Teaching the Static Image: Colour, Images, Font, Layout

Number one tip: BAN CLIP ART.

Unless it’s used ironically, in which case, okay.

COLOUR

Colour Theory: Quick reference sheet for designers

Colour symbolism: What colours mean

The Colors of Good vs. Evil: Comic Book Color Palettes (an infographic from Color Lovers)

For students who have no sense of colour, get them to choose a palette using the ‘mathematical’ foolproof way, with Adobe Kuler, or many other similar products. Colour choice is basically a scientific thing, regardless of individual preference. (To counter that statement: Why The Science Of Design Is A Bad Idea.) Students can make their own swatches with Adobe’s colour wheel. They can download and import these swatches into Photoshop. If they don’t have Photoshop, they can still get the hexadecimal numbers for use in other programs.

See: Developing A Colour Scheme And Colour Management Tips for some great online tools for generating palettes.

Students who have Photoshop on their home computers are at an advantage when doing coursework including graphics. For this reason, I’ve taught at a school where Photoshop wasn’t allowed for internal assessments. I didn’t really agree with it then and I sure don’t agree with it now.

There are plenty of freely available Photoshop resources online. For example:

40 Fresh and Free PSD Files.

Photoshop Tutorials For Stunning Photo Effects from PS Deluxe

100 Sets of Free Photoshop Brushes from Design Modo

50 Free Photoshop Brushes Every Designer Should Have from 2ExpertDesign

8 Photoshop Tricks I Wish I Knew When I Was A Student from Onextrapixel

For students who would like Photoshop but don’t have it, direct them to the open source, free and legal version which is easier to use and does almost as much: GIMP. Give them some time in the computer lab during class and tell them the help files can all be found online. The help files aren’t all that good, but here are some online tutorials to get started. If they still moan because they haven’t got *Photoshop*, they may download a trial version onto their home computers. It lasts for one month and they can’t do it twice. This might be good for students who have problems meeting deadlines.

For students with access to a Mac: 30 Free Mac Apps for Web Designers.

My Secret To Color Schemes, by Erica Schoonmaker

The colour red makes you stronger, faster and more distractable.

FONTS

Weird and wacky fonts should only be used as an image in their own right (e.g. as part of the picture). When combining different fonts, here are some guidelines.

For the perfect font, they can download many for free online. Don’t install too many on your computers because you’ll slow the system right down. (I speak from experience, and recently had a font cull.)

Designers will tell you there exist ‘well designed’ and ‘poorly designed’ fonts. If you get your fonts from the free font sites, many of them are poorly designed, so better to look at hand chosen lists for the best looking ones:

30 Free Hand Drawn Fonts

50 Beautiful Fresh and Free Fonts from Specky Boy

Some Brand New Fonts (designed 2011) from Design Beep

The Best Free and Brand New Fonts (of 2011) from Gonzoblog

Free Retro Fonts from Tripwire Magazine

See also:

The 5 Fonts Flavorwire never want to read ever again (a primer in font snobbery). And for an indication of how much people can hate Comic Sans, see this short imagined monologue at the McSweeneys site.

A Guide To Typography Infographic from Zubeta

How To Choose The Right Typography Font For Your Designs from Naldz Graphics, which could serve as a checklist for peer assessment.

IMAGES

When searching for images online, try Flickr Creative Commons Search. This tag browser is pretty. Here are some more. FlickrStorm lets you search for photos under the creative commons licence. There is also Compfight, which does the same thing. Using these engines it is easy to search for Creative Commons images.

Another: 7 Image Search Tools from Brain Pickings.

Also interesting: Here’s Looking At Hue.

LAYOUT

Why Is White Space Good For Graphic Design from Design Modo

Focal Points In Design Layout from Instant Shift

For magazine quality layouts, Adobe InDesign is an industry standard. The free (GNU) version is called Scribus.

POSTER DESIGN

For making a movie poster, direct them to the Movie Poster Database.

For vintage posters, the Chisholm Larsson online gallery.

