Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

Activity 3.1
Unit 3 Analysing units of structure
Section 1 Basic techniques and problem-solving

The fifteen sentences below make up a plot summary of Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist (1837-8), but they have been jumbled up to form a different order. Each sentence describes an event in the novel (so the unit of structure here is ’sentence’ and/or ’event’). To contrast that level with a different level of analysis, the words of sentence (1) within the jumbled sequence of sentences have themselves been scrambled. (The original ordering is given on p. 340.)

1 Construct a possible English sentence out of the jumbled words of sentence (1) below. Use all the words and do not use any word twice. Keep a note of how you rearrange the scrambled sentence. (Your note may show that you can do this on a more systematic basis than trial-and- error.)

(1) escape and tries Nancy’s cry to following hue the death Sikes

2 Now work out a plausible sequence for all fifteen jumbled events. Again, keep a note of the kinds of evidence - especially particular linking words or expressions, or possible and impossible/implausible sequences of events - that you use to help you decide in favour of one particular order rather than another. (It may help to photocopy the page and actually cut the copy into strips, with one event on each, so that you can physically reorder them.)

3 When you have found and noted what you take to be the most plausible sequence, rearrange the fifteen events into a new, different order, this time an order that tells the story in a different way. In carrying out this second reordering, only take into account what happens, not the particular wording of each event as given above. In your rewritten novel sequence, you can refer to a single event more than once (for example, if you want to insert events into the description of a particular event in order to create a flashback).

4 Finally, consider how different your new narrative structure is from the one created by the summary you assembled earlier. What are its differences at other levels of structure for which relevant units of analysis might also be developed: point of view; suspense; chronology; genre?

(1) [Write your rearranged version of sentence (1) here.]

(2) Keen to take advantage of these offers, the gang of thieves kidnap Oliver from Mr Brownlow.

(3) The thieves try to convert Oliver into a thief.

(4) Nancy discovers that Monks knows about Oliver’s true parentage; having developed redeeming traits, she informs Rose of the danger Oliver is in.

(5) With Sikes dead, the rest of the gang are captured; Fagin is executed.

(6) Oliver accompanies Sikes on a burglary, but receives a gunshot wound.

(7) Nancy’s efforts are discovered by the gang, and she is brutally murdered by Bill Sikes.

(8) Oliver runs away and is looked after by benevolent Mr Brownlow.

(9) The thieves become especially interested in Oliver, because they receive offers concerning him from a sinister person named Monks.

(10) Found and threatened with exposure, Monks confesses that he is Oliver’s half-brother, and has pursued his ruin in order to acquire the whole of his father’s property.

(11) Oliver falls into the hands of a gang of thieves, including Bill Sikes, Nancy and the Artful Dodger, and headed by a rogue called Fagin.

(12) Suffering pain from the gunshot wound, Oliver is captured by Mrs Maylie and her protegee Rose, who brings him up for a time.

(13) Monks emigrates and dies in prison; Oliver rejoins Mr Brownlow and is adopted by him.

(14) He accidentally hangs himself in the process.

(15) Oliver Twist, a pauper of unknown parentage, runs away to London.

Reading

Aitchison, J. (2003) Teach Yourself Linguistics, Teach Yourself Series, London: Hodder.

Culler, J. (2002) Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of

Literature, London: Routledge, Chapter 1.

Fabb, N. (2005) Sentence Structure, 2nd edn, London: Routledge.

Leech, G. (1969) A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry, London: Longman.

Leech, G. and Short, M.H. (1981) Style in Fiction, London: Longman, Chapter 1.