around him, the occasional tick from the empty downstairs or a
rustle of bedding from his mum’s room next door.
Nothing.
And then something.
Something he realized was the thing that had woken him.
Someone was calling his name.
Conor.
He felt a rush of panic, his guts twisting. Had it followed him? Had it
somehow stepped out of the nightmare and–?
“Don’t be stupid,” he told himself. “You’re too old for monsters.”
And he was. He’d turned thirteen just last month. Monsters were for
babies. Monsters were for bedwetters. Monsters were for–
Conor.
There it was again. Conor swallowed. It had been an unusually warm
October, and his window was still open. Maybe the curtains shushing each other
in the small breeze could have sounded like–
Conor.
All right, it wasn’t the wind. It was definitely a voice, but not one he
recognized. It wasn’t his mother’s, that was for sure. It wasn’t a woman’s
voice at all, and he wondered for a crazy moment if his dad had somehow made a
surprise trip from America and arrived too late to phone and–
He heard the creaking
and cracking of
wood again, groaning like
a living thing, like the hungry stomach of the world growling for a meal.
Conor.
No. Not his dad. This voice had a quality to it, a monstrous quality,
wild and untamed.
Then he heard a heavy creak of wood outside, as if something gigantic
was stepping across a timber floor.
He didn’t want to go and look. But at the same time, a part of him
wanted to look more than anything.
Wide awake now, he pushed back the covers, got out of bed, and went over
to the window. In the pale half-light of the moon, he could clearly see the
church tower up on the small hill behind his house, the one with the train
tracks curving beside it, two hard steel lines glowing dully in the night. The
moon shone, too, on the graveyard attached to the church, filled with
tombstones you could hardly read any more.
Conor could also see the great yew tree that rose from the centre of the
graveyard, a tree so ancient it almost seemed to be made of the same stone as
the church. He only knew it was a yew because his mother had told him, first
when he was little to make sure he didn’t eat the berries, which were
poisonous, and again this past year, when she’d started staring out of their
kitchen window with a funny look on her face and saying, “That’s a yew tree,
you know.”
And then he heard his name again.
Conor.
Like it was being whispered in both his ears.
“What?” Conor said, his heart thumping, suddenly impatient for
whatever was going to happen.
A cloud moved in front of the moon, covering the whole landscape in
darkness, and a whoosh of
wind rushed down the hill and into his room, billowing the curtains. He heard
the creaking and cracking of wood again, groaning like a living
thing, like the hungry
stomach of the world growling for a meal.
Then the cloud passed, and the moon shone again.
On the yew tree.
Which now stood firmly in the middle of his back garden.
And here was the monster.
As Conor watched, the uppermost branches of the tree gathered themselves
into a great and terrible face, shimmering into a mouth and nose and even eyes,
peering back at him. Other branches twisted around one another, always
creaking, always groaning, until they formed two long arms and a second leg to
set down beside the main trunk. The rest of the tree gathered itself into a
spine and then a torso, the thin, needle-like leaves weaving together to make a
green, furry skin that moved and breathed as if there were muscles and lungs
underneath.
A monster, Conor thought. A real, honest-to-goodness monster. In real,
waking life.
Already taller than Conor’s window, the monster grew wider as it brought
itself together, filling out to a powerful shape, one that looked somehow
strong, somehow mighty. It stared at Conor the whole time, and he
could hear the loud, windy breathing from its mouth. It set its giant hands on
either side of his window, lowering its head until its huge eyes filled the
frame, holding Conor with its glare. Conor’s house gave a little moan under its
weight.
And then the monster spoke.
Conor O’Malley, it said, a huge gust of warm, compost-smelling breath
rushing through Conor’s window, blowing his hair back. Its voice rumbled low
and loud, with a vibration so deep Conor could feel it in his chest.
I have come to get you, Conor O’Malley, the monster said,
pushing against the house, shaking the pictures off Conor’s wall, sending books
and electronic gadgets and an old stuffed toy rhino tumbling to the floor.
A monster, Conor thought. A real, honest-to-goodness monster. In real,
waking life. Not in a dream, but here, at his window.
Come to get him.
But Conor didn’t run.
In fact, he found he wasn’t even frightened.
All he could feel, all he had felt since the monster
revealed itself, was a growing disappointment.
