Loads of new teachers, and a ceremony with a plot twist

In Japan, every three to seven years the teachers of one school leave and are replaced by others. I don't really know why, but that's not the point.

It’s been a week since the new school year started, such that the many new faces flitting round the staff room are now somewhat less new. In spite of Japan’s adherence to the codes of professionalism and courtesy, people’s mannerisms are never truly hidden, nor do they go unnoticed. In a way, these codes ironically serve to highlight each person’s individuality, to the point where they would make great fodder for fiction.

So it is, I decided to profile some of the not so new faces.

Prepping for a ceremony. There are countless ceremonies, one of which gets referred to further down.

Hamaoka Sensei

Miss Hamaoka is the new P.E. Teacher, but, really, she just wants to teach judo. This is hinted at on her drink bottle, which reads, “No judo, no life.” It’s hinted at in her self-introduction, which includes a lot of unfamiliar Japanese interlaced with familiar Japanese – that is, the word ‘judo’ pops up more than twice. It was hinted at by the English teacher I sit beside, who, just after I’d met them both, said, “She is Hamaoka Sensei. She is number one judo player.” And it’s hinted at by herself, who half the time can be seen going about the school in full judo attire.

Her not-so-subtle hobbies are matched only by her giant grin, which, despite the obvious glint in her eye that tells you she could wrestle everyone at the same time and win, still manages to display a full set of teeth.

Nor is it a scary grin. She is in fact very kind. And funny, and she likes to give her two cents in conversations between me and the English teachers. This usually doesn’t work out, and we all just laugh. I then attempt Japanese, and we laugh some more.

Chikashige Sensei

He’s the new English teacher, though you wouldn’t know this by speaking to him. He likes to think I speak Japanese, which isn't as frustrating as it is provoking - provoking because it gave me the fun idea of seeing how long I could speak Japanese back at him without giving away that I’ve no idea what he’s on about. Other times I do know what he’s on about, but not how to respond. Sometimes we go three whole sentences (single words count as sentences) without a single English word. Every encounter is a new opportunity to beat my record. One day I’ll be teaching him Japanese. You’ll see.

Not that he’s a man of many words anyway. “So, Matt, can you make a 25-minute activity for class?” he said hours after I’d met him.

“Sure,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said. No context was provided, but fortunately, in this case, it wasn't needed.

His tacit nature is coupled with a generally laid-back demeanour. He’s somehow very organised, which is noticeable because most of the other teachers can’t manage to erase enough things off their to-do lists or wipe enough sweat from their faces. He could be a robot (I’ve yet to see him eat).

He claims that he’s about to become a father. The evidence will speak for itself.

Kanayami Sensei

She’s the new music teacher. Her musical worth was proven at the after-welcome-party (karaoke) last week, where she sang a very harmonious rendition of… well, of a Japanese song that’s probably famous or something. I understood none of it.

But music isn’t her only talent. She can also bow super well – a perfect 76 degrees with nary a bend in the knees. Her bow contains such precision that it’s clear there’s something more going on underneath. Think of all the stuff that happens inside a piano when a key is pressed. It’s all very complicated and delicate, but all you see is the effortless down and up. She could quit music and teach bowing; though if you proposed this to her, she'd probably say something like, "One cannot exist without the other." And you'd believe her.

When all the new teachers walked on stage to introduce themselves, I remembered only hers because of her perfect bow. “Be careful of her,” I thought. “She’s too perfect.”

That about does it for profiles, but speaking of ceremonies, I’d made the mistake of thinking the entrance ceremony last Tuesday would be like all the others. That is, lots of synchronised and frantic standing, sitting and bowing, and listening-but-failing-to-understand antics. There was this; but towards the end, something happened in this ceremony that hadn’t happened in all the others: all the teachers were called to line up at the front and introduce themselves. It seems the majority of teachers hadn’t read the ceremony schedule, because, after the announcer said, “all the teachers will now introduce themselves,” they all at once flipped their schedules over (with a unanimous whoosh) and learned, by reading those schedules, that yes, indeed, they would.

Miraculously, I’d accidentally planned for this when I was bored one day during the Spring break. I’d hypothesised a scenario in which I had to introduce myself to hundreds of people, and I’d also hypothesised a short speech. (I'd decided that, if a formal introduction was ever required of me, I didn’t want to repeat my self-introduction from last August, which, in English, was something like, “My name is Matt. I’m from New Zealand. I like coffee. Nice to meet you.” I needed something new!)

