English Literature Optional Strategy by Anjali S (AIR 26, 2017)
Disclaimer2 : So much of this is borrowed from my mentors Prof. KG Radhakrishnan
Sir, Mahesh Sir and previous toppers and close friends like Hamna and Shafeeq,
that I hardly claim any ownership on these ideas. What I am trying to do here,
is to bring all those million pieces that has made the whole portrait under a
single post. Kindly treat them as an individual reply to all those who have
been contacting me regarding the optional.
Disclaimer3: I am engineer from NIT-Calicut, working at Deloitte, who has
absolutely no academic background of English Literature who chose it out of a
passion for the subject. Hence, these methods may seem unconventional for
mastering the subject. I also had to prepare along with my career for the
longest part, hence the help I took for mastering the content from Prof. K.G.
Radhakrishnan Sir at Trivandrum, was for three months after my prelims. Hence,
#1 again :)
Disclaimer4: The examples used here are just samples from my current
recollection. Kindly discover your own and use them.
Disclaimer5: I scored 289 marks for
English Lit optional. This is a decent score for this year, but strategies
have to be re-framed and must adapt to how the questions evolve across the
years as well, even though so many questions are repeated over the years.
Why
English Literature?
I was inspired by a senior of mine, Shafeeq Sir,
who was an NIT-C graduate himself, who was working and cleared with English
Literature as an optional through self-study alone with really good marks. This
was in 2015. I was awed at the feat and went home to eventually exchange
hundreds of mails with him to develop a good understanding of it.
Finally, the confused-me took the leap of faith and
followed my heart, Pursuing English literature, and all of a sudden all those
years of voracious reading seemed to make sense despite how unconventional an
optional it is. And, I do not regret one bit for that choice I made :)
And
I did try.
The
following reasons were certainly add-ons to making the choice:
1.
Your aptitude is the most important thing in choosing an
optional, since we spend
hundreds of hours on it, trying to develop close to a Master’s level of
knowledge about the prescribed works. You have to love the process, to create a
great product.
2.
I spent some time going through the syllabus (Many of which I had already read when I was
younger) and the question papers of almost a decade.
I genuinely felt comfortable with the idea that, provided I can recollect what
I had read, the questions were really do-able.
3.
Limited nature of the syllabus- It boils down to 14 novels, 5 plays, around 60
poems(many are very small) and some understanding of the history of English
literature. For me it took around 3–5 hours of reading a day, across 3-4 months
to finish my first hand reading.
4.
My love for the language and the written word. There was never any substitute for this and Reading
the books in the syllabus was really the best part of my day for so many months
:)
In 2015, once I was certain about the
optional, I started reading for the pleasure of it in the beginning and slowly
developed a strategy around it, thanks to my mentors :)
Breaking down the preparation into Eight phases
I believe in the
simplification of things when it seems most complicated and Hence, fragmented
my preparation into the following phases.
2015
August- December:(After my first failure in prelims, I
invested time in internalizing the optional and read many works for the first
time)
Phase
1/8. It is extremely important to understand the demand of the examination.
Please go through 7–10 years of Mains question paper of English literature
optional.
1.
I sorted questions from 7–10 years and wrote it down
under each title. For eg: On a
single sheet, I had all the questions asked in the last decade on Huckleberry
Finn, chronologically to understand the pattern of questions. Similarly, for
each author(10 poets+14 novelists + 5 plays) and each movement in the History
(16 movements).
2.
Every time I began with a literary work, I went through
this 20 odd previous questions from that work and tried to look for answers in
the work I was reading. It
also throws light into what UPSC thinks is important from a particular work.
Phase
2/8. Placing each literary work in the time period it belongs, assimilating the
works as zeitgeists of a particular time period. It
would also benefit to have some basic reading on the 16 literary movements
mentioned in the syllabus Eg: Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and George Eliot in
the syllabus has a perspective of the Victorian world, that is narrated through
the characters whose value systems were set in that time.
Phase
3/8. Try to read as many works in the syllabus first hand. I believe that there
is no substitute for your own original interpretations of the novels, plays and
poetry and most of them are literary pieces worth awe.
Enjoy what you read,
internalize it as much as you can and embrace the signature that the author
leaves, letting you feel what you feel and allowing you to frame your own
interpretations of different events and characters. This individual absorption
is I believe, what reflects as originality in answer writing too.