33 Photoshop Tutorials For Designing Posters from Design Modo

The Six Rules Of Modern Poster Design, an infographic on Flickr

The 100 Best Movie Posters Of The Past 100 Years from Paste Magazine

Thirteen Movie Poster Cliches from Uproxx

BOOK and magazine COVERS

Book covers here. It’s a blog and includes discussion. Here’s another one. Examples of bookcovers making use of letters only.

The Most Iconic Book Covers Ever, from Flavorwire

A Guide On How To Design A Magazine Cover That Stands Out from Nadlz Graphics

ADVERTISEMENTS

100 Clever and Creative Advertisements.

40 Retro Advertisements for Inspiration, from Design Modo

300 Remarkable Vintage TV Print Advertisements from The Mad Men Era.

BROCHURES

Examples of Brochures

LOGOS

Logo Trends 2011

If students are making logos, Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard. The free (GNU) equivalent to Illustrator is Inkscape. This can  be downloaded for free. In Illustrator and Inkscape, students can make logos that scale to any size without loss of quality. (i.e. vector images.)

45 Beautiful High Quality Brushes for Illustrator

INSPIRATION ON THE INTERNET

AWWWARDS: The awards for design, creativity and innovation on the Internet, which recognize and promote the best web designers in the world.

BEHANCE: Hundreds of thousands of creative professionals broadcast their work widely and efficiently.

DEVIANT ART: Artists upload their work for sharing and feedback.

OTHER FREE RESOURCES

Some graphic design portfolios.

Free abstract backgrounds from Creative Fan

65+ Awesome Free Textures from Design Modo

51 High Quality Free Textures from You The Designer

18 Creative Free Textures from Vision Widget

See Also: Kids Can Learn Graphic Design Too from Naldz Graphics

Describe A Kitchen: Photo Stimulus

Close your eyes and imagine a kitchen. Any kitchen. Now open. Which kitchen sprang first to mind?

That’s your kitchen. You’ll be writing two or three paragraphs about that kitchen.

pic by Amanda Woodward

Whose eyes do you see through? The kitchen above looks like it’s from the view of a child. Perhaps you imagine one kitchen in particular: grandmother’s, your own house, your cousin’s kitchen, your neighbours. Perhaps you pulled it out of nowhere. That’s good too.

pic by Mark Wiewel

Whatever you imagine in your kitchen, exaggerate it a little. Flowers on the wall? Now what’ve you got?

pic by skarpetka86

If you were painting this kitchen on canvas, would you use warm hues or cool? What’s the weather like outside the window? Are you cold? Or is it a mid-summer’s day?

pic by Tom Watson

This kitchen looks as if someone’s just moving in or just moved out. What has just happened in your kitchen? What is about to happen? And most importantly, what’s happening now?

Is there anyone else in that kitchen? What are they saying to each other, if anything? Perhaps there’s just a cat. Or the dog, or a line of ants marching across the floor to an open jar of jam left on the bench.

pic by Christopher Barson

Is this a well-used kitchen, or the kitchen of someone who looks as if they’re always out to dinner?

pic by J Konig

If there are magnets and notes on the fridge, what do they say?

pic by BulletMiller

Untidy kitchens are more interesting. Pick a few details and describe. Just a few, mind. You’re not writing a photograph.

pic by cafemama

What would this kitchen smell like? What about your kitchen? What was the last thing eaten here? Can you still smell cooking aromas lingering? Maybe you smell smoke, or grass clippings from outside, or cleaning products.

pic by cafemama

Let your mind camera zoom in to the smallest detail. What can you see now that you didn’t see before? If you can’t remember details, make them up.

pic by sigma

This used to be someone’s kitchen. What happened? Where are the people now?