This hypothetical scenario would become much less hypothetical a week later.

I recalled that speech exactly and, as the microphone passed from hand to hand, drawing ever nearer, I rehearsed it many times over in my head. Some of the students must have noticed this, because they kept smiling encouraging smiles, the way that parents smile at their children when they’re on stage and about to do something they’re suddenly too scared to do. Thanks, kids.

In short, it went well, though I did omit the joke I had planned because context (the ceremony was super formal; everyone was uncannily still). If there’s a downside, it’s that the parents of the new students now think I speak Japanese, meaning I must study fast in order to keep up pretences. I told all this to my Japanese tutor the following Thursday, who with hand to chin, said, “Mmmm, you are now in a dangerous position!”

She also revealed that my speech, which multiple students and teachers had said was perfect, wasn’t perfect, and could use some work. “They were just being nice!” she kept saying. Sensei tells it like it is.

There’s a student here who isn’t Japanese and doesn’t really speak the language. All the other students in his grade are doing tests today, but he isn’t, because he can’t. Instead, he and I are about to study Japanese together. The support teacher, who just realised she’ll also be free in that period, is currently preparing a quiz for us. This should be interesting; but I’ll be honest, I’ve a feeling that many pretences are about to be shattered.

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I ate raw chicken and lived

I'm watching two teachers converse, one on either side of the staffroom doorway. They do this at leisure, even as other staff enter and exit with regularity. Indeed, rather than move to a more stand-and-talk-friendly location so that passers-by do not create momentary obstructions to their chatter, the two who are talking remain right where they are, and the prerogative is on the passer-by to bow low, say 'sumimasen' (excuse me), and crawl their way between them with all the humility they can possibly exude.

Personally I find this odd. The doorway and its passage cannot be moved, but the teachers can. It only makes sense for them to talk somewhere less compromising.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining; the system works. In New Zealand you move to a place where it makes sense to talk. In Japan, you don't. It's fine. But it's interesting.

Here's a platter of raw chicken served at a restaurant. I'll get to this in a bit!

Oh, and look; one of the JTEs (Japanese teachers of English) has just demonstrated, with unrivalled humility, the above prerogative on her return entry into the room. After passing, reverting, straightening, and exhaling, she has noticed my less-than-subtle observation of the whole affair and has laughed, perhaps to acknowledge that this custom is indeed odd, but that, well, it is how it is: "shoganai", which is slang for "it can't be helped". Or perhaps she was picturing me in her shoes, trying to arch and crawl just so, then realising that I'm so tall I should really just jump.

Bowing is so ingrained that people even do so when they're on the phone. Not all of them, but I've identified who are the phone call bowers; as it turns out, more than a few!

I may not bow on the phone, but I certainly find myself doing so at all hours without my willing it. Bowing and the affirmative word 'hai' are twins that accompany me to every conversation. They're an obnoxious pair.

And finally, for otherwise the title of this post will have to be changed, I ate raw chicken. Raw chicken! And lived. It's quite edible here, apparently, including the waddle (plume thing on roosters' heads) and gizzard (digestive tra-- let's just call it the stomach, even though that isn't much better). Anyway, I ate them all - raw! I've thus learned that it is in fact possible to eat 'chicken sashimi' (single quote marks because I'm still a little bit sceptical) safely if the chicken is super fresh and super unhandled. It's also super chewy (and the waddle could scarcely be chewed at all), and I felt super primitive eating it. But in conclusion, it tasted fine - not rich or soapy (for some reason I imagined raw chicken tasting like soap) - and did not result in my stomach doing turns throughout the night.

But this doesn't mean that it was good. Like the sliver of fugu (puffer fish) I'd had the week before, it's a novelty. I probably won't have it again.

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A Giant in Japan

I've said it before that in Japan I have to duck to successfully clear thresholds. What I haven’t said is how significant this ducking needs to be.

Last week I was sitting on the couch, doing nothing much. At some point I rose, took my phone to hand, began thumbing away a text, and began the necessary looking down at my phone so as to thumb it correctly. (What this means is my neck and head were tilted forward just so.) Still texting, I proceeded from the lounge to the kitchen with all the speed and impatience of every millennial in existence.

