The Reluctant Fundamentalist "type" of essay question

[STUDENT4]

hey
i am doing the Reluctant Fundamentalist for the exam and i have been studying the themes and characters, when i looked at some of the practice exams both of the questions were structure based, so because this novel is mainly about structure does that mean in the exam there is a possibility that there wont be any questions that are thematic and character based?

theres 2 weeks left to the exam and this is really stressing my out because i have never answered a structured question before and i dont want to learn it now so please respond if you know whether VCAA will do this, cheers

[jimbothebest]

The 2 topics that you get on the exam won't be the same, i.e. you won't get 2 structure-based topics, you'll get 2 out of the 3; so you'll get a character-based and thematic-based topic, or character / structure... you get the point. So don't stress too much, there'll be at least one topic that won't be on structure!

But another thing about the structure question they ask is that it may actually work to your advantage. I read a topic today that was something like 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist is presented as a one-person monologue. Discuss the effects of this.'
So you can pretty much choose whatever effects you like, i.e. Because of the style of the novel from the point of view of a Pakistani it is anti-American, or that it is an eye opener to different stereo types... once again, you get the point. So as long as you can write maybe your first paragraph on what the structure basically is, then you can choose to write about whatever effects you like. Hope this helps.

[STUDENT4]

thankyou, really helpful

[jimbothebest]

No worries, and good luck for the exam!