***

[I] Note how personalised and peopled the material world is at a level almost beneath scrutiny. I’m thinking of the cutlery in the drawer or the crockery I every morning empty from the dishwasher. Some wooden spoons, for instance, I like, think of as friendly; others are impersonal or without character. Some bowls are favourites; others I have no feeling for at all. There is a friendly fork, a bad knife and a blue and white plate that is thicker than the others and which I think of as taking the kick if I discriminate against it by using it less

- Alan Bennett, 2001 diary entry, 8 January

Painting A Setting In Few Words

THE HOME OF A NEWBORN BABY

The door opened on the scene of misery and confusion in which it seemed that all Beth’s days were passed. Wet laundry — diapers and smelly baby woollens — was hanging from some ceiling racks, bottles in a sterilizer bubbled and rattled on the stove. The windows were steamed up, and soggy cloths or soiled stuffed toys were thrown on the chairs. The big baby was hanging on to the rungs of the playpen and letting out an accusing howl — Beth had obviously just set him in there — and the smaller baby was in the high chair, with some mushy pumpkin-colored food spread like a rash across his mouth and chin.

- Alice Munro, from Wenlock Edge

A SCHOOL

The school was a low concrete building surrounded by asphalt that had seesaws, swing sets and other iron instruments of play welded onto it. The halls were wide and monstrously echoed the shouts of children.

- Mary Gaitskill, from Two Girls, Fat and Thin

The longest corridor at the Institute bordered the gymnasium for its entire length. The corridor was glassed on one side with long curtained windows and recessed doors, and on the other side the wall was uninterrupted save for the heavy double doors into the gymnasium that swung out halfway down. On this long wall were fixed a number of costumes preserved adn flattened against the high brick, their empty arms spread wide, like ghosts pinned by a sudden and petrifying shaft of light.

- Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal

It’s hard to portray the layout of a building and make it sound comprehensible, let alone interesting. I love the simile at the end. It’s as if the entire paragraph leads us towards that very image.

Describe A Classroom: Photo Stimulus

Jonathan Pobre

Maybe you’re in a classroom right now. If so, you can write about that. If not, you can imagine any sort of classroom you like. It may be one classroom in particular, or it may be an amalgamation of several, or of all the classrooms you’ve ever set foot in. Or you might make it up completely.

Write what you see and imagine, not what you know.

Blackboards are really quite green, aren’t they? I wonder who scribbled on the board in the photo above. Do you think it was the teacher? What happened? This is a creative writing about setting, but I want you to imagine what happened in that classroom just before you wrote about it. This will affect the atmosphere in the room.

pic by monkeyc.net

First, imagine the outside of the building. Is it a modern building or old? What’s it made of? Is it well-maintained, or in a state of disrepair? Whatever you imagine, exaggerate a little. If there’s a flight of steps leading up to the classroom, you might instead write of a long, winding staircase. Because that’s how it sometimes feels, if you don’t want to go to class.

pic by Extra Ketchup

Now we’re inside the classroom. In your mind, is it full of people, or are you alone? If you’re alone, why? Maybe you’ve been kept back after class. Perhaps you just imagine a teacher in there, preparing a lesson, or a magic potion to cast over his students tomorrow.

What’s on the walls? If you’re writing a fantasy scene, it’s sometimes better to ground the fantasy in reality by describing what might well be on the walls of a real classroom.

pic by Liz

What’s the mood? This classroom looks like a cheerful place with a fun teacher.

pic by Night Owl City

This looks like a dreaded exam room.

pic by Dystopos

So does this one. Sometimes it’s more fun to write about an unpleasant place than a happy one. Look at the details. What do you notice after a few minutes that you did not immediately see?

The windows cast squares of white upon the wall.

The linoleum tiles are lifting in places, perhaps where the cleaner spilled a bucket of water. (You can imagine whatever you like. The more you imagine the more interesting this will read to others, who will never imagine exactly the same thing as you do.)

Ask why. Why are all these chairs pushed to the back, and why are the red ones clustered together? Who sits in the red chairs, do you think?

pic by cwtreloar

What happened to the children who used to study here?

pic by Pink Sherbet Photography

Notice the smallest detail. If you’re in a classroom right now, this will be easy. Perhaps there’s a lump of chewing gum stuck to the underside of your desk. (No, don’t check.) Or perhaps there are stains on the carpet.

pic by Aaron Knox

See how this teacher doesn’t wipe previous sums from the board before starting on another. It looks a little as if he can’t remember his equations, so he tapes them above the board as reference. Notice the way the light bounces off his head. What is the most distinguishing thing about the teacher in your classroom? (Tip: don’t choose the teacher who’s going to be grading this particular paper.)