Only, I did not reach the kitchen.

I was stopped.

Furthermore, someone had taken a hammer and whacked my head with it.

The pain was like a rising kettle, silent at first, then excruciatingly loud. I recoiled, my lips mouthed the syllables for something French (well, syllable; there's only ever one), and my fingers crunched into fists.

But then, though I glared at that doorframe with all the contempt in the world, I breathed. Somehow my knuckles thought twice about enduring the same fate as my head that, quite literally, sits in the clouds. Once again I'd learn that above these clouds is a ceiling.

This selfie took too long; I was borderline late to work. But see that door frame? And see my head? Yeah.

Yes. I’m tall. Tall enough that simply tilting forward doesn’t suffice. Instead, my head and neck must assume a sort of battering ram angle if I’m to navigate the apartment with any success. This becomes hazardous in the early hours when the lights are off but the bladder needs swift escort. Very hazardous. The potential for spilt blood - and spilt urine - grows.

Since then, I’ve mastered the bowing angle: my hair now grazes the frame like a cat’s whiskers while the integrity of my head goes untouched. Surprisingly, my spatial perception has not been compromised in the hammer thwacks hitherto; rather, it has only heightened: ‘ducking at thresholds’ is the newest and most reliable technique in my repertoire of defensive reflexes. I duck even at those doors built for the 6’2” citizen. For you see, in Japan one must adapt if one is to survive. And so I have.

This doesn’t mean that I enjoy bowing at every entranceway. I do not envision with pleasure the slowly shifting verticality of my spine, nor return with joy the myriad stares of those who watch me bow like a pitcher pouring forth its dignity. Exactly like a pitcher.

People look up at me like a mountain they’d prefer to go around than over; like a giant whose mere existence bids them question if it’s reality or just a dream; as if this town is, and will henceforth be, a foreign and foreboding place so long as I’m in it.

The first question my students ask when they meet me is how tall I am. When I tell them, their faces beam and their eyes grow wide with wonder. I of course pat them on the head and say, “Don’t worry, with time you, too, will grow tall.” Which is a lie.

Because this height thing is, oftentimes, coveted. Many a person has told me they’d kill to be half as tall. At least, that’s what I think they tell me; it’s hard to hear them from this altitude.

And how can I blame them? Here in Japan, height alone makes me an expert at many things. I’m a basketball pro; I’m a natural at high jump; tall or not, because I’m from New Zealand, I’m obviously great at rugby. Coach volleyball? Pfft. Course I can! I mean, I don’t exactly play volleyball, but if I did I’d be amazing at it. 

And that's not all: my hobbies include coconut picking, rescuing cats from trees, and laughing at ladders. (Hah… ladders…)

Well, that is until I tell them that I in fact do none of these things. To which the faces beam anew, and the eyes, again, cannot sit still. It's the kind of punchline that no one knows how to react to. The kind of news your audience wasn't quite ready to hear. 

“Oh,” I add, “but I do like volleyball.” This tends to work. The general composure returns once more. Hmm? What’s that? Stereotypes? Nonsense. I’m one of a kind!

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The sensei, the school, and the bitter cucumber.

It’s 4pm, school has finished, but the staff room is ever abuzz with teachers. To my left, Aizumi sensei graces a trio of sweat-smeared colleagues with two rigorously sweeping hand fans. On my right, Akubara sensei works the tape measure to see how, in millimetres, his height compares to mine. And in front of me, the vice principal stamps my work log before writing in the comment box, “Hot Matt!” Yes, hot Matt. Gochu’s vice principal makes the most of his rudimentary English.

I thank him as he returns the journal, and begin to head out. “Matt!” he calls after, and the sternness in his voice makes me wonder what dastardly thing I’ve done wrong. I turn to him, showing no fear; then, finally, without any give in his single expression, he says, “Easy come, easy go.”

Wise words. I tell him so.

“Wise?” he responds.

“Smart.”

“Wise, wiser, wisest?”

“Yes, that’s right!”

“Matt, Matter, Mattest?”

“Uhh...” I scratch my head. “We’ll get there.” Surely. I mean, that is what I’m here for, right?

Sensei's feedback is never taken for granted.

