Practice IOC 2 (Royal Beatings)

Practice IOC:
https://youtu.be/U7NkiAN4Uhk

Practice IOC #2 (Boys and Girls)

https://soundcloud.com/pratik-chaudhari-7/practice-ioc-2

Passage is one from Boys and Girls on practice IOC test.

Welcome to the final year of he.. senior year!!!

So the final first week of school has just gone by like a strong gust. It sure did hit me hard in the face, but thank the heavens, because boy was I prepared for it. There were definitely some boring classes... but English was not amongst them. In fact, I began to realise the importance of literature through our renewed focus of literature in class.
We started off by reviewing the purpose of studying literature. Literature is a form of art, just like drawing, painting and music. It is stringing together words and sentences in order to make a new world: be it mystic or realistic. This new world brings the entire reader community under one roof: a common ground for understanding each other. Through our fictional conversations with authors, we are able to relate our lives to the author's feelings and thoughts. Literature not only improves our conventional 'use of language', but also rather increases our emotional understanding of each other. We are able to comprehend one another, which leads to a harmonious existence of the human race.
Next, we started to focus on our main topic for this unit: Women's literature. Mr. Michael posed an intriguing question to us: What is women's literature. There were definitely some quite good definitions thrown around. Women's literature can be considered as one of those new worlds that brings the readers under one roof. It tells a story through the perspective of a female, and hopes to form a common understanding between the author and the reader, of the social problem that is gender inequality. It may also lead to a conversation about other topics, such as the construction of a female identity. These are quite different from the stories written by female authors though; some of these cannot be classified as women's literature.

Even though Munro doesn't identify as a feminist writer, her work has had a lot of impact on the social sphere. She considers herself to be a private person, and just wanted to be free of the daily life that society had imposed on her. Due to this, her stories, even though not intended to be feminist, have had a considerable impact on modern social structure. Her books are one of the very few that provide a meaningful insight into the life of women. The thoughts one goes through as a female are remarkably conveyed through Munro's beautiful short stories. The subtle symbols and themes that shine through her stories stimulate the mind to form connections that someone with other thought processes might never think of. Through the use of powerful metaphors and other such literary devices, Munro has developed literature that even though is contextually not relatable, but gives rise to a new female identity.
Munro's work itself has given me a lot to relate to, even though I'm not female. It's like Munro has left these gaps in her stories that are meant to be filled in by the reader, like an actually conversation. I find myself swapping the genders of certain characters and thinking about how it would make a different ending to the story. Personally, when I think of certain stories, I start thinking of related scenarios which consist of me and the people around me. I think of how the social structure, appearing very flexible on the outside, is still very rigid on the inside. One day, hopefully, that will change.

My CAP Project: Option A

Theme:  Isolation

Style: Indirect narration

Context:  A teen from a very poor background has just hit it big in football. He has secured a record transfer fee to his favourite club. Coming from Colombia, he has now bought himself and his family a big estate in England, and lives a comfortable life until a standstill arrives in both his personal and footballing life.

Characters:

1. Javier Vasquez: The protagonist. He has been playing football since he was seven. Javier’s dream was to play for Chelsea F.C., and lead his team to world cup glory. He is currently 23 years of age and plays for Chelsea F.C.’s reserve team. He is working hard to get to the first team. He is living with his mother, Loretta in a big apartment in London, and is eternally grateful to her. His dad passed away when he was a child. Now, both of them live a peaceful life in the beautiful city of London.
2. Loretta Vasquez: The protagonist’s mother. She had been in Colombia when she had Javier, and was leading a prosperous life. All of a sudden, her husband, Carlos passed away in the middle of a shootout. She had to then live out the rest of her time in Colombia working as a waitress to support Javier’s schooling and passion for football. Her sister supported Javier when they had to go to England for Javier’s trials.
3. Sam Stewart: Javier’s model girlfriend. She has been rich all her life, and lives the high life in London.

Extended metaphor: Football as a game of life.

