[0:00]Hi everyone, welcome to Miss Adams Teachers English Language and Literature A-level. In this video, we're going to be taking a look at the final piece from the Edexcel Voices in Speech and Writing. That is 10.2 riding the Iron Rooster, which is a little extract from Paul Theroux's book. I'll take you through the content, some contextual points that you need to be aware about about Paul Theroux and about Samuel Beckett who is referenced in the text. Before we start picking apart those key moments, we'll look at genre audience and purpose, and of course, I'll give you some voice descriptors which we can underpin with literary and linguistic analysis. So, for the last time in this collection, let's get started.
[0:46]Okay, so last time, last one of the series, let's have a little look at the content and context. So the writer of Riding the Iron Rooster is a chap called Paul Theroux, you'll probably recognize that surname because he is the father of um, Louis and Marcel Theroux, who are both actually uh documentary makers and and and writers. Obviously Louis Theroux is so so famous uh because of all of the kind of documentaries um that he does, investigating all sorts of different kind of cultural movements, um he's brilliant if you haven't looked at him already. Um, but uh his father is equally famous as a novelist and travel writer and in fact the whole family, the whole family of writers because his uh brothers are writers, um his uncle is Justin Theroux, uh very famous actor and screenwriter, so big famous family. Um, now this particular text was published in 1988, but it's actually recounting the travels through uh the early 80s. Now, interestingly, the overall purpose of the text itself is about his travels to um China, so the little bit that is um based in Paris is a very very kind of small chunk early on. Um, through this travel that was, as he says, full of stops and starts and he ended up deviating all over the place. Um, so that's worthy of knowledge. Another thing for you just to be aware of is that uh in the book he talks about how he wanted to kind of um go against the Chinese maxim that you can always fool a foreigner. So this idea that if you're a tourist, then you're always going to get um fooled by the kind of shininess of of of what is being put in front of you. So he's basically saying I am a discerning travel writer and traveler, um and so his, he's looking to kind of dispel um some of those ideas. Uh contextually, another thing that you need to think about is the literary allusions in the text, um because he makes a number of references to Samuel Beckett, who is an Irish novelist and playwright and short story writer and all the rest, very very famous. He was around from 1906 to 1989, um and amongst other places, he lived in Paris, had quite a solitary life. He won the Nobel Prize for literature, so very very famous, um his most famous work is Waiting for Godot, which is a a play, um which is actually referenced in the extract that we're going to look at. Um, and his writing is quite is characterized for being quite pessimistic and miserable, um the whole kind of concept of Waiting for Godot uh is about kind of depicting as all almost quite a nihilistic view of life. It's about two homeless people who are waiting for this ambiguous character Godot to arrive and he never arrives and so it's this kind of like expectation and disappointment cycle. Um, yeah, so great fun there. Um interestingly, Paul Theroux has always been considered in terms of the way that he would speak about himself as a pessimist. So you could argue that there is a sort of um or certainly a cynic, um that there is uh a kind of commonality or a kind of, you know, metaphorical bond between the two writers. Uh he has said that in his later um years, he has become more optimistic, but certainly when he was younger, he was considered to be quite um, yeah, quite cynical and pessimistic. Okay, looking at Gap, this is quite straightforward. Obviously, we're looking at travel writing, uh so you're going to expect it to be uh first person um account. Uh you're going to expect it to be reflective looking back, it does take on therefore some of the kind of um conventions of journal or memoir writing as well, that kind of reflecting back, but obviously the key focus is about place and creating a sense of time and place. Uh so audience, there is an element of personal, you know, writing for himself, a kind of sense of reflection, but obviously it's Paul Theroux, it's of course it's meant for publication. So you're going to have, you know, fans of Paul Theroux, uh people interested in travel writing, interested in exploring different cultures, maybe particular uh Chinese culture, um and um a notion of like the USSR because he deals with um traveling through there as well in the in in in the past. Um, what he's doing, he's writing to inform, to entertain, to persuade. It's not a kind of go to this restaurant, go to this um hotel, kind of travel log. It's less persuasive than that in the sort of specific, but he's certainly being compelling and he's certainly trying to win you over to his way of thinking. And if you think about the idea that he's trying to dispel the Chinese maxim, he's also trying to say I see beyond, you know, the shine and the glow. And with