The average day at school is both seamless and straight forward: there is a class, then there is another class, then there is another class. If I’m with the same teacher for more than one of those classes, each of them is the same, just with a different set of kids. On a good day you might say the final set gets graced with a very polished duet from me and the JTE. On a bad day you’d say we sound like drones.

But even when our team-teaching is amazing, it is also, simultaneously, not. Due to a combination of excessive heat, excessive height and ever-increasing (bordering on excessive) hunger, by the third or fourth period I begin to feel light-headed. Class becomes a mission of searching for excuses to walk around the room or lean against flat sections of wall. Seriously, I’m no longer thinking about what the students are doing or what the teacher is saying; I’m devising schemes that will ensure I don’t faint for 50 minutes whilst all the time looking normal. 

It's funny in hindsight; it’s not so funny in class as I'm wondering when hindsight will be the only sight I have left.

But then the class finishes, it’s lunch time, and, as I sit down to eat, I learn anew that without the four-hour suffering, my stomach would not know heaven.

One perk is that I don’t have to prepare my own lunch: it’s all provided. Students and teachers each get a handsome helping of rice, soup, salad, and... well... to be honest, I often don’t know what the fourth thing is. Today I’d thought it might be onions, or shrimps, or some strange deep-fried insect that tasted like onions and shrimps. I shrugged and ate it anyway, but it was none of these things. It was bitter cucumber.

Other times it’s fish, or pork, or some unrecognisable thing to which I shrug and devour all the same. A yearning stomach does not discriminate.

There’s also a carton of milk, which I'm still getting accustomed to consuming with lunch, but which is fine because, for all those times when the food doesn't sate my appetite, the milk does its job convincing my stomach that it did.

On that note, a friend from back home asked me what the low-light is. I said the hunger. Another asked me the highlight. I said the food. Such is the world we live in.

I mean, yeah, there are other low-lights, like the time the teacher left and I proceeded to read half of a story before realising I was meant to get the students to ‘repeat after me’ with each line; but that was only a lowlight until I remembered all the times I could’ve made a fool of myself and didn’t. In the end I felt quite victorious.

But that’s school. I’m actually home as I type this. Procrastinating. Really I should be doing the dishes, cleaning up the plum wine that spilled in my fridge, and, I dunno, making dinner or something. I’ll get to one of those things now. Easy come, easy go.

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I Encountered a Sparrow Bee

"The stranger that greeted me today had three eyes, two antennae, six legs, and a buzz whose pitch caused the whole air to stop."

Is that a sinister enough opening for this retelling?

How about this:

"I was exiting my car, finding the keychain button to lock it, and gazing with pride at my perfectly calibrated reversed parking manoeuvre when, suddenly, I saw movement…"

Okay, whatever, on with it.

For future reference.

A bee had landed on my side mirror. Well, it could've been a wasp; who am I to judge? It was large for a honey, small for a hornet; but the word ‘small’ doesn't enter in the Japanese bestiary, so I'm going with the former. Anyway, this bee remained on the mirror for a good half minute, staring at itself, not exactly pleased with its yellow tan, and during this bout of self-deprecation undulated its abdomen in that way that bees and/or wasps can’t seem to stop doing - and for which reason they’d still be just as disturbing even without those hypodermics we call stingers.

But I would not be stung by this one. Soon, bored of its own face, it detached from the glass and disappeared into the air. Meaning I was alive. It was also alive, but unlike me was clearly mad at its own untanned existence. Perhaps its flight into the sky was to be an endless flight. Perhaps that’s why bees unhinge their stingers: they have a good look in the mirror and decide they can’t take it anymore. The undulating is probably a constant indecisiveness about whether to end it then and there, or wait to find an unsuspecting victim to take down with them.

We’re giving this one the benefit of the doubt. We’re saying it was a bee, and bees, as we know, deserve some sympathy. In fact, I’d be quite happy to befriend our humble honey suppliers if they would only stop that constant undulating. I once saved a bee from a spider’s web, which I felt quite good about until, fallen and too weak to fly, it began to, you know, undulate. In the end I felt worse for having deprived the poor, innocent spider of its dinner.

Which brings me back to the present story.

