1. Preparing for your essay
The Simple Gift | YHSC | Year 9

2. Components of an essay Introduction
allows the readers of your essay to understand what you are going to be talking about – this includes the text you are writing about and the general subject matter (themes/ideas) of the topic to which you are responding
must have a contention (main idea) that you are proving throughout your essay
Body paragraphs
Focus on different aspects of the general subject matter and explain in detail how that aspects relates to and supports your contention
must contain at least one brief direct quote
Conclusion
Summarises the points you have made, re-states and reinforces your contention

3. Topics
You need to carefully ‘unpack’ the topic you are given to write about
This means to read it closely, looking for key words that will help you to know what it’s asking you to write about
The words in the topic will be (or will suggest) the key concerns of the text
For example, imagine the topic statement is:
Relationships with others are integral to personal growth and a clear sense of self for the characters in Steven Herrick’s The Simple Gift. Discuss.
What are the key words?
What ideas/themes from the narrative would you ‘discuss’?

4. Planning
As soon as you have the topic, you can begin brainstorming your ideas about the sorts of things you will say in your essay – as many as possible!
Find key words and think of/look up some synonyms for them
Re-state the topic statement in your own words – a few different ways if you can, but at least once
Add to your brainstorm - outline some relevant themes/scenes
Topic practice – To what extent do you think Steven Herrick’s verse novel, The Simple Gift challenges social stereotypes and conventional beliefs about homelessness, education, and family?

5. Chapter 9 – Locks and keys
Celebrating
Billy ecstatic about the way out Old Bill has provided him with a way out of his situation
‘I hugged Old Bill/like I’ve never hugged/a man before’
‘he’d saved my life’
Old Bill, ‘the big grey-haired man’ hugs him back
Then they walk to Wellington Road in ‘the better part of town’, which is ‘up the hill’ where gardens are ‘neat’, trees are ‘orderly’, and fences ‘brightly coloured’
Symbolism – ‘swallows/celebrating a birth’
Swallows
At Wellington Road, Old Bill’s house, they sit on the veranda but don’t go inside
‘watching the swallows/swoop and play’ – indicating freedom, change, new life (nesting)
They reflect on parts of Old Bill’s past – how he has used the veranda for BBQs, how he ‘planted those trees’ and ‘had a dog’
Literal and figurative closing of ‘the door’ when Billy says that Old Bill ‘locked it on March 2nd, 1994’ and only came back ‘occasionally’ ‘to cry, like an old drunk’

6. Chapter 9 – Locks and keys (cont.)
Tremor
Use of the image of shaking hands
Old Bill’s hands shake from ‘the drink/or lack of it’
when he shakes hand with Billy after giving him the key, Old Bill’s ‘hand in [Billy’s]/stops trembling/for a moment’
there is a doubling and comparison effect in this poem – it shows how Billy is helping Old Bill manage in the moment and see a way forward
Locks and keys
Billy needs to tell Caitlin about all that has happened
‘A house seems so …/so …/so adult’
Indication that the arrangement with Old Bill is seen by Billy as temporary, ‘only for a short time/until the welfare/are off my track/and I can decide/what I really want to do’

7. Chapter 9 – Locks and keys (cont.)
Caitlin and the key
Caitlin explains how Billy reveals all the things that have happened since he last saw her
He takes her to Old Bill’s house on Wellington Road – she describes what she sees, ‘a beautiful white timber house/with an old shed/and a huge backyard/of trees’
Also, ‘there’s a king parrot’ – like the injured one Jessie found, nursed back to health, and released
Billy tells her how he and Old Bill sat on the veranda ‘talking/rather than taking the key […]/and turning it in the lock’ because Billy wants to go in with Caitlin
‘We shake hands, and my hand in his stops trembling for a moment.’

8. Questions
In the poem ‘Celebrating’, what changes in the environment does Herrick describe to show readers that Billy’s life is about to become much better thanks to Old Bill?
Why do Billy and Old Bill not enter the house in the poem ‘Swallows’?
What is the comparison being made in the poem ‘Tremor’?
In the poem ‘Locks and keys’, why do you think Billy has trouble telling Caitlin his news straight away?
In the poem ‘Caitlin and the key’, how does Caitlin describe the house on Wellington Road?
What makes Caitlin cry in this poem?
Using evidence from ‘Caitlin and the key’, why does Billy wait to go into the house with Caitlin?