Now, your eyes are only of so much use.

How does your classroom smell? I can smell wet wool, because it’s been raining and every student wears a green, woollen jersey. The girls wear oatmeal woollen tights.

I smell orange peels and peanut butter, because it’s after lunch and 28 students just ate their lunches in here. No doubt some of them stuffed their waste between the bar heaters and the wall.

What can you hear? Even a quiet classroom is seldom without noise. If it is, you might hear the sound of biro on paper. I hear the rain outside, and students from an adjacent classroom about to visit the library. I hear someone at the back of the room tapping a ruler on the desk, absentmindedly but annoying.

Now write.

Start with the largest detail, and zoom like a camera down to the most minuscule. Make stuff up. Let your mind make diversions. Imagine what has happened, what will happen, what maybe happened and what probably didn’t happen but is interesting anyway.

Write for ten minutes. Then see where you are. You may be surprised.

The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield finished The Garden Party on her 32nd birthday in 1921. She took a month to recover from her previous story, At the Bay before embarking upon this one. She felt that The Garden Party was better than At The Bay, ‘but that is not good enough, either…’ It is apparently based upon an actual incident.

STORY

Mrs Sheridan holds a party, which she leaves to her teenage children to organise. This will mark their entry into the world. However, the story is not about the party itself but rather the lead-up and the aftermath, when the upper class Sheridan family learns that a man has been killed down below. Laura thinks to offer solace by taking his bereaved wife some of the leftovers. She goes to the house down below and is overcome with a feeling of hopelessness, inappropriateness and perhaps some greater understanding of the nature of life and death.

The Garden Party is much more a story than the short stories involving The Burnell Family. Here, events are used to carry the meaning; Prelude and At the Bay are more explorations of milieu, where a series of keen observations about seemingly insignificant details add up to form a lasting impression and offer a deeper message.

SETTING

KM presents this deeper message by building an atmosphere of fun and frivolity before presenting the characters with an awful situation. The ostentatious nature of the party is emphasised with our attention drawn to the comfortable circumstances of The Sheridans: large house, tennis court, spacious garden, hilltop view, lily lawn, green baize door.

The house KM imagines is her bigger childhood house in Thorndon, Wellington, at 75 Tinakori Road. The Beauchamp family moved back to town when Kathleen was 9 and a half.

View Larger Map

Also within this setting, we see a comparison between the Sheridans and the underlings – we see them interact with each other and the different reactions of the family to their social inferiors.

THEMES

Growing Up

The party is the children’s first time to prove their new-found maturity. Their mother is ‘determined to leave everything to the children this year’. Laura is torn between her own feelings and the dominance of her mother, who never really does relinquish control of the party, ordering masses of lilies on a whim.

Laura does not reject the life she is a part of; rather, she has understood something about it – she reaches a more serious maturity than her mother and older sisters have reached.

Class Distinctions

Criticism of the social values of bourgeois society is the most obvious, basic theme, with the upper-class Sheridan family living at the top of the hill and the lower-class in their ‘poky little holes’, ‘little cottages just below’. KM herself must have been keenly aware of class distinctions as she was the daughter of a self-made man, living in upper-class New Zealand society. This theme is also important in The Doll’s House.

The upper-class is symbolised by sheer extravagance. The sandwiches each have flags (fifteen kinds). There is a hired band, cream puffs and masses of canna lilies. Each member of the family has power over the cook, the maids and the men putting up the marquee.

CHARACTERS

The family is no longer the Burnells but The Sheridans, who reflected KM’s family during her own teenage years. Unlike the Burnells, the family does not live within its own microcosm of the world but is fully participant in the wider social world of town.

