Have you checked out the
Prompts and Sample Language Analysis Articles collection? Quite a few there.
Here are some more prompts, found by searching ATAR Notes:
'In the film All About Eve, Mankiewicz suggests that in the theatre world, power only lasts for a limited time.' Discuss.
'We do not fully sympathize with either Margo or Eve as they are both driven by enormous egos.' Discuss.
'All About Eve' demonstrates that women must make difficult choices if they are to have successful careers. Discuss.
‘All About Eve demonstrates that in order to succeed in the theatre, the only values that count are egotism and ruthless ambition.’ Discuss.
‘In All About Eve, marriage is offered as a solution to the problem of women growing older.’ Discuss.
"All about Eve is really all about power. Each character struggles to obtain and maintain power over others." To what extent do you agree?How about you try making up your own prompts? (and then contribute them
so other people might then join in when they see it's give and take). Here's a quote that discusses the benefits of this and how to do it:
A good starting point would be to begin with these four categories: characters, themes, structural features, and views & values.
-For charaters, list all of the major ones in the text, possibly some minor ones, or a general category for 'others' (eg. for prompts like 'The minor characters in A Christmas Carol have the most influence over Scrooge' or 'It is the minor characters in This Boy's Life that show us the importance of family.')
-Do the same for themes. Try to approach it from all angles; VCAA are trying to trip you up, remember. Even if you have a seemingly surface level theme like 'justice' or 'family,' try and make this more complex. Break the theme up into different levels, then start examine all its different components.
-Some texts lend themselves better to structural discussion than others, but everything on the list has at least one or two key features to discuss. Think about the importance of the form/genre, or the way the characters are presented and depicted in the language.
-Views and values will require a bit more effort. Taking into account all of these above ideas, what is the author trying to get across, and how/why is this done? There might be an outright rejection or condemnation, or the message might be a subtler, more ambiguous one. Either way, having a solid grasp of the purpose behind a text will help immensely when constructing a contention.
This might seem like a lot of effort to go to, considering you'll only end up getting two prompts to chose from, but this is a really helpful exercise in terms of generating ideas and working out which areas of the text you haven't dealt with yet.
In the end, my T.R. prompt still surprised me, but it was a lot easier to think about what I was being asked to discuss, and how I could shift my discussion to familiar territory.
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