Symbols:

• Teams symbolise families. Everyone in your team is very close to you. However, there is always a risk of everyone falling out, and the family disbanding. Your belief in your team, just like your belief in your family, gives meaning to your life and a goal to work towards. 
• Training symbolises hard work. Just like one trains for success in football, one would work hard in order to make their dreams come true. 
• Superiors, the coaches and managers, are just like the elders in a family. They would give you advice and help to succeed and fulfil your ambition.

Plot:
The story starts off with Javier at home, getting news of his tryouts in England. His mother somehow gathers the money he’d need, from her family and friends, and somehow sends him to England.

In England, Javier starts working very hard and soon gets into his first team, Bolton Wanderers in England. Javier then plays very well throughout the season, developing a lot of friends and enemies along the way. His team becomes like his family, and the fans always want to see him play. Due to his talents, he attracts enemies as well. Thankfully, nothing bad happens to Javier and het gets a transfer offer from his boyhood club, Chelsea F.C.

Soon, Javier moves to London with his mother and starts playing for Chelsea. When he gets his sign-on bonus, Javier decides to invest in a big mansion for his mom and himself. His mother becomes uncontrollably happy. Everything seems to be going well. His teammates love him, and so do the fans. The hard work, aka training, that he put back at Leicester came into handy.

Eventually, Javier starts dating an English model named Sam Stewart. They meet at a part organised by one of his teammates, and instantly fall in love. Not too long after (in around eight months time), they decide to get married. Javier is still playing well, however, his coach tells him that he could do better. Sam and Javier then end up having a baby, and things at home become more busy. His mom helps Sam take care of the baby, as Sam is not at all used to doing such things.

One day, Javier decides to go to one of the parties hosted by the same old teammate where Javier and Sam had met. Javier ends up seeing Jack, one of his rivals at Leicester, with Sam, and gets into a fight with him. Drunk and angry, Javier ends up hitting Jack so hard that Jack gets a cardiac arrest. He is then taken to jail, and ends up being deported from the country. A lot of his financial property is confiscated by the police, and the rest of the money goes to Sam as compensation for their divorce. During all of this, Loretta, Javier’s mother ends up getting a heart attack due to the adverse conditions they face.

Javier is now back in Colombia. He is without the three most valuable females in his life: his mother, Sam, and his baby daughter. Isolated from everyone else, Javier goes insane and is eventually kept at a sanatorium for the rest of his life.

Themes: 

• Isolation: The theme of isolation is prevalent throughout the story in a very subtle manner. Javier, just like all other human beings, fears isolation. He brings his mother with him, and when he starts performing bad, Javier starts dating someone. He is has strong auto-phobia, but fails to recognise it. When he finds Sam dating somebody else, he almost kills his old teammate Even so, when things eventually fall apart, he is torn to pieces. Just as any normal human being would do, he goes insane and is put into a sanatorium for the rest of his life. This is included to draw a parallel of Javier’s situation to real life. Everyone is afraid of isolation, even introverts and people who tend to be loners. Humans are social beings and need each other. Just like you would go insane if you lost all of your family in a very short time, Javier lost his meaning in this world and lost his sanity, just due to one of the most often misunderstood but highly dangerous things in this world: isolation.
• A second chance for females: In this story, the females always get a second chance. Be it Javier’s girlfriend, or his mom, they have always had second chances as long as they were living. Even Javier’s baby was made to be a daughter, just to maintain this theme. If Javier and Sam’s gender in the story are swapped, it would turn out very different. This theme not only applies to this story, but also the real world. Females always have second chances. In a modern relationship, females have the position of more power. If the male does something wrong, there is no second chance; only a straight path to the exit door. On the other hand, if a female slips up, the male would probably try to work things out. This is a very vague example and is not true a lot of the time. But it proves that females are getting the stronger position in a relationship that is supposed to be respected and maitained equally by both genders. Indirectly and very subtly, the story asks the question: Is feminism getting women on the same stage as men, or higher?