Free from the threat of bee undulation, I locked my car. Yet I'd no sooner pocketed my keys when I saw another sting-laden spawn whiz by from right peripheral to left. There was no mistaking this for the earlier bee: this creature took up three times the airspace, sported a far deeper tan (orange, so it could’ve been fake tan; I can imagine a bee of this size quite comfortably holding up a convenience store and stealing as many cans of the stuff as it felt the need for. Of course, no store owner would admit to this – to think, the shame!), and the beating of its invisible wings created gusts that messed with my hair and composure both. At first I was grateful - in this humidity, the breeze was a welcome one - but this breeze carried with it the smells of a thousand mutilated bees (death and blood and honey). Bittersweet it was, like the ending of a Christopher Nolan film.

You see, Suzumebachi (sparrow bees/Japanese giant hornets) hunt honey bees. And (from this point forward I’m no longer exaggerating) 30 hornets can murder 10,000 bees. This one, I was soon to find out, was on the hunt.

At this point, I still wasn’t certain of the insect’s identity, so I followed it to the garden. It was not a nice garden; granted, the bushes and trees were, like other bushes and trees, fine; but the space between was an indecipherable network of shimmering silk. Droplets of rainwater trailed from leaf ends to tightrope threads, down one and then the next, to bump, but not to disturb, the statues that were the Joro Spiders. Like bees, these spiders are striped: yellow, black, but also with a bit of red. But more than bees, their heads resemble human skulls. If you’re familiar with Skulltulas from Zelda, you’ll know what I mean. True to Japan, these spiders are large. They’re also cousins of the golden orb web; thus their silk is nylon strong. Of this garden, there wasn’t a space left unchecked; their traps covered every square inch.

Still, somehow, as if it had every web memorised, the hornet bobbed and weaved between them, searching the trees and the bushes, yet never tripping the wires that would’ve certified its death. By now I was more intrigued than afraid, waiting, hoping for a battle between two large and poisonous creatures – perhaps more than two, given the sheer infinity of rain-washed spiders that graced the air like Christmas ornaments.

This hornet gained its respect with every dodge of web, every start-and-stop, each decision to fly under rather than through. But the suzumebachi is an assassin; what else did I expect? By now I was sure of its calibre; though, in case there were remaining doubts, it landed on a branch to flaunt its size, its orange black jacket, its quarter-inch-long stinger. It was clear now: the thing was hunting for bees not unlike the one that eluded death (although, as we learned, wished it were dead) moments before.

Soon, like the honey bee before it, the hornet took to the air again and flew on. And the search for 10,000 bees continued.

Some more facts: When one of these hornets finds a hive, it drops a beacon in the form of pheromones. Doing so summons all other hornets within several kilometres. There's a raid, and after having their fill, they dismember the bees’ bodies and take their parts to feed to their hornet larvae. Pleasant.

But here’s where it gets cool. The Japanese honey bees (specifically them, not other countries’ honey bees) have adapted. When a hornet pays them a visit, they enshroud it in a blanket woven of 100% bee. In fact, it’s more like an electric blanket, because - hear this - they beat their wings so fast that it heats the centre of the blanket to exactly 47 degrees Celsius (one degree above that which hornets can withstand), cooking the hornet! The bees, meanwhile, are content up to 50 degrees. Crazy, right?

Right, so that’s where the story ends, because then I walked up the stairs to my apartment and did boring things like have a shower and iron shirts. Things totally unrelated to the title of this blog post. But, um, the cliff hanger ending is… let’s see here.

"This was but my first encounter. It would not be my last."

Good enough?

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At School I am Matt-sensei, but you can call me Tatami-san

As I sit at my staff room desk, writing this blog and sipping iced coffee, throngs of school children bottleneck at thresholds in their eagerness to die in the summer heat and have their corpses carried away by suzumebachi (Japanese hornets, or, literally translated, sparrow bee, because, you know, their size). Really, though, they’re preparing for sports day.

View of Gotsu from the aquarium

As a sidenote, these hornets, which I have had multiple pleasures of seeing, murder 40 people in Japan each year, and they hospitalise far more. So, I’ve no idea why these children are so eager. But this is a sidenote.

Today is my first day; I taught my first class; and I write for the first time on this blog in two years. I don’t mean to remain on this blog (a new site is in the works), but I can no longer not write. I’ve been itching to write – and yet not writing – for five weeks! Why would anyone do this to themselves? It’d be like, I dunno, having a hot coffee instead of an iced coffee right now. The word is masochistic.

