Ideas for Year of Wonders.

[aiming_95]

"My dear friends, soon God will set us a new test" warns the priest.
"The hardships of the plague bring out both the best and worst in the villagers of Eyam"
Discuss


Any ideas on how I can tackle this essay topic ?

[foolishangel]

Hey
You could structure your piece like this:
Intro
Paragraph 1 - How the plague bought out the best in Anna
Paragraph 2- How the plague bought out the worst in Mompellion
Paragraph 3- How the plague bought out the worst in the village as a whole
conclusion

[greenbeans]

Hey foolishangel, try to avoid structuring your essay around characters.
It does make your essay much easier to digest in terms of planning where you can think of all the quotations for each character and slot them into each paragraph, but you will find that it's hard to get depth of responses when you do it this way. Also try to aim for at least 4 paragraphs, 5 to 6 is fantastic but 3 is just not that great at this level. No offence intended, just thought you may as well know now before it's too late

aiming_95, there are multiple ways that you can tackle this.
I would personally define hardships and what you think that Brooks means by best and worst in people, i.e. what values that human beings consider to be of wrong and what actions or qualities that people possess help promote goodness in the world. Talk generally in the introduction about the human condition before you throw in the examples from the novel.

From there you need to find your topic sentences.
What do you think that Brooks is trying to tell us?
You could even follow this guideline: Brooks thinks that the hardships of the Plague bring out both the best and worst in the villagers of Eyam because..
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

I won't do the thinking for you but here's some questions to get the ball rolling: How do people react in times of crisis?! What do the characters in Eyam admire in people? What do they despise? Where do they get their values from? What society are they brought up in? What were their conditions at the time? What roles did the individuals play in society? Were females just as important as males? Was status an influential factor in terms of freedom and authority? Were they any cases of persecution? Were there any injustices? Who were the individuals that stood up for the marginalised? Were they commended for their actions, were their acts of bravery recognised, ignored, expected? Why or why not?
Think about the roles that Anna, Michael and Elinor played in the society. Were they expected to act in those certain ways? What happened when they did something out of character? Josiah Bont, John Gordon, the Bradfords and their cook, the Gowdies, etc. etc there are heaps of characters to talk about, not just the trifector.

[dilks]

foolishangel's suggestion (not to beat down on you or anything, sorry) is also a bit narrow, because it suggests that the plague only brings out the best in Anna, and the worst in everyone else, which isn't really true. One of the things you are marked on for topics which deal with some sort of antithesis is your ability to explore the nuances and complexities of the topic. Anthony made an interesting post about using a structure for these sorts of essays wherein you would say, 'the text has some of X, but it is ultimately Y', and I think that sort of approach would be ideal for this sort of prompt; that is, a better way of approaching this topic, rather than using a character focus might be to start by showing how the plague/hardship brings out the worst in people, but then discuss Anna, and the other exceptions to the rule; to show how ultimately the good outweighs the bad (focusing on the ending might be a good idea here). If possible make a general statement about what Brooks wants to learn from this (assuming that's possible, haven't quite got around to reading YOW yet).

That said the structure I have suggested above is a bit too narrow for this topic, but I think it's a step in the right direction, hopefully someone else will be able to suggest a better one. What I would like to emphasise is something really important about the prompt:

"My dear friends, soon God will set us a new test" warns the priest. "The hardships of the plague bring out both the best and worst in the villagers of Eyam"
Discuss

If a prompt comes with a quotation it isn't the examiners being a pain, by trying to make a hard question harder; they are throwing you a bone. This prompt gives you the opportunity to talk about how the plague represents a test of faith. In other words, not only do you get to discuss the hardship aspect, but you also get to talk about how the plague siphons out the true believers from the sinners; and there is a lot of meat in the theological subtext of this novel. You are being given an opportunity to demonstrate insight; so use it. If you want you could talk about the other kinds of tests the plague represents (test of courage, test of moral integrity, test of character, etc.) but the prompt is heavily hinting at the theological aspect.