Extracts from
A Teachers Guide
to Crystal Coffin
(for Teachers and Students)
Free to download or copy for educational purposes only
© Anita Bell, 2002.
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Extract from page 1:
Crystal Coffin – A Teacher’s Guide
Welcome to the inner world of Crystal Coffin, to the plots within plots and the thoughts behind thoughts. Never before has learning the finer points of English been more tailored to suit you, the teacher of the modern student.
In this short FREE downloadable booklet, you will find a host of quotes, tips and insider information about Crystal Coffin that you won't find anywhere else. Use Crystal Coffin and the Teachers' guide to share studies with your students in the following topics: grammar, symbolism, metaphors and a host of other literary devices through a modern action packed thriller.
Set deep in current world events and written by Australia's favourite debt busting mum (who bought her first property when she was 16, retired aged 26 and became a bestseller by showing other people to do the same) Crystal Coffin is a similarly ground-breaking novel, which can also be used to coach aspects of modern history, world politics, goal setting, research skills, the power of individuality and a positive attitude as well as the use of mathematics in plotting creative English.
So now, students can have a modern action-packed thriller with all the ‘literary stuff’, in a way that should make the studies fun and rewarding. Read on to find out how…
Extract from page 15 :
Symbolism
… a study of the complex 'crystalline' nature of symbolism from the novel. By now you know what the crystal coffin really is. But did you ever stop to consider how the symbolism of it works on many levels? For example:
Imagine a crystal, diamond in shape. Each point around the three dimensional diamond provides a pinnacle to the overall structure. And each facet (the flat face between points) is the bond which holds a subset of three points in strong but invisible connection with each other. So while there does exist a single foundation point upon which all the others must form their relationships, no single point can exist as a diamond by itself. It takes up to 57 multiple subsets of three points, where each point is part of another subset of three points that are all trying to pull each other in a different direction - and so it is with the characters of Crystal Coffin.
Locklin may well be the central character, but all main characters share a strong invisible bond with their own opposing forces. At times, the strengths of good or evil forces are disproportionately stronger, just as in crystalline structures where some facets are distorted longer at one end by the forces of one point which may be 'stronger' than the other two.
Now consider that our crystalline structure is not in the shape of a diamond, but more in the shape of a rhomboid - like a coffin - and you should instantly sense the kind of fears and forces that are at work in each facet of the story. The shape of the coffin is also important on many levels. For example:
- At the 'head and shoulders end' of a symbolic coffin, the three opposing forces of good (being Locklin, the Police and the Army who oppose each other inside their own subset) are combined obtusely in opposition to the evil of Fletcher Corp, which is a force pulling them all together at the 'feet' end of the symbolic coffin. They are each kept distanced from their own goals by the long sided forces of fear and conscience.
- The three longer sides of evil can also be considered to be Fletcher Corporation on one side, the militia on the other, with the furthest and smallest 'feet end' threat being from the buyers that Fletcher deals with at the end.
Extract from Summary of symbolism
- Locklin, Nikki and Parry are all carrying symbolic coffins on their shoulders of people who have died, effecting them deeply.
- Crystal symbolises the fragility of their coping skills and suggests that the events of the story as it unfolds will either shatter lives or add value to them depending on which path the characters choose.
- The crystal coffin is part of the murder weapon that killed Nikki’s mum. This is a religious observation that churches can either shatter lives leaving nothing but coffin fodder, or they can rebuild lives from shattered pieces – as Parry personifies when he orders the crystal church to be reconstructed. Taking that further, you know that lives will never be perfect once shattered. There will always be cracks.
- The word crystal is played on in each scene where important developments ‘crystalise’ for main characters.
- The coffin encapsulates the fears of each character and the desperate fate that awaits them if they cannot overcome the grief they all bear.
- The coffin is also the trick Nikki uses to overcome her personal grief – by laying the memories of her family to rest every night by way of the angels she wears in memory of her lost family.
- It’s also the trick she teaches Parry to comfort him in the loss of his daughter, with the added important lesson that it doesn’t matter if the coffin is made of crystal, glass or plastic, the principal is just the same… This has many underlying meanings, including that: it’s not what you’re made of that matters, it’s what you do with your life; wealth is not materially dependent, it’s what’s in your heart and how you view the world that matters; and no matter how you set out to solve a problem, when you start putting all the pieces of it into one ‘box’, you can often see right through a solution (i.e. the solution may be right in front of you, but you can't see it until you have enough pieces.)
- At the end when Locklin rings Nikki, the coffin is still in his saddlebag, wrapped so the lid is partially kept open by the wrappings so it wont break. He asks her to close it for him, to bring closure to that part of his life. In doing so, she is doing the same for herself and indirectly for Detective Parry.
Other sections to be discussed in the teachers' guide include:
(REMINDER: If you need these or any other topics discussed for educational purposes soon, please let me know via my guestbook on my webpage and I'll try to help you asap.)
- Mathematics in Creative writing - using geometry to explore inter-relationships between characters, eliminate extraneous characters and find missing ones.
- The Optimism / Pessimism Debate in Young Adult Fiction
- Homo-fictitious: A study of other characters
- Author versus Characters, a war of words.
- Fundamental Devices - Nouns, verbs and adjectives and their role in this modern novel.
- Punctuation and grammar - more important than ever.
- Grammar and advanced literary tools (e.g. Alliteration, Assonance and Resonance; Similes and Metaphors; Adjectival and other attributive phrases; Poetic licence, rhythm and style.)
- An Appendix of exercises and project topics for students, written as if asked by the main character Locklin. For example: Exploring the Missing Scene - a discussion on the three scenes which are missing between the prologue and chapter one. This includes a brief analysis of why the scenes were never written for creative and logistic purposes. This section also invites students to write extracts from these scenes for themselves as an exercise in creative writing and an opportunity to become interactive with characters who constantly keep secrets even from their own authors.