Well, not all the time. This room, for instance, is air conditioned. As is every room. They can’t not be; we’d all be dead. Here in mid-year Japan, air-conditioned spaces are like bubbles of life, and venturing outdoors is a mission of negotiation – that is, negotiating one’s way to the next nearest bubble. Cars are moving bubbles: we thank God for moving bubbles.

Fortunately, the teachers here are lovely. They showed me the fridge, the iced coffee inside the fridge, the glasses in which to pour the iced coffee inside the fridge – for, as well as life bubbles, a man needs his coffee.

“Kohi-ga daisuki-desu.” This means I love coffee. I say it when introducing myself. There have been a lot of introductions; and afterwards a lot of people asking me what my hobbies are. I lie: I say writing, movies, and making strange decisions like going to Japan to teach kids how to English. My actual hobbies are bowing and yoroshiku onegaishimasing (nice to meet you, ing). Here’s a fact: everyone in Japan has the same two hobbies.

And there seems to be an art to bowing – a technique, like nailing a harmony, or knowing how far to turn the steering wheel so as to remain on the road yet not converge with that obnoxious cyclist. There’s a sense of pride when you do so successfully. A bloody mess when you don’t.

In my apartment, which is large in width but small in depth, much bowing has been had. A refusal to bow means a head-butt to the doorframe. But what my apartment lacks in height it more than compensates in square metres and cheap rent. Just one of the perks of rural Japan.

But rural Japan isn’t like rural New Zealand. New Zealand’s towns and small cities are devoid of life, their deathly silence broken only by the occasional baaing of a sheep. Japan has – how do I word this – people. Moving figures. These moving figures have jobs, drive cars, occupy aisles at grocery stores. They unload coinage at vending machines and make pedestrian crossings relevant again.

The highways in between cities are also different. Unlike New Zealand’s vast spaces of nothingness where featureless hills fold over each other like golden oceans caught in a frame (okay, when I put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad), Japan has variety. Countryside and civilisation are unified; townships are spread out; nature is lush and diverse. And the ever-changing terrain necessitates extravagant infrastructure. Countless mountains mean countless tunnels, and countless rivers mean countless bridges. Simultaneously, Japan is both city and wild.

Also countless are the aforementioned vending machines. Ah, but I’ll save food for next time; the kids are going to the gym for a lecture on school cleaning. And I’ve a mind to follow them.

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How to tackle any English essay question

--UPDATE-- 
I've made a new site dedicated solely to teaching academic writing! Click here to check it out! Every week you'll find a new tutorial, and every tutorial will be easy to read and easy to learn. I'm also writing an ebook that I'll give away free to anyone who subscribes. I hope the site proves useful!
Sadly, I will probably no longer be updating this site. But the new site is better. In every way. 

In my template for how to write an English essay, I used a rather straight forward essay question, i.e. 'Show how a character in a text presents a main theme'. This is a rather basic essay question, perhaps too basic; and while the structure of an essay may be easy for you, the essay questions you're told to answer might not be. In fact, if you read that last post, you were probably sitting there screaming, "But my essay question has nothing to do with character! And worse, it has nothing to do with theme! GIVE ME WHAT I WANT!"

So I wrote this post as well. It's really long.

Important: main theme, main idea, central idea, author's purpose, and all other such phrases mean the same thing. Feel free to put them into the 'theme' box.

To start, you should know that one of the most important rules for writing an English essay is that you should connect your essay question with a main theme, even if your essay question doesn't contain the words 'main theme'.

Why:

1. The goal in any essay is to show how something in the text conveys something relevant to society.
2. Themes are relevant to society.
3. Use a theme.

Q: What's a theme?
A: A theme is a recurring idea in a text, such as courage, discrimination, or something a little more specific, like kingship vs tyranny. (Hint: if you aren't sure what themes are present in your text, google them.)

In short, no matter your question, always talk about theme (with tight reference to the text) for the sake of making your text relevant. Make sense?

Let's pretend you've been given the following question:

First things first: substitute specific details for the general ones in your essay question.

The tricky part about this question lies in those last two words: 'surprised you'. Ugh.

Don't worry. It's easy. All you have to do is replace those dumb words with the reason that Lennie's death surprised you (even if, in truth, you weren't all that surprised).

