In his Transition Year Extended Essay, Samuel Clarke wrote about the theme of conflict in three very different books. For this outstanding piece, Samuel was awarded a Commendation. He writes:-
In the first text that I read, Birdsong by English novelist Sebastian Faulks, the theme of conflict was by far the most protruding within the novel. The story, set in the early 20th century, with its main character Stephen Wraysford living through four years of the horrific First World War, saw scenes of what many consider to be the worst conflict ever seen. Yet the war is not the only conflict that one comes across. There are many smaller conflicts woven into the overall story. Examples of these are the conflict between Isabelle and Stephen with Isabelle’s husband Azaire, and the riots that take place in the town of Amiens between Lucien Lebrun and Azaire’s workers.
However in the second book which I chose, J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the author portrayed conflict in a completely different light. Unlike Faulks who looks at the theme with a backdrop of a horrific war in his novel, Salinger looks at the mind of his principal character Holden Caulfield. Holden seems to be constantly faced with an internal conflict, an on-going depressive struggle with himself. The story tells of the sixteen year old boy, after having been expelled from school and having had a fight with his Pencey School roommate known as Stradlater,leaving the college three days early without his parents knowing. The depressed teenager takes a train into New York where he spends the night in a hotel, and the following days in the city.
However, for this essay I have decided to choose a core text which I aim to describe in great detail while still relating, referring and comparing the text to the other novels I read. The core text I have chosen on which to write about is the highly acclaimed modern classic, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a play dealing with conflict in the highly religious town of Salem, in 17th century America.
This play based, on a true incident which Arthur Miller described in an introduction to the text, as “one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history,” saw, in my opinion, both of the types of conflict visible in each of my other texts. - Like the war in Birdsong, in The Crucible there is an open conflict – the Salem ‘witch hunt,’ where in the town, a court is set up to try people suspected and accused of having conversed with, and been possessed by the devil.
Read the full essay here.
In her fine Transition Year Extended Essay, Iyobosa Bello-Asemota examined four books dealing with love - The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane, A Voice in The Wind by Francine Rivers, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (original), and The Phantom of the Opera by Kate McMullan (revised edition).
In her conclusion, she states:
"Having spent so much time writing an essay with its focus on love, I finally feel as though I now have a better grasp on what it truly means to love something or someone. I now understand what motivates people to do things onlookers would regard as irrational, things that they normally would not have the strength or courage to do. I also understand why some would look upon the notion of love or being in love with disdain or would regard rash acts born of this love, to be foolish. While I do not hope to justify the evil acts people do in the name of love, regardless of whatever form it manifests in, I must admit that love’s influence is as wide and as deep as any ocean."
Read Isoybosa's full essay here.
In her Transition Year Extended Essay, which last term received one of just four Commendations in the Form, Bethany Shiell wrote about three books in which the central characters are 'confined' in some way. She comments:-
"My first plan was to write this essay on the theme of Racism. So I began reading Anne Frank, but I soon realised that the book didn’t actually have much on that theme, but it did have a lot of insight on being trapped; Anne constantly wrote about her relationships with the people she was stuck with and the troubles she found living in such a small space. This made me change my theme to Confinement, as I found it more interesting.
According to the Collin’s English Dictionary, to Confine is to “keep close or within bounds; limit; restrict. To restrict the free movement of.” This is the case of all the main characters in the three books I have chosen, which were Room by Emma Donoghue, Stolen by Lucy Christopher and The Diary of Anne Frank."
Read Bethany's full essay here.
In her excellent Transition Year Extended Essay, which was awarded a Distinction, Ally Boyd Crotty compared Emma Donoghue's Room, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
She writes:-
My choices of books were mainly based on childhood. I chose this theme because I am interested in books about childhood and I thought I would find it rewarding to study these books in more depth than I have before.This theme made all three of my books interlinked in a great deal of ways even though they all had their own unique stories. The contrast but similarities of the books made it a very broad topic. I never really felt stuck or had any reason to ponder on what I needed to write.
Read Ally's full essay here.
In her Transition Year Extended Essay, Sofia McConnell wrote on Wicked by Gregory Maguire, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Michael Scott's The Magician.
She comments:-
"Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Wicked are both well written, more so than The Magician which is a much more modern story and has a more modern style of writing. Wicked probably has the most complicated plot of all the stories, to be able to understand it you have to follow very closely, unlike Alice in Wonderland which was written for a much younger audience than Wicked. Unlike the story it was derived from (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), Wicked is written more for adults than for children, parts of it tend to get quite crude and vivid, it contains a lot of adult language and content, there is violence and a few sexual situations.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written for young children and older adults; it is very easy to follow if you are open-minded and don’t question all the incredibly curious things that happen in the book. The Magician is neither as complicated as Wicked nor as simple as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the book makes you concentrate more on the story rather than on the writing. It was written for teenagers and older children who wouldn’t really think about the writing anyhow. Alice in Wonderland and Wicked are timeless: both could be enjoyed now and also a hundred years ago, although possibly Wicked would have been strongly frowned upon. The Magician however is much more contemporary novel, it most likely would have been considered drivel that long ago, most likely wouldn’t even be published.
All three are written in the third person and the present. Each writer went with the times, as can be expected: that is easy to see in these three books. Judging from these three books you would imagine writing is getting worse with time. The oldest book seems to be the best written."
Read Sofia's full essay here.
In her fine Transition Year Extended Essay last term, which gained a Distinction, Eliza Hancock dealt with a subject that has not previously appeared in the 18 years of these projects: the portrayal of Asperger's Syndrome in modern fiction.
As she writes in her introduction,
I came across the theme of my extended essay completely by chance. Originally, I wanted to do childhood in general, my reason being that childhood is something that everyone goes through, that everyone can relate to, and therefore would be quite easy to write on. However, I then came across ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time’, and realized that I didn’t want to write on children who had normal, every-day childhoods, I wanted to read and write about children like Christopher Boone, children with Asperger’s Syndrome.
I began searching for books that fit my theme, and came across five: ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time’ by Mark Haddon, which obviously I had already read as it was the book which gave me the whole idea for my essay, ‘Mockingbird’, by Kathryn Erskine, ‘The London Eye Mystery’, by Siobhán Dowd, ‘Spinner’ by Anthony Masters and ‘House Rules’, by Jodi Picoult. I read them all, and after a lot of deliberation, indecisiveness and chopping and changing, I finally decided on ‘The Curious Incident’, ‘Mockingbird’ and ‘House Rules’.
Read the full essay by Eliza here.