that, let's get started. So you're going to find that I use a lot of synonyms for critical when describing the voice. You don't want to just stick with the same one again and again and again, but there is quite a kind of pessimistic tone all the way through this as he's dispelling the kind of expectations of Paris. So let's look at the opening, I've actually done the whole thing for you, because it's quite a short piece, um but the opening is here. We came to Paris and were met by a bus and brought to a hotel. So, immediately in that sentence, we've got a few things going. We've got first person plural pronouns, uh rather than just first person singular, that's because he is actually with a tourist group, um so he's referring to the group as a whole. Now, this opening uh part of the clause, the independent clause, we came to Paris is written in active voice, so it's that kind of decision making. We came to Paris, this is what we wanted to do, but then in the next uh two coordinate clauses of this triadic structure, because notice it's broken into three, so it's a compound sentence, each of these are coordinates, we shift to the passive voice and were met by a bus and brought to a hotel. So suddenly, we go from being in control, making plans to almost feeling slightly out of control and slightly passive in the moment. Okay, then we get some contextually obvious points to make here about the lexis, the use of proper nouns, uh in American proper nouns where he's comparing back home because again, he's an American, and he's probably writing to an American audience. But you also have the French lexis coming through because he's in Paris, so what do you expect? But what I think is important is that we get this idea that it is indistinguishable, so you can't tell the difference from the outskirts of Chicago or South Boston. So that adjective placed here is immediately saying this isn't something special. We've seen this all before, and he's not comparing it to the vibrant parts of the cities, he's talking about the outskirts, um the suburbs. And then this sort of bleakness is created in the next few sentences through color symbolism. Um, we also have the reference to it being post-war blocks, so things have had to be built up in a hurry after the war, um that of once light stucco and were now grey. There, connotations of the color grey, it's very sort of lifeless and bleak, um and then the criticism continues through the syntactically parallel, uh section. This part, the two, uh so what we've got here is we've got the main clause and then the coordinate, there were too many of them, so note the intensifying adverb there, and they were too close together. Okay, so again, the same intensifier being used, so we've got two kind of parallel phrases that are both offering intensified criticism. And people said, so you've got another coordinate clause and then what we do is we move into direct speech, which is brilliant, because the direct speech is, it's another little sneaky triad. He loves his triads, they're everywhere. Um, but they're all interrogatives, all rhetorical questions, you know, um and all of them show disbelief. So we've got, is this Paris, is this France? So note the way that that's amplified, where's the Eiffel Tower? So he's drawing on typical expectations, tourist expectations, yeah, that you're, that you're going to see these things that you immediately recognize, like for example, the Eiffel Tower. It does sort of uh downplay the intelligence, I suppose, of the people on the group with him, uh you know, this idea that no matter where you are in Paris, you're going to be able to see the Eiffel Tower, for example, maybe. And then we've got a little bit of that kind of satirical tone. Okay, he uses dark humor and it's really really emotive, he uses a lot of hyperbole, but before we get to that, so he says the center of Paris is a masterpiece of preservation. So, note the metaphor there, and the hyperbole, um drawing upon the kind of expectations of Paris in the midst of it, I.e where the Eiffel Tower is. And you've got this uh noun here is part of the metaphor that is, that uh refers to beautiful pieces of art. So it's a kind of reference to the kind of cultural heritage as well of of Paris, and then we get the juxtaposition, but the suburbs such as this one are simple and awful. Note actually how simplistic those base adjectives are, simple and awful. He doesn't need metaphor for that bit, until this bit. The brutal pavements, so note the personification of the pavement suggesting almost a sense of cruelty and suffering, and high windows of Saint Jacques seemed designed to encourage suicide. So darkly emotive, massively hyperbolic, it is over the top, it is satirical in tone, but he certainly is demonstrating a kind of real, disappointment in how bleak it all seems, even if it is done with a bit of exaggeration. Okay, we've got a little kind of shift here, so then I was told, so quite reflective, past tense, funnily enough. Now this parenthesis we have it creates quite a sarcastic tone and it's relevant because what he's just said about suicide. So he's linking the idea that Samuel Beckett lives in this bleak place with the joke about suicide before, so that funnily enough is like, how fitting, you know, how obvious that Samuel Beckett would