Not all reasons are useful. Here are some examples:

GOOD reasons:
1. Lennie's death surprised me because it exposed the predatory nature of mankind.
2. Lennie's death surprised me because it reinforced the punishing nature of life on earth.

BAD reasons:
1. Lennie's death surprised me because it was unexpected.
2. Lennie's death surprised me because he killed Curly's wife by accident, and the others should forgive him.
2. Lennie's death surprised me because he was my favourite character. Sniffle.

There's a very important difference between a good reason and a bad reason. Good reasons, you'll notice, are themes! Bad reasons are not themes, and they trap you into talking about something that nobody cares about. Pick a GOOD reason, and you'll see that the words 'surprised you' have been conveniently substituted for a theme. Magic!

Note: even though the essay question doesn't contain the words 'main theme' or 'main idea' or whatever, that doesn't mean you can't discuss a theme. And if you can discuss a theme (which is always), you should discuss a theme. Why? Because a theme makes your essay, and the text, relevant to society. It answers a sort of "Why does this essay matter?"-type question, which is a very important question to answer.

You might be thinking, "But my teacher said to 'stick to the essay question'. Isn't talking about theme, when 'theme' wasn't specifically mentioned, bad?"

Nope! By talking about theme, you're simply answering the essay question - whatever it is - in the way it was designed to be answered. It's an essay, remember, not a plot summary.

Think about it. If your essay question didn't state the words, "With reference to a text you've studied..." would that mean "don't reference a text you've studied"? Of course not. You'd fail every time - EVERY TIME - if you avoided referencing a text.

"Yeah, all right," you say, "so that question wasn't so bad. But there are worse ones!"
And you're right; there are worse ones. Let's take a look at one of them.

Such a stupid question, right? Who cares? (The person who hands out grades, that's who.)

It's difficult even to substitute stuff; but don't worry, you don't need to. All you have to do is describe a main incident and how that incident shaped future events. Then, explain what that shaping of events meant for the text as a whole (but secretly with reference to a theme).

To do this, it's important to remember why you're writing this essay. You're writing this essay to make a point that readers should care about. In this sense, it's kind of like writing a persuasive speech, or having an argument with your mum. You're right, they're wrong. Prove it.

So, for an essay to work, you need to have something that the marker should care about, and you need to know why they should care about it. In the first essay question (above), the marker isn't going to care that Lennie is your favourite character, but they are going to care that John Steinbeck used Lennie's death to convey a theme. This theme is a much better foundation for your essay, rather than, "Uh, he was my favourite character."

It works the same for the second question. With regards to the shaping of future events, the marker isn't going to care that the death of a mouse led to the death of a man, but they are going to care if John Steinbeck used this death of mouse/man to show something, like, I don't know, a theme.

Look at the question again. It's an annoying question because it doesn't look theme-able. But to make it theme-able, all you need to do is apply that unspoken question I revealed earlier. "Why does it matter?" This is the underlying question that any essay question is and isn't asking you. You need to answer it because it makes your essay relevant to society. I keep saying that.

Anyway, the answer to the question "why does it matter?" is this:
It (the shaping of future events) matters because it presents a theme (or themes). It impacts the text as a whole because it helps the text present the theme. And it's this theme which you can use to relate the text to society.

In other words, what the essay question is really saying is this:

Admittedly, this is a trickier essay question to manage than one of those 'character to theme' or 'setting to theme' or 'relationship to theme' ones. So, below you'll find an essay I prepared earlier (It will help if you've read the book, Of Mice and Men). In it, I chose to a) describe the incident that changed the course of future events first, and then b) explain the themes presented from the impact that this change had on the text as a whole.

Note: This (a) then (b) process is recommended when answering two-part questions such as this one. It's also recommended that you answer the essay question in the order that it's given. Do the describing, then do the explaining. (If your essay question just says 'explain' or 'analyse' or 'discuss', then don't worry about describing anything.)

Here's the essay:

(Unsure about how to structure an English essay? Click here)

At the heart of every essay is a message to society. In other words, you get marks for making the text relevant to today. The easiest way to make a strong case for why your text is relevant to today is through theme. Therefore, theme-ify your essay question. Next, find proof from your text (examples - ideally with quotes and/or techniques). Finally, explain how your proof is evidence of your theme.

© Matthew Ferri 2014 (no plagiarising)

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