Laura

This is Laura’s story. Although there are some general, impersonal passages and several scenes without her, we see the world through Laura’s eyes. We observe others how she sees them, especially their response to her own behaviour.

Laura is still a child. She doesn’t fully understand what is happening; her reaction to the workman’s death is a mixture of instinct, upbringing and egotism. She sees the workman’s death in an emotional way, torn between her own instinctive feelings and the powerful dominance of her mother and older sisters. She finally reaches her own personal understanding of life, which is left ambiguous in the final sentence. She does not reject the social life of the upper-class but comes to her own serious kind of maturity.

Being still a child, and not fully aware of the power of class distinctions and her own place within the social structure, Laura acts as a bridge between the upper and lower classes. She decides ‘it’s all the fault… of these absurd class distinctions’. Unlike Mrs Sheridan, she sees the workmen as individual people, indeed, as attractive ones.

When the carter dies, again, Laura sees him as another human, with the frivolity of their party exposed.

Meg

Meg ‘could not possibly go and supervise the men’.

Jose

Jose, too, has absorbed the attitudes of her mother re class distinctions.

Mrs Sheridan

Mrs Sheridan is comfortable with her social status and at ease with ordering others about. We see this clearly in her attitude towards the cook.

Laurie

Laura and Laurie are similar in their outlook on life, symbolised by their similar names. It is only natural that Laurie understands Laura’s reaction to the grieving family without Laura needing to put her feelings into words.

SYMBOLISM

Laura’s Hat

By placing the hat upon Laura’s head, Mrs Sheridan claims her to the upper-class – superiority and indifference. But Laura does not feel comfortable in the hat.

‘Forgive my hat.’

Nor is she entirely comfortable in her class. Nevertheless, she does wear the hat, just as she takes part in her upper class, privileged lifestyle.

DOWNLOAD NCEA sample 1.4 essay (doc)

(WARNING: DUPLICATED BELOW SO THAT TEACHERS WILL FIND YOU IF YOU’VE COPIED AND PASTED.)

*

NCEA ENGLISH 1.4

DESCRIBE AN IDEA THAT INTERESTED YOU IN EACH TEXT.  EXPLAIN WHY THESE IDEAS INTERESTED YOU.

AUTHOR: Katherine Mansfield

TITLES OF SHORT STORIES: The Voyage and The Garden Party

An interesting idea that Katherine Mansfield dealt with in two stories, The Voyage and The Garden Party, is the transition from childhood to adulthood.  In both stories, Mansfield makes use of symbols to let readers know that growth has taken place.

The Voyage is about a young girl, Fenella, who is being taken to Picton to live with her grandparents.  As the story progresses it is revealed that this is because her mother has died, and we presume her father is unable to care for her alone.  The death of a parent is in itself a time for children to grow up suddenly, and Fenella’s ‘journey’ to the South Island on the Picton Ferry is symbolic of this period of growth.

Within the symbolic journey is a symbolic umbrella, which comes to represent Fenella’s transition into the next phase of her maturity.  Fenella’s grandmother, who accompanies her on this journey, allows her to look after the precious ‘swan-necked umbrella’.  At first, the grandmother feels she must remind Fenella to be careful with the umbrella, being careful not to poke it into the railings of the ferry and break it.  Later on in the journey, however, when Fenella and her grandmother leave the ship, Grandmother is about to remind Fenella about the umbrella, but does not need to, saying only:

“You’ve got my –“

“Yes grandma”.  Fenella showed (the umbrella) to her.

This demonstrates that Fenella has now grown up to the extent that she need not be reminded about looking after precious things.

In the same story, darkness is contrasted with light to symbolise childlike ignorance versus the knowledge and understanding that accompanies adulthood.  Images of light are used repeatedly in the first half of the story.  For example, as Fenella and her grandmother walk to the ship, everything is dark except for a shining lamp.  The solitary shining lamp highlights the darkness.  On board the ship, it is revealed that the grandmother is dressed all in black; likewise, the men on the deck are hiding in the shadows.  In contrast, as the ship sails into Picton, images of light prevail.  “The cold pale sky was the same colour as the cold pale sea”.  As Fenella is walking up the path to her grandparents’ house, she notices the path of ‘round white pebbles’.  These images of light contrast with the initial images of darkness to indicate that Fenella can ‘see the light at the end of the tunnel’; that she has grown up sufficiently to get on with life despite the death of her mother and that she has moved into the next phase of her life.  This is interesting because Mansfield’s view of life and death is ultimately a positive one, despite the overall negative view created in European culture.