Because this wasn’t the monster he was expecting.
“So come and get me then,” he said.
A strange quiet fell.
What did you say? the monster asked.
Conor crossed his arms. “I said, come and get me then.”
The monster paused for a moment, and then with a roar it
pounded two fists against the house. Conor’s ceiling buckled under the blows
and huge cracks appeared in the walls. Wind filled the room, the air thundering
with the monster’s angry bellows.
“Shout all you want,” Conor shrugged, barely raising his voice.
“I’ve seen worse.”
The monster roared even louder and smashed an arm through Conor’s
window, shattering glass and wood and brick. A huge, twisted, branch-wound hand
grabbed Conor around the middle and lifted him off the floor. It swung him out
of his room and into the night, high above his back garden, holding him up
against the circle of the moon, its fingers clenching so hard against Conor’s
ribs he could barely breathe. Conor could see raggedy teeth made of hard,
knotted wood in the monster’s open mouth, and he felt warm breath rushing up towards
him.
Then the monster paused again.
You really aren’t afraid, are you?
“No,” Conor said. “Not of you, anyway.”
The monster narrowed its eyes.
You will be, it said. Before the end.
And the last thing Conor remembered was the monster’s mouth roaring open
to eat him alive.
Points for discussion
How does the Patrick Ness bring the monster alive for the
reader?
Think about the use of the following techniques:
·
Repetition for effect
·
Ellipsis (a dash where a sentence is left unfinished)
·
Withholding information to create mystery and suspense
·
Onomatopoeia (words which make the noise they describe)
·
Adjectives
·
Similes (comparing one thing to another using the words "like" or "as")
·
Short sentences to build tension
How does this link to GCSE English Language?
You may be given a question such as this:
A student, having read this section of the text, said: “The writer
manages to successfully bring the monster alive for the reader. The way that
the writer describes Conor’s reaction is unexpected.”
To what extent do you agree?
In your response you could:
·
Write about your own impressions of the monster and Conor
·
Evaluate how the writer has created these impressions
·
Support your opinions with reference to the text
A sample response might look something like this:
I agree that the writer successfully
brings the monster alive for the reader. The writer appeals to all of the five
senses in the description. The reader would therefore be able to imagine the
stench of the monster’s “compost-smelling breath” and could imagine the feeling
of the “vibration” in Conor’s chest. The reader would also be able to hear the
monster through the imagery of the “loud, windy breathing from its mouth” and
through the onomatopoeia in “creaking” and “groaning”.
The writer also mentions lots of body
parts such as “arms”, “leg”, “spine” and “torso” when describing how the tree
morphs into a monster. This makes the monster appear more life-like, as it has
been personified and therefore seems more threatening. Also, the verbs “moved”
and “breathed” add to this sense of personification.
The writer also brings the monster to
life by showing how it seems to grow bigger in size in the phrases, “filling
out to a powerful shape” and “its huge eyes filled the frame”. This sense of
size adds to the terrifying image, bringing the monster alive for the reader.
I also agree that Conor’s reaction to
the monster is surprising, making the reader curious. The short phrase, “come
to get him” seems very scary and intimidating. However, this is juxtaposed with
the fact that “Conor didn’t run”. This is surprising for the reader because a
natural reaction to seeing such a monster would be to run away. At first, the
reader might think that Conor is frozen in shock, so it is even more unusual
when we learn that “he wasn’t even frightened”. This would make the reader very
confused and curious to know why Conor is not afraid. Their curiosity would be
aroused even further when we are told that his overwhelming emotion is
“disappointment”, which seems like a completely inappropriate reaction and the
reader would wonder what he was expecting instead, particularly as the writer
has written that it wasn’t what he was “expecting”. This makes the reader wonder whether he was
expecting something far worse and therefore prepares the reader for something
far worse to appear further on in the novel.
Disclaimer: This is NOT (I repeat NOT) a model
answer. This is simply a demonstration of the kind of language techniques you
could be looking out for and the kinds of things you could begin thinking
about. There are many, many other points that you could have made which would
be equally valid.
If you would like more detailed information about Paper 1
question 4 of the AQA specification, I would recommend:
Mr Bruff's guide to AQA Paper 1 question 4
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