live here because as we know his plays are often about misery. Um, oh in fact it's it's it's written down here, so he gives us this um contextual information for anyone that doesn't know um Beckett's plays, sheer pointlessness and utter misery of human existence. So very very emotive language again, again more hyperbole, and it's creating that sense of nihilism once more, this sort of what's the point of life. I thought, no wonder, so getting internal kind of thought process there, um and we've got, you know, little exclamative um section here, no wonder, so again, it kind of ties in with the tone, um the sarcastic tone here from the parenthesis. I was told, so notice how we're still in passive voice, he's constructions, I was told, I was told. So repeating again, the sort of, I suppose structure of the tourism trip, you know, where you have a guide that sort of you sit back passively where you're given the information. Uh so I was told that he often came over to our hotel, the Hotel Saint Jacques, to have a morning coffee. So there's almost a sense of excitement there, you know, literary great is in your area, um but then the description of the hotel is sort of disappointing. So we've got this uh these little adjectives, newish, so nice and informal there, um spick and span place. So spick and span is a collocation, I.e two words that you normally see together, associate together, but there's something quite soulless in the notion of a newish spick and span, sort of overly tidy, um and again, that's emphasized through the personification that they resemble the lonely hotels outside American airports. So not places people would want to go to, but places that people have to go to uh during, you know, like on a layover. Again, we've got um the reference back to the predominant audience here. Uh Beckett came here for pleasure. So we've got another rhetorical question there, in this case, it's very much his, so there is a kind of mirror mirroring of the disbelief of the other American tourists that he quoted, but in this case, it's his own disbelief, um and it's centered around his expectation of what Beckett's life would be like as probably maybe a literary hero, um and then the kind of disappointment that he realizes in in in how he lived. Um and that's developed in this idea. I love this, uh little bit here, so we've got another triadic construction, but it is syntactically parallel and I want you to really think about the verbs being used.
[15:06]So I walked the streets, I lurked in the coffee shop, I prayed for him to appear. So that's our little triadic syntactically parallel uh clauses, um but I think the verbs are brilliant because they escalate. So we go I walked, yeah, so you, that's standard. Then you get I lurked which suggests being a little bit more shifty, a little bit more kind of suspi not suspicious, but a little bit more desperate, and then finally you get the verb I prayed. So the kind of um impact, the emotional impact of those verbs amplifies and escalates as it goes through, um the triad, praying, really demonstrating just how desperate he is to see this, um to to get a glimpse of him. But nothing. So, disappointment, expectation, disappointment, so his desire to see Beckett mirrors the expectation and disappointment of Paris in general. It was a lesson though. Okay, so little metaphor there. Uh when people read Samuel Beckett lives in exile in Paris, they did not know that it meant a pokey little flat on the fifth floor of number 32. Um a tall gray building in which residents waited for Godot by watching television. So we've got the kind of referencing to tourist guides again, the typical tourist um experience, um and then the disappointment is reflected through these adjectives, okay. Uh these attributive adjectives, pokey and little that uh re-emphasize each other, because pokey means sort of small and claustrophobic. Um and then we've got a literary allusion, little pun, he's like, oh, they're waiting for Godot because that is of course Beckett's most famous play. But what a miserable um depiction of life if he says that all of the people in this place are waiting for Godot and we know contextually that in the play, you know, Godot did not arrive. And they're doing it by watching television. So there's a real sense of the mundane. So you've got this juxtaposition of expectations with the bleak, mundane, trivial reality. And then you get another reference to place, so we've got this adverbial of place here, and it was 17 stops on the metro from the center of Paris, the Left Bank, the museums. So this triadic construction is all about the kind of um normal places that you would visit in Paris, the kind of touristy, tourismy bits, and he's just drawing attention to the fact that it was so far away, and that is in physical space, but it's also in it's also a kind of figurative, it's so far away um from that expectation. Okay, coakes. Um, so what we have here is a real shift in tone. Now the ellipsis is just saying they've cut out a bit, all right, it's not him doing ellipsis, but look at the narrative style, it was a wet black morning in Paris, the street sweepers and milkmen doing their solitary rounds by the light of street lamps, and just as dawn broke over the eaves and chimney pots, we plodded out of the Gare de l'Est.