The Garden Party also deals with the interesting issue of growing up, as Mrs Sheridan has decided to let her children organise their first garden party all by themselves.  Unlike Fenella in The Voyage, though, Laura’s journey to independence is not as clear and definite; she flits between feeling very grown up and suddenly losing confidence.  When the workmen arrive to put up the marquee, for instance, she begins to address them in an authoritative manner, but suddenly feels that this is too affected, and “stammered like a little girl”.  This demonstrates the difficulty Laura initially feels in taking on adult responsibilities.

The real test for Laura comes later, when she is forced to make her own mind up on a moral issue.  When the news arrives that a man from down in the cottages has been killed, Laura feels that the party must be cancelled out of respect for the family.  Until her father and brother arrive home, however, she is forced to stand alone in this opinion.  She decides to compromise by putting the incident out of her mind until the party is over, then taking it more to heart when the fun is over.  At the conclusion of the story, when Laurie, her more mature older brother meets her in the village below Laura says, “Isn’t life-“ and does not finish the sentence.  She does not need to, as Laurie understands her.  This demonstrates that the younger sister has now joined her older brother (whose names are symbolically similar) in the increased understanding of life that comes from making one’s own decisions and contemplating death. This increased empathy with a more mature individual is an interesting one to consider, as it affects all of us as we grow older.

Both of these short stories deal with the fascinating theme of growth in two individuals who are confronted with the issue of death.  Mansfield’s skilful use of symbolism and imagery help the readers to plot the growth of her central characters for themselves.  This is interesting because the idea of growth and development is relevant to all human beings.

750 words (The minimum is 200 words.)

The Voyage by Katherine Mansfield

THE VOYAGE TEXT (pdf, with line numbering)

THE VOYAGE QUESTIONS (download the pdf write-on version)

THE VOYAGE TEACHER NOTES (download pdf)

*

PLOT

Briefly describe what happens in this story.

Make sure you are able to answer the following questions.  (Include the answers in your plot summary.)

The storyline is limited: a young girl travels with her grandmother by boat to her grandparents’ home, to live with them. Her mother has passed away and her grandmother now takes care of her as her guardian. Only halfway through the story, however, we can conclude that Fenella’s mother is indeed dead. In short stories, information like this is often not told in so many words, but suggested rather economically through images. Imagery means that we get the sensory impressions—that is, what someone sees, hears, smells, feels, or tastes—of the main character without wordy explanations; from these impressions we can deduct facts, or moods that go along with them.

1.  When was the moment you discovered THE REASON why Fenella was leaving to go with her grandmother on a voyage?

2.  Why was Fenella so surprised to be given a shilling from her father?

She receives a shilling from her father which in her childlike way of thinking is a lot of money: “A shilling! She must be going away forever!”

3.  Why did the stewardess know grandma personally?

CHARACTERS

NAME	ABOUT THEM (IN BRIEF)
Fenella	A little girl of about 5 who…
Grandma
Fenella’s father
The ferry stewardess
Mr Penreddy
Fenella’s grandfather

FENELLA

Mansfield never lets readers know the exact age of Fenella, but we can guess that she is a young child because of the limited understanding she has of different situations.  Give 3 examples where Fenella does not understand things that the readers, and adult characters in the story, do.  (This is called dramatic irony.  The style of writing is called free, indirect discourse.)

1.  The woodpile is seen as a “huge black mushroom”, an image that would perhaps be unusual from an adult’s point of view.

