Edusites Guide | How to Deal with Context Effectively

What It Is: And What It Isn’t

The Examination Boards make clear their ‘take’ on context which starts life in the DfE curriculum order of 2013: under the heading ‘reading comprehension and reading critically’ there are the following bullet points:

• literal and inferential comprehension: understand a word, phrase or sentence in context
• critical reading: identify the theme and distinguish between themes; support a point of view by referring to evidence in the text; using understanding of writers’ social, historical and cultural contexts to inform evaluation…of the text.

So we have context in its generally understood sense: ‘parts that precede and follow a word or passage and fix its precise meaning’ (OED) in other words its place in the scheme of things: and in the sense it has come to have in literary rubrics, ‘circumstances’. As described here by ‘social, cultural, historical’.

It is the latter which is actually examined and is mainly the subject of this guide but at the same time it is important to remember a former, more general sense of the word which is a if not the critical part of reading, deciphering and responding to texts, especially unseen texts.

The golden rule is never to forget that we are dealing, always, with ways of responding to literary texts. There is no call for knowledge or information that is outside the text itself. Far too many candidates seem to believe that bolting on a paragraph here about the alleged history of any given period or a paragraph there about the writer’s early life will gain credit and can be a substitute for unremitting focus on the words on the page.

To take a straightforward example, consider this passage from Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (copyright author, reproduced for educational purposes).

At that moment a young man came into the bunk house; a thin young man with a brown face, with brown eyes and a head of tightly curled hair. He wore a work glove on his left hand, and, like the boss, he wore high-heeled boots.

“Seen my old man?” he asked.

The swamper said, “He was here jus’ a minute ago, Curley. Went over to the cookhouse, I think.”

“I’ll try to catch him,” said Curley. His eyes passed over the new men and he stopped. He glanced coldly at George and then at Lennie. His arms gradually bent at the elbows and his hands closed into fists. He stiffened and went into a slight crouch. His glance was at once calculating and pugnacious. Lennie squirmed under the look and shifted his feet nervously. Curley stepped gingerly close to him.

“You the new guys the old man was waitin’ for?”

“We just come in,” said George.

“Let the big guy talk.”

Lennie twisted with embarrassment.

George said, “S’pose he don’t want to talk?”

Curley lashed his body around. “By Christ, he’d gotta talk when he’s spoke to. What the hell are you gettin’ into it for?”

“We travel together,” said George coldly.

“Oh, so it’s that way.”

George was tense and motionless. “Yeah, it’s that way.”

Lennie was looking helplessly to George for instruction.

“An’ you won’t let the big guy talk, is that it?”

“He can talk if he wants to tell you anything.” He nodded slightly at Lennie.

“We jus’ come in,” said Lennie softly.

Curley stared levelly at him. “Well, nex’ time you answer when you’re spoke to.” He turned towards the door and walked out, and his elbows were still bent a little.

George watched him out, and then he turned back to the swamper. “Say, what the hell’s he got on his shoulder? Lennie didn’t do nothing to him.”

The old man looked cautiously at the door to make sure no one was listening. “That’s the boss’s son,’ he said quietly.”

To understand and articulate the context we need to look closely at the text. Its place in the scheme of the book is that it is, as it were, Act Two Scene Two. It follows the awkward conversation with the boss who Candy insists is a ‘nice fella’’ and is followed by his warning about Curley and the entry of Curley’s wife into the bunkhouse.

This is very important but not, however, what will be directly rewarded by the mark scheme.

What will be rewarded, as above, is ‘show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written.’

The scene presents a confrontation between the powerful (Curley, the boss’s son, established straightaway); and the powerless (the others who can be fired or worse without appeal or recourse of any kind.) This is not a familiar social context in the 21st century. We might want to note that Curley has not and does not expect to have authority or any kind of consent or agreement from the others: that is the role of Slim, elsewhere in the novel.

The confrontation is developed in the context of physical size (much more familiar) and the assumption of status (also, sadly, familiar.) Curley sees Lennie as a challenging potential victim whose defeat in a fight would be justified and bring him approbation because of the disparity in their physical sizes. We note that Curley wears ‘high heeled boots’ and we already have a detailed picture of Lennie’s physical dimensions.

The linguistic context then (and predictably for this novel) becomes one of animal predator and prey: Curley ‘stiffened and went into a slight crouch’. Lennie ‘squirmed’ and ‘twisted’ showing Curley’s instinct to bully and show off: and also perhaps the causes of that.

So that the atmosphere and context are ones of fear, anxiety, insecurity and inequality: and so on.

Whether or not that applied to John Steinbeck’s experience of farm work or his background or his married life is entirely irrelevant.

The context comes from the text. Examiner Tip