English Literature / Unit 18 ENL 1731 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Writing Back: Three Pairs
The idea
Writing back is easiest to recognize in pairs, and the exam can ask which work answers which. First pair: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, which gives the silenced "madwoman," Bertha, her own history as Antoinette in Jamaica. Second pair: Homer's Iliad and Walcott's Omeros, which gives Caribbean fishermen the names and conflicts of Greek heroes. Third pair: Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Achebe's response, both his lecture calling Conrad racist and his novel Things Fall Apart, which shows an Igbo society from within before colonial arrival. In each pair, ask what the later work restores: a voice, a dignity or a perspective the earlier work denied. Then name both works and the direction of the reply.
In practice
Brontë and Rhys, Homer and Walcott, Conrad and Achebe.
Where people slip
Do not reverse the pair. The postcolonial work answers the earlier classic, never the other way round.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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