2.  In the middle of the story Fenella is in the private cabin with her grandmother. In wonder (although not expressed in some many words but through a registration of what she perceives) Fenella sees the old woman undress, while until then she had hardly ever seen her grandmother with even her head uncovered. Because it is new and strange to Fenella, grown-up women’s underclothing is not yet reflected by the right terms in her mind: “Then she undid her bodice, and something under that, and something else under that.” This is Fenella’s introduction to what it would be like to have a woman’s body.

3. Fenella doesn’t know why Grandma thinks that selling sandwiches for twopence is such ‘wickedness’.  She doesn’t understand the value of money.

( Also, it is the first time Fenella makes this trip. We can also tell from the images (Fenella’s impressions) the narrator uses to describe the public area on the boat that everything is new to the girl: “They were in the saloon. It was glaring bright and stifling; the air smelled of paint and burnt chop-bones and india-rubber.” An experienced traveler would no longer register this strangeness.)

GRANDMA

1. Describe Fenella’s grandmother’s overriding emotion throughout the story.  Provide quotes to support your answer.

The grandmother, being older, understands the situation and is therefore sad and apprehensive.  We can tell she is apprehensive because she keeps praying.  She also believes that “god is with you at sea more than he is on land”, thus showing she is slightly nervous about the possibility of disaster.

2.  What sort of person is grandma?  Again, provide quotes to support your answer.

The grandmother must be a kind person, because she is taking her granddaughter home to care for her after the death of the mother.  She says “God bless you, my own brave son!” showing that she is a religious, kind-hearted person.  The gentle way in which she deals with Fenella also belies her personality – she tells Fenella she would be more comfortable taking her lace socks off, though doesn’t insist that she do so.

SETTING

1.  When was the story set (approximately)?  Quote from the text to back up your answer.

The story must be set in the early 1900s.

- The old, British style money is being used (shilling, tuppence.)

- The grandmother wears restrictive clothing such as stays and bodice

-  Adults wear bonnets and caps in public

- The English used by the characters is reminiscent of the time ‘what wickedness’

-  Bananas are a luxury because of the expense

-  They ride in horse and cart

-  It takes all night to cross the Cook Strait

2.  Where is the story set?  Quote from the text to back up your answer.

‘And now the landing stage came out to meet them.  Slowly it swam towards the Picton boat’

This quote shows that they must have got on the ferry in Wellington, New Zealand.

LANGUAGE & IMAGERY

Katherine Mansfield always disliked intellectualism and aestheticism (which she had in common with her husband John Middleton Murray), and strove to combine a realist way of writing with personal and understandable symbols. “The Voyage” is a good example of that; it is one of Katherine Mansfield’s late stories and was posthumously published in the collection The Garden Party in 1923. Mansfield’s technique can be called impressionist, borrowed from 19^th century painters’ depictions of sensory impressions. Her use of impressionism, however, is modernist, in that she mainly wanted to give series of moments in her stories. No moral or plot, but rather snippets of life. At the time, this was a new idea, and related to the montage technique in film. Katherine Mansfield made an important contribution to the development of the short story genre.

Copy and complete the following chart.  Be specific in your answers.

LANGUAGE FEATURE AND CONTEXT	EXAMPLE	EFFECT
METAPHOR Description of Fenella’s luggage as they set off on the voyage.	“… her luggage strapped into a neat sausage”	Indicates Fenella’s childlike, vivid imagination by giving such a simple comparison.
SIMILE	“he looked like a baby fly that had fallen into the cream”	Same as above.  Babies, flies and cream are all items that little girls know about, and are able to make comparisons with. Fenella may be projecting her own feelings of insecurity onto the boy. He looks like a fly drowned in the milk; this sense of being helpless or insignificant is repeated when later on Fenella is also referred to as an insect (“mite”).
ONOMATOPOEIA OR PERSONIFICATIONFenella and her grandmother are on the ship and they are leaving the harbour.	“Silently the dark wharf began to slip, to slide, to edge away from them”.	Emphasises that Fenella is acutely aware that the ship is taking her away from her father.  Also indicates the slow motion of the ferry.  Fenella doesn’t know that it is the ship leaving the wharf, not the other way around.  This shows her innocence.
COLLOQUIAL LANGUAGEThe man giving Fenella and her grandmother a ride from Picton describes meeting Fenella’s grandfather.	‘“I seen Mr Crane yestiddy,” said Mr Penreddy.  “He looked himself then.  Missus knocked him up a batch of scones last week.”’	Delineates the class difference between Fenella’s family and that of the working class.  Adds life to the story.
ANIMAL IMAGERY (SIMILE)Fenella’s first impression of her grandfather.	“he was like a very old, wide awake bird.”	Gives the readers a vivid impression of the grandfather’s eyes in particular.  A simple comparison to show Fenella’s innocence. This, too, is typically a child’s perspective and it is thus shown us how she feels.

