Writer's methods — A Christmas Carol — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Writer's methods
Writer's methods
What you need to know
How Dickens's form, structure and language create meaning: the novella's five staves, the narrator's voice, the ghost story,
pathetic fallacy, symbolism, and contrast.
Form: a carol in five staves (verses of a song), a ghost story and a moral fable, told by a narrator who speaks to the reader ('Marley was dead: to begin with').
Language and structure: lists, similes and pathetic fallacy (the fog and cold), symbols (Marley's chain, Ignorance and Want), contrast, and the circular ending.
OCR's question on this novel is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the novel elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the novel, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts when it is relevant to the question, and 4 marks are for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4). An extract-based answer that never leaves the extract, or a discursive answer built on one moment, cannot go above Level 3. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the question it is for.
