READING B E N E A T H T H E S U R FA C E (1)

Writing which conveys factual information must make its meaning clear.
It must not cause doubts or uncertainty in the reader’s mind. If you have
to read this kind of text twice, it has failed in its purpose. The language of
such texts avoids opinion, emotion and implication; the writer’s attitudes
or personality are not important. Language is used here literally.
Literary texts are different: they have succeeded if you can find
alternative meanings when you read them. The language of a well-
written literary text is full of qualities such as the author’s mood, ideas
and values.
In literal language, a spade is a spade and a pen is a pen. Literary
language, by using images and allusions (reference to a person, event
or story), can make us see how one might be like the other. Read this
extract from the poem Digging by Seamus Heaney:

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney realises that his tool – the pen – is like his father’s
tool which was a spade. Neither tool is better than the other, and both
men create worthwhile things with them.

Metaphor and symbolism

Remember the power of the imagery from William Golding’s Lord of
the Flies:

…it seemed like the breathing of some stupendous creature… Then

the sleeping leviathan breathed out – the waters rose, the weed
streamed, and the water boiled over the table rock with a roar.

Certain words give animal qualities to the sea. They convey the fear of
the boy watching it. In the extract from Thistles by Ted Hughes (see
page 10) we also saw how thistles could be symbolised as threatening
in a human way through personification and imagery.

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 READING B E N E A T H T H E S U R FA C E (2)
Irony
The meaning of literary texts is often conveyed through the way the
reader understands a situation better than the characters involved in it.
For example, in Barry Hines’ A Kestrel for a Knave, Mr Gryce the
Headteacher sees nothing odd in singing a hymn about God’s love at
an assembly mostly taken up by shouting at the pupils (and sometimes
the staff). Irony may also be very bitter. An example is this extract from
Siegfried Sassoon’s poem:

Does it matter? Losing your sight?

There’s such splendid work for the blind:
And people will always be kind.

Irony can also be subtle. In Penelope Lively’s The Darkness Out There, it
is only at the end of the story that the reader realises how
inappropriate this early, gentle description of Mrs Rutter is:

...the old woman was back in the armchair, a composite chintzy

mass from which cushions oozed and her voice flowed softly on.

Dramatic irony is a common device in plays or sitcoms: you, the

audience, know more than the characters on stage and so can be
horrified or amused by what they say. In Fawlty Towers the audience is
already cringing when Basil asks a guest ‘And how is that lovely
daughter of yours?’ long before Sybil quietly reminds him: ‘Dead’.

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Check yourself 6
Reading beneath the surface (1–2)
1 What three things do we learn about Sandra in this extract from
Penelope Lively’s The Darkness Out There? Identify a textual clue
to support each suggestion. (6)

She put her sandal back on. She walked through the thicker grass by
the hedge and felt it drag at her legs and thought of swimming in
warm seas. She put her hand on the top of her head and her hair was
hot from the sun, a dry burning cap. One day, this year, next year,
sometime, she would go to places like on travel brochures and run
into a blue sea. She would fall in love and she would get a good job
and she would have one of those new Singers that do zig-zag stitch
and make an embroidered silk coat.

2 A mother has seen the

horrors of war at the How should he know
cinema. Later that day Why I kissed and kissed and kissed him,
crooning his name?
she is bathing her baby
He thought that I was daft.
son. Explain the irony in
He thought it was a game
these lines from Teresa
And laughed, and laughed.
Hooley’s A War Film (2):
3 What is the irony in
this situation? (3) HOBSON I’m going out, Maggie.
MAGGIE Dinner’s at one, remember.
It is from Hobson’s
HOBSON Dinner will be when I come in
Choice by Harold
for it. I’m master here.
Brighouse. MAGGIE Yes, father. One o’clock.

4 Identify details in the following lines from Dylan Thomas’s The

Outing: A Story which suggest the landlord’s different qualities (9):

The landlord stood at the door to welcome us, simpering like a wolf.
He was a long, lean, black-fanged man with a greased love-curl and
pouncing eyes. ‘What a beautiful August day!’ he said, and touched
his love-curl with a claw.

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