[18:32]So you see what I mean about this narrative style and and this sort of tranquility created through the sibilance, and then he just smashes it on its head by ending with the main clause, so of of the sentence, we plodded out of the Gare de l'Est. So that dynamic verb, plodded suggests like lethargy and frustration and slowness. So again, you've got this, he's so sneaky, uh you can tell he's a great novelist as well. Um, so you've got this sort of like atmospheric setting building, and then anticlimax as we actually get to see like them as they're moving along, it's it's almost an example of pathos with a B, so that sense of anticlimax. I thought we had left the suburbs behind in the Rue Saint-Jacques, but there were more, and they were deeper and grimmer. So more of that kind of sense of disappointment demonstrated through the comparative adjectives, deeper and grimmer. Um more focus on expectation versus reality, so you've got the people in the group with their faces at the windows of the train, so that sense of excitement and anticipation, juxtaposed then with shock and disillusionment. It wasn't gay Paris, little collocation there, gay Paris, so uh that's setting up the expectation of the sort of frivolity and excitement and bright colors of the city. So it wasn't gay Paris, so disappointment, it wasn't even Cleveland. So we've got a little bit of syntactic parallelism there with one exception, that we've got this little sneaky um adjective in this case, or determiner, actually, it wasn't even Cleveland. Um basically saying it's not even a place in America, like again, a well-known, perhaps not particularly exciting place in America. So not only is it not hitting the expectations of Paris, it's not even hitting the expectations of home. Uh the Americans look very closely, we were unused to this, so again, there's set up of expectation. And then, finally, last bit, uh so drawing out on the kind of cultural understanding of the American audience, so we're back to the uh first person plural. We put up suburbs too quickly and cheaply for them to wear well, we expected them to decline and collapse and be replaced, they weren't built to last. Uh so we've got our little adverbs of manner, quickly and cheaply, so he is also criticizing um um American suburbs, but he goes on to develop this through, that's right, another triad. We expected them to decline and collapse and be replaced. So there's a sort of sense that everything keeps moving in America, so it's always going to look new, you're not going to hold on to these sort of like old and, you know, sorry looking buildings. So they weren't built to last and they look temporary because they are temporary, so that repetition um backs that up. But French suburbs, and note we've got a little bit of parenthesis with yet another triad, uh villas, terraced houses and blocks of flats are solid and fairly ugly, and their most horrific aspect is that they look as though they will last forever. So very kind of sardonic dry wit there uh in the horror, because obviously you want normally something to last forever, so the fact that they look like they will is shocking because they are both solid and fairly ugly. Again, the adverb of the um adverb, the sort of intensifying adverb there, they're fairly ugly, although it undermines it slightly, creates that sort of sarcastic tone. Uh we've got another kind of reference, uh culturally, now we've got to London, so the idea that the city of London has got all of the excitement, but the outskirts, not that exciting, apparently. Um, and then we're finishing up, the rhetorical question, how could houses so old look so awful? So I think that's coming back to the idea that when you think about heritage and when you think about looking at buildings that are old, you want to see something beautiful, you want to see something or inspiring. But the reality of the situation is that most of the time, they're just humdrum. What a miserable piece. Sorry. Finishing off the parrot anthology with just bleak disappointment. Sorry about that. Don't blame me, blame Edexcel. Um that is it for me. I've got one more video that I'm going to do for you guys, which is all about how to kind of structure an essay and your response. If there's anything else you want me to cover, um do do just drop me a line and I'll I'll see what I can do. I know that this current exam is coming up quickly. Uh if you've got any questions about this text, just drop me a line in the comments and I will get back to you. Thank you again, happy revising.
