Towards Assessment: Higher Level Essay

Students submit an essay on one non-literary text or a collection of non-literary texts by one same author, or a literary text or work studied during the course. The essay must be 1,200-1,500 words in length. (20 marks).††

Dai Sijie’s novel is partly autobiographical and reveals much about his life and experiences during the years of Cultural Revolution in China. Nevertheless, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is still a work of literary fiction, and should be approached as such. Avoid the temptation to conduct a historical study when choosing literary works for your HL Essay. Instead, find a line of literary inquiry that can focus your investigation. Here are one or two examples of lines of inquiry suitable for this text – but remember to follow your own interests and the direction of your own class discussion to generate your own line of inquiry. It is not appropriate for students to submit responses to an essay question that has been assigned:

Part 3.2: Leaving the Mountain

‘A woman’s beauty is a treasure beyond price.’

Page 172

Luo gets some bad news from home. His mother is sick and he is granted one month’s compassionate leave to return home. While he is away, the narrator takes care of the Little Seamstress, devoting himself to cleaning for her and reading to her in Luo’s place. Then one day, she confides in him a secret – and he must act to avert a disaster for her and for Luo.

By reading to her stories by Balzac, Luo dreamed of transforming the Little Seamstress from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover. By the end of the novel it is clear he succeeded beyond his expectations – yet the result is not what he might have hoped for. As our time on Phoenix of the Sky mountain comes to an end, an unexpected departure guarantees the tale of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress will linger long in the mind.

Re-education

One of the novelists in Four-Eyes’ suitcase in Gustav Flaubert, who wrote Madame Bovary. The titular heroine, Madame Bovary, feels stuck inside her unhappy marriage and a repetetive everyday routine. She is restricted by society and would do anything to escape. She dreams of fleeing her old life and finding a new one that’s more exciting. Perhaps Dai Sijie alludes to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary in order to foreshadow the ending of his own story?

Resources

• Part 3.2 Questions and Activities
• Wider Reading – Washington Post review

Prose Study: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is, at heart, a coming of age story. Luo, the narrator and the Little Seamstress engage in the testing of boundaries and discovering the truth of the world that marks this kind of literary adventure. However, the oppressive nature of the government and the fact that their entire futures are also on the line, makes this process considerably more high stakes. Not knowing if their time in the village will ever have an end, the boys find themselves trapped in a kind of limbo, or ‘liminal state’.

Briefly conduct research into the concept of ‘liminality’ then write a piece for your Learner Portfolio in which you explain how the Phoenix of the Sky village and mountain functions as a ‘liminal space’ in the boys’ coming of age story. If you prefer to design an image of the mountain and village, make sure you accompany your image with notes and quotations that explain the mountain’s role as a liminal space for the boys’ transformation.

Towards Assessment: Individual Oral

Supported by an extract from one non-literary text and one from a literary work (or two literary works if you are following the Literature-only course), students will offer a prepared response of 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions by the teacher, to the following prompt: Examine the ways in which the global issue of your choice is presented through the content and form of two of the texts that you have studied. (40 marks)

Please find suggestions here; but always be mindful of your own ideas and class discussions and follow the direction of your own programme of study when devising your assessment tasks.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress could make a good text to talk about in your oral assessment. The themes of transformation, education, and the power of literature would make excellent starting points from which to develop a Global Issue. Once you have finished reading and discussing the novel, spend a lesson working with the IB Fields of Inquiry: mind-map the novel, include your ideas for Global Issues, make connections with other Literary Works or Body of Works that you have studied on your course and see if you can make a proposal you might use to write your Individual Oral.

Here are one or two suggestions to get you started, but consider your own programme of study before you make any firm decisions about your personal Global Issue. Whatever you choose, remember a Global Issue must have local relevance, wide impact and be trans-national:

• Field of Inquiry: Art, Creativity and Imagination
• Global Issue:the transformative power of books and literature
• Possible Pairings (Lit course: if you are following the Literature-only course, you must pair a text originally written in English with a translated work):Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M Coetzee; Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw; The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy; John Keats’ poetry; Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
• Possible Pairings (Lang and Lit): speeches by Michelle Obama; Poetry in the Making by Ted Hughes; I, Daniel Blake by Ken Loach; Plan Internationalvideo charity campaign;