Superman and Paula Brown

by bmccarey99 @ 2008-11-20 – 16:52:33

Hello and welcome to my teaching blog. Here you will find highlights and key points of the lessons I have taught this week. If there is something which you think I should include here then please let me know.

Year 11: "Superman and Paula Brown's New Snow Shoes"

Today we analysed the journey of the narrator in this story from innocense to experience. At the opening of the story she is an excited dreamer whose love of Superman and dreams of flying show her to be an optimist, as yet untainted by the realities of the world in which she lives. As the story progresses, her eyes are opened to what she eventually terms "the real world". She sees a film clip of Japanese soldiers abusing American prisoners of war and promptly vomits up the cake and ice cream she had eaten at a birthday party. This clearly represents the painful realisation that the world of her childhood is coming to an end.

This transition is furhter confirmed by the kind of brutal cruelty which only children can inflict on one another. Paula Brown seems to take great joy in the suffereing she causes the narrator (schadenfreude) when she falsely accuses her of pushing her over. The narrator returns to the family home where she is briefly distracted by her uncle (the embodiment of Superman himself) however this bubble is soon burst and, in the adults acquiesance to the false accusations made against her, she realsies that the world of her "technicolour dreams" cannot exist in the real world.

Listen to the story here: http://www.cooper.oxon.sch.uk/English%20WebPages/Front.htm