MAIN IDEAS/THEMES

There are two themes symbolized by the contrast between darkness and light.  First of all, complete the following chart using quotes and examples from the text.

	IMAGES OF DARKNESS	IMAGES OF LIGHT
1	The old wharf is ‘dark, very dark’. (Everything on the “Old Wharf” is dark, and the one lantern with its timid light only seems to underline that sensation.)	‘The lamp was still burning, but night was over’ (Describes the morning they arrive in Picton to Fenella’s new life).
2	Woodpile looks like a ‘huge black mushroom’.	‘the cold pale sky was the same colour as the cold pale sea.  On land a white mist rose and fell’.
3		Grandma’s cheeks are ‘white waxen’.
4	grandmother is wearing black clothes ‘crackling black ulster’	‘up a little path of round white pebbles’
5	Little boy has black arms and legs	On the table at Grandma and Grandpa’s sits a ‘white cat’.
6	Wool shed has a trail of smoke	Grandpa has a ‘white tuft’ on his head and a ‘long silver beard’.
7	A ‘huge coil of dark rope’ on the ferry
8	‘Dark figures of men lounged against the (ferry) rails’.
9	The ‘dark round eye’ is the window in the cabin on the ferry
10	‘spider-like steps’ of Grandma climbing the bunk

This darkness/light imagery symbolizes:

1.  TRANSITION FROM CHILDHOOD TO ADULTHOOD

the transition from being an innocent child (darkness) to becoming a knowing adult (light).

The voyage itself is the one event of the story. All the action centers around it and thus it is more than just an event; it becomes a symbol. The death of her mother perhaps forces Fenella to grow up faster than she otherwise would have. The journey may come to symbolize a transition from childhood into adolescence.

Along with the voyage, the repeatedly mentioned umbrella becomes a symbol. Fenella’s grandmother lets her take care of her swan-necked, probably expensive umbrella. At first it seems a burden to Fenella, as it is big and awkward. But she does think about it during the trip. On the boat, she prevents it from falling over the same moment her grandmother does. When they have arrived on the island, Grandma does not even have to say the word or Fenella can confirm she has performed her duty:

“‘You’ve got my—’

‘Yes, Grandma.’ Fenella showed it to her.”

The umbrella comes to symbolize Fenella’s grown sense of responsibility, a process which is speeded up because of the death of her mother. It surprises her grandfather in the end, that Fenella comes home carrying his wife’s good umbrella.

2.  LIFE AND DEATH

the sense of darkness may illustrate both her uncertainty and sadness because of her mother’s death.

Symbolically, these images may signify that a difficult period in Fenella’s life is now behind her. Perhaps there have been years of her mother being ill, and now she has arrived in a new, stable home. However, it is implied that life will never regain the stability it seemed to have from a child’s point of view. Dealing with the death of a beloved one and becoming an adult also means getting a sense of the irrevocable passage of time. Fenella’s grandparents are obviously no longer young, and a final image, the text painted by her grandfather, underlines the awareness that life is transitory. Fortunately for Fenella, Grandpa looks very happy.

For a sample NCEA English 1.4 essay featuring The Voyage and The Garden Party download NCEA sample 1.4 essay.

A cloze exercise based on the above essay: katherine mansfield essay 1.4 model cloze exercise