A
word on managing time and also, the wonder of audio books :)
I used Librivox app on
my phone to listened to classic novels in the syllabus, since I always din’t
get time to sit and read all of them after my work hours. I listened to them
while I was traveling, while walking to office, during lunch breaks and before
I slept- Just to hint at the fact that you will have to find substitutes like
these if conventional reading is not completely possible for you and make the
best use of the time available :)
Phase
4/8 While reading a work, I often paused and reflected at the previous
questions and pondered over how I would opine on each of them. This offers
direction to what otherwise can seem like indefinite reading and forgetting.
Based on what you think will benefit for your mains from the previous questions, highlight/ note down/ bookmark these elements that you notice from the book. Eg: The argument between rape versus seduction of Tess by Alec D’urberville in ‘Tess of the D’urbervilles’ of Thomas Hardy during Victorian Era, placed the morality of a woman upon her sexuality. But if you keenly observe the narration of Hardy, it is possible to interpret that he has been a visionary in delineating a woman’s moral compass from her private choices or sexual experience, which is a very Modern outlook to have during the Victorian Era calling Tess a ‘Pure woman’. Such examples and acute observations from every work while you read it, will definitely inspire original thinking and interpretation.
Based on what you think will benefit for your mains from the previous questions, highlight/ note down/ bookmark these elements that you notice from the book. Eg: The argument between rape versus seduction of Tess by Alec D’urberville in ‘Tess of the D’urbervilles’ of Thomas Hardy during Victorian Era, placed the morality of a woman upon her sexuality. But if you keenly observe the narration of Hardy, it is possible to interpret that he has been a visionary in delineating a woman’s moral compass from her private choices or sexual experience, which is a very Modern outlook to have during the Victorian Era calling Tess a ‘Pure woman’. Such examples and acute observations from every work while you read it, will definitely inspire original thinking and interpretation.
Phase
5/8 After reading each work, I supplemented that by reading many online sources
and noted important points down. I used sources like: http://www.sparknotes.com/, https://www.gradesaver.com/ , https://www.litcharts.com/ etc. Pretty much a google
search and skimming through multiple links that popup would throw light on the
major themes and gist of the work. English Literature as an optional, is this
way, well endowed in terms of the online resources that you will find in plenty.
If you think it doesn’t offer you enough
quality content for interpretation, a Google search of ‘Scholarly articles on
..the name of the work..’ should also give you great content, especially for
the novels and plays.
The following was done after the 2017 Prelims:
Phase
6/8 The creation of the following concise material myself for revision,
carrying the crux of the knowledge I accumulated over a course of time-
For
almost all the works(novels, poems, plays), I made Single page summaries
comprising:
a. A few lines about the author Eg:
Yeats being called as Myth maker, Auden as a poet of paradoxes, Thomas Hardy as
a man beyond his times born into the Victorian era etc..
b.
Lines I intend to quote from the work (Lines that carried
the crux of the work) and small incidents that reflect a theme (Nora’s
evolution through the three waves of feminism, in ‘A Doll’s House’)
c. A
mind map of characters and places, since I was terrible at
remembering names
d.
One or two literary critics who specialized on the particular author,
Eg: Allan Rodway wrote ‘A Preface to Auden’
e.
Comparisons I can bring in from other works I have read outside the syllabus,
to works that are part of the syllabus
e.1
Similarities- Eg: In the 18th century, how the expectation from
women was to marry only for Class and Social status was reflected on books like
Wuthering Heights(not part of the syllabus), as in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (Part
of the syllabus) OR How innocence fading with adulthood or exposure to social
norms are portrayed in not just Huckleberry Finn, but also Tom Sawyer and many
other works at the time
e.2
Contrasts- Works in Shakespearean era offers a complex blend of
both the medieval values and Renaissance, compared to Dr.Faustus
f.
Generic themes represented in the book (All this you will
already know at this point from the earlier steps)
Phase
7/8 I googled for many sources for each literary movement in the History of
English Literature. It is important to not skip this,
since 10marker short questions come from this part and cannot be skipped to
ensure a decent score. (A good source for 1800–1900 is ‘A History Of English
Literature’ by Robert Huntington Fletcher. You can also rely on the internet
for this, that’s all that I had done)
Phase 8/8.
ANSWER WRITING
At this point, I went back to step #A
and started writing answers to 2–3 questions from each work and sent it to my
mentors at that point who had already cleared with English as their optional. I
took their feedback and rewrote the answer incorporating it multiple times
until I was satisfied.
