Power and leadership — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Power and leadership
Themes
What you need to know
How Kelly explores power and leadership in the group, as John Tate, Richard, Phil and finally Cathy take control through threats, silence, plans and fear across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'I'm in charge', 'Everyone is happier', 'do not use that word', 'You shouldn't threaten me John', 'Richard will take you', 'Not me again', 'lays a hand on his shoulder', 'We'll throw rocks at you', 'making it up', 'running things', 'Cathy doesn't care'.
Leaders who rise and fall: John Tate by threats, Richard who challenges him but gives way, Phil by silence, plans and menace, and Cathy by violence, so that no leader's place is safe.
Different readings: Phil as a tyrant who 'carries none of the tasks out himself', or a leader who keeps ten people out of prison; and Leah's leaving as proof that 'You can't be the leader if no one decides to follow you'.
OCR's sample paper on the behaviour of gangs: Phil in control while others show doubt, and how a leader's calm can be more frightening than shouting.
Quotations are short phrases of a few words, the way you would learn them for a closed-book exam.
OCR's question on this text has two parts on the same text. Part (a), 20 marks, compares a printed extract from it with an unseen extract of the same genre, and weights your response (AO1) and context (AO3) twice as heavily as language analysis (AO2), where context means the social and cultural situations you can infer from the two extracts and their introductions; an answer on only one of the two extracts cannot go above Level 3. Part (b), 20 marks, explores another moment in the same text from memory, with response and analysis of language, form and structure (AO1 and AO2) equally weighted and no marks for context. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the part it is for.
