leaving cert english higher comparative

laineystar

Hi i am trying to do a leaving cert comparative study question and i am really struggling! i can't figure out if i am reading the question right or how to even start it. My comparatives are foster by claire keegan the kings speech and the plough and the stars.
here is the question can anyone help???
"the way in which a reader responds to relationships that are constructive or destructive in a text can influence his or her understanding of the general vision and viewpoint of the text"
(a) discuss this view in relation to your study of one text on your comparative course
Support your answer with reference to the text.

(b) compare how your response to relationships that are constructive or destructive influenced your understanding of the general vision and viewpoint of two other texts you have studied on your comparative course. support with reference to the text

emersyn

The only text I'm doing out of your ones is Foster but I'll do my best to explain with that:

There's a lot going on in that question but the key thing to focus on is "relationships that are constructive or destructive". Basically what they're asking you to do is write about the different relationships between characters in your texts, compare how healthy they are (both within each text and between the different texts) and compare how they influence the text's overall outlook on life and the world.

The way I would approach it would be to choose two relationships to write about for each text, one destructive (i.e. unhealthy, leads to distress and problems) and one constructive (i.e. healthy, helps the protagonist grow/overcome obstacles). So 'Foster' is really suited to this question as you can directly compare the girl's relationship with her parents (destructive: they neglect her, the father contributes nothing to the household etc) and the Kinsellas (constructive: they nurture her, teach her to read, buy her new clothes etc). Then you have to think about how these relationships contribute towards the overall vision and viewpoint conveyed by the text. 'Foster''s vision is mixed rather than outright optimistic or pessimistic, and in the context of this question, you can argue that that's because neither the constructive relationships nor the destructive relationships outweigh each other; they are both highly influential on the child's life and they are both developed in depth over the course of the book (albeit subtly with regard to her parents). Think about the same thing for your other two texts: how do the constructive/destructive relationships portrayed in the text affect the characters within them? Which type of relationships are more influential? Does this have a positive or negative effect on the overall GVV?

I don't know anything about your other two texts but if one of them has a predominately positive GVV and the other has a negative GVV I would say they would be easier to compare with each other as they'd be more black and white in their visions, so I would use 'Foster' for part a and the other two for part b (of course ignore this if you think it would be easier to do a different combination). When comparing make sure to use linking phrases like 'similarly...' and 'in contrast to...' as the examiner is looking for direct comparisons and those phrases mark them clearly. Also with a loaded question like this one it can be easy to lose sight of the question and go off on a tangent, so make sure to keep everything on topic. I hope this helps, something I don't know how to do is be concise

Leavingcert16

I think that it is asking you how the relationships in the texts whether good or bad have affected your idea of what the main message of the text is. I have done plough and the stars so for that you could say that the relationship between Jack and Nora illustrates how the main message is the rising affected everyone and Nora ultimately paid the greatest price. This is then a negative relationship as she is fully dependent on Jack and when he leaves she disintegrates mentally. I haven't done general vision and viewpoint but I think you could say that.