GCSE English Literature Unit 3

Examine Shakespeare’s presentation of commitment within a love relationship in Romeo and Juliet.

Examine the way that commitment is portrayed in Valentine and The Sun Rising. Refer to other poems from the poetry selection in your response.

What is your response to the pieces of literature you have read? Make links between the ways the writers have considered and presented the theme.

GCSE English Literature Unit 3

What is your response to the pieces of literature you have read? Make links between the ways the writers have considered and presented the theme.

Romeo & Juliet

The Sun RisingValentine

commitment

AO3: Making links (50%) Candidates: make a sustained discussion of links between texts, confidently evaluating subject, theme, character and the impact of texts; make apt selection of details for cross reference and confidently explore writers’ different ways of expressing meaning and achieving effects; at the highest level, make subtle points of connection and probe links confidently.

GCSE English Literature Unit 3

What happens in The Sun Rising?

Stanza 1 – Sun, go away and irritate ordinary people, lovers are beyond your power!

Stanza 2 – Sun, you are weak! All the precious things in the world are here with me.

Stanza 3 – Sun, if the whole world is in this

room, you only need to warm us, so relax.

Recap

GCSE English Literature Unit 3

What happens in Valentine?

Rejects clichés of romantic love, offering an onion’s simple beauty

An onion can make you cry – just like a lover can

Recap

Its rings could symbolise a wedding – does marriage threaten

to kill relationships?

• Love is timeless, transcendent, unchanging, precious

• For lovers committed to each other, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS OR EVEN SEEMS TO EXIST!

How is the theme of commitment in love presented in The Sun Rising and Valentine?

GCSE English Literature Unit 3

• Lovers have to be truthful• Commitment is exciting but dangerous • It should not be taken lightly

GCSE English Literature Unit 3

How do the poems link to Romeo & Juliet?On the balcony

• Juliet: Frightened – will he take her seriously? Can this last? “It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden.”

• Knows he may betray her: “At lovers’ perjuries they say Jove laughs” (the gods laugh at the lies lovers tell)

• Unwilling to let him go! She is a naughty child with a pet bird. She is “loving jealous of his liberty” and says she’ll “kill thee with much cherishing”!

• Valentine’s day – cynical marketing ploy to sell “satin hearts” and “cute cards” – love seems cheap – superficial. Poet rejects these – also wants to be taken seriously.

• Onion symbolises pain of love – “it will blind you with tears”.• Its taste is a “fierce kiss…possessive and faithful”

GCSE English Literature Unit 3

How do the poems link to Romeo & Juliet?On the balcony

• Exaggerates her beauty using brightness of her eyes: stars have asked her eyes to “twinkle in their place” – they’d make birds sing – bright as daylight!

• He’s prepared to risk all - travel to a place washed by “farthest sea” for “such rich merchandise”

• Juliet echoes his imagery: “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep” – says her love is “infinite”

• Also exaggerates brightness of her eyes – “If her eyes have not blinded thine” – stronger than the sun!

• He says she is “both the Indias of spice and mine” – also precious and exotic BUT she has come to him so he doesn’t need to move! Both make her an OBJECT of desire.

• Bed = centre of the universe = macrocosmic image like Juliet’s

GCSE English Literature Unit 3

How do the poems link to Romeo & Juliet?On the balcony (2)

• Romeo calls sun’s rays “envious streaks” – spiteful and jealous of their love

• Says she is his “soul” – he is an empty body without her, the spiritual part of him

• Sun is a “pedantic wretch” – also personified to appear the villain as if choosing to force them to part

• Also expresses how dependent on her he is - “she is all states and all princes I” – nothing without her – but also an image of ruling over her…

GCSE English Literature Unit 3

How do the poems link to Romeo & Juliet?

• Suicides show their devotion.• Romeo returns to image of ship, telling himself to

“run on the dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark”.• Both lovers saw their future deaths in advance:

“Methinks I see thee…as one dead in the bottom of a tomb”

• Poem’s ending ambiguous – “shrinks to a wedding-ring, if you like”. Is there a fear of commitment? Worried about rejection?

• Love seems doomed when poem ends with “lethal”, “knife”. Is marriage killing love?

• Isn’t this hinted at earlier – “a wobbling photo of grief”?

At their deaths

GCSE English Literature Unit 3

The essay…Here’s a snippet from an essay similar to the one you are writing:

Follow link below for more useful ideas:http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/poetry_wjec/treatmentofwomen/valentine/revision/6/