1. The following is a passage from The Life and Death of Sophie Stark (2015). Discuss how the concepts narrator and characterisation are relevant in this context by close readingn (parts of) the passage. In other words, pick out specific phrases, words and/or sentences and interpret/discuss them in detail. (10 points total, word limit: 250 words + quoted text)
The night I told the story it had been almost two years since Id left Burnsville, and I still hadnt heard from him. It had gotten weaker, but I still had the feeling that he had something of mine that he needed to give back, and that I couldnt rest until I had it.
Maybe thats why I told the story about Bean that night, instead of one of the others I couldve told he still had a hold on me, and my mom and dad and my sisters and my stepdad didnt, or at least I thought they didnt at the time. But I wasnt about to tell the real story and have everybody know my business, and I guess I thought I could fool people usually Brooklyn kids would believe anything you told them about West Virginia. I hadnt expected this little stranger standing in front of me, acting like she knew something about my life.
When people lie about their past, she said, they push their chests out and stand up straight, like someones going to challenge them.
And I was doing that?
She nodded. But some of it was true, she went on, because sometimes your whole body relaxed, like you knew the story in your sleep.
I was annoyed with her for pegging me so well. I told all kinds of little lies about my life to Barber and Irina, to people I met, making my family and my town sound better or worse than they really were depending on the situation. Id always gotten away with it, and I was happy to be able to make my own past and have people accept it. But I sometimes hoped somebody would catch me out, so I could feel like they really knew me. And the first person to do it was a girl who didnt know me at all.
What are you, I asked, some kind of psychologist?
I make movies about people, she said, and Id like you to be in one.
(North, 2015: 12-13)