A
word on Deliberate Practice:
My method for quick improvement in a
matter of a few months was through a scientific technique called Deliberate
Practice, which focuses on the mistakes on every iteration and
perfecting those particular elements where I have made mistakes. I have used
the same method to correct and quickly improve my GS answers as well.
I used feedback from
people who well understood the demands of this examination as critical input
and implemented that in each iteration of answer writing. Here, quality of
answers acquired over this correction mechanism helps far more than hours and
hours of writing answers the incorrect way that aren’t reflected on and
re-written. When you practice, Kindly practice right and stay humble enough to
take feedback and correct yourself.
(References on Deliberate Practice if
you want to know about the above method: https://jamesclear.com/deliberate-practice-theory, https://jamesclear.com/beginners-guide-deliberate-practice , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-sjUoGO250&t=129s)
You are free to choose whichever methods
may can suit you to practice well :)
What makes
a good answer for English Literature?
1.
Understand the question
really well and adhere to the word limit as much as possible. Completing the
paper reasonably well is far more helpful than skipping a lot of questions
while you were trying to perfect the few answers you write.
2.
The duty of the first
paragraph is to display that you have understood the question well and connect
it to the author/ time period and directly enter into the crux of the answer.
Eg: For a question on Sons and Lovers as a psychological novel, introduction on
the reflection of pathbreaking discoveries in the modern era of Freud and its
influence on Lawrence’s writing, portraying Oedippus Complex through Paul and
Mrs. Morel can be an example of a broad introduction.
3.
Delve into specific
examples/incidents/ quotes/ lines/ verse from the work that may illustrate both sides of the argument, if present.
Eg: ‘Nothing to be done’ is repeated in the play ‘Waiting for Godot’,
reflecting the existential, nihilistic anxiety of the modern man.
4.
Add, if possible,
critic’s comments if you can connect it to the context of the question. This is
not mandatory for plays/ novels, but can be often useful for poems. Eg: Cleanth
Brooks’ admiration for Yeats as a ‘myth-maker’ has been an evidence for how
national legends like the 1916 Irish uprising were slowly weaved as myths by
Yeats that invite awe.
5.
Most importantly, your
original interpretations of the context in which the question was asked, is
what carries the soul of the answer. As long as examples/ quotes from the book
are used to supplement your argument made in a concise paragraph, any stand you
take on a particular question is fine. What is important is how well you
justify it and also, your awareness of the other side of the argument too.
6.
Conclude in a few lines,
moving from the specificity of the examples and arguments in the paragraphs in
the middle and connect the answer back to the question, taking a general scope
in the end. Eg: Jimmy Porter in ‘Look Back in Anger’ can be described as the
quintessential young man post Industrial revolution, but can also be justified
as a unique and rare individual amidst a sea of people who respond alike in the
play. Both arguments can be made, provided you offer justifications in the
paragraphs in the middle, also nudging at the possibility that the other side
of the argument exists.
7.
The answers only demand
a decent standard of English language and it isn’t a platform to display your
command in a sophisticated vocabulary. Forcing a flowery language at the cost
of clarity and brevity is not recommended and a simple, clear, beautiful
language is generally more appreciated.
The last and final bits of my Optional preparation
I kept revising my one page summaries
for all the works as it got closer to mains and over time, despite how much I
have read through hours and hours, what I intended to directly reproduce from
my learning in the six hours was reduced to minimal sources (Around 200 pages
of one page summaries and material prepared by me, bringing together important
things from all sources I had). This minimization of content is
important to not lead to the content overshadowing your original
interpretations of the work.
My
answer writing, exactly like my phases for GS answer writing, focused on four
phases between July 2017- October 2017:
1.
Quality and aforementioned structure of answers for the first 1.5 months of
practice
2.
Brevity and word limit for the next month
3.
Reducing time taken to produce such answers in the final month.
4.
Writing 2 full tests for paper 1 and 2- last two weeks
5.
Continuously revising the summaries I had made for quotes, names, verses from
poems, lines from plays etc.
Perfection is not an accident. There is no substitute
for your aptitude in this subject and love for literature. It is even more important to know that, what
worked for me, may or may not work for you. Carefully choose the parts of the
article that will benefit you and do not buy anything that doesn’t convince you
as an aspirant. I thank you for your patience and attention.
Credits - Anjali S
