Chinese Cinderella analysis

Team 1

1. ‘full of foreboding’ Alliterated phrase emphasizes Yen Mah's sense of anticipation thus arousing melancholy as we've already been informed of her terrible life but sympathise with her for what's about to happen.
2. ‘my heart was full of dread’ Repeated metaphor (there are three figures of speech about her 'heart') adds tension and makes us see Yen Mah as genuine; 'full of dread' and 'gave a giant lurch' implies how intimidating the father is. Learning of this estrangement, we feel sympathetic for her growing up without parents.
3. Melodramatic simile emphasizes the tension she felt entering described 'as in a nightmare', so different to how a father-daughter relationship should be, thus highlighting the distance.
4. After feeling ‘overwhelmed’ by the thought of being summoned to his room – which shows her intense emotions, she has no choice but to obey.
5. ‘I had been summoned…. why?’ Tension-building question and ellipsis creates a sense of uncertainty and tension and makes us curious to read on.
6. ‘I breathed a small sigh of relief….is this a giant ruse?’ How awful must it be to not trust your own father, to think it must be a trick? That something nasty was about to happen?
7. ‘Dare I let my guard down?’ – this rhetorical question suggests the sense of doubt she has in herself and in the father who has made her doubt, making us feel even sadder for her.
8. ‘Is it possible? Am I dreaming? Me the winner? – this triplet of questions in the present tense highlights her feeling of disbelief, from a girl wondering who had died to being a success – for the very first time.
9. questions – creating tension;

Team 2
10. ‘Sit down!...Don’t look…take a look’ – these imperatives sound like a command but are friendly in tone
11. Is it ironic that the next paragraph is about a man, C.Y. Tung, who discovers Adeline is a prizewinner before the father?
12. ‘So I was quite pleased to tell him that you are my daughter.’ – those of you who know the book know how huge that admission is: he tells him that he is pleased of his daughter.
13. ‘Well done!’ – praise indeed! Short, dramatically punctuated and sincerely meant.
14. ‘He looked radiant’ – this short sentence makes the positive nature of her win very dramatic.
15. ‘For once, he was proud of me’ – the emphasis here being literally for the very first time since she was born.
16. ‘My whole being vibrated with all the joy in the world’ – How must it feel to be praised by your father for the very first time? Not to feel like the one who killed your own mother and treated like dirt all the time – this feeling must have been intense and euphoric.
17. ‘How come you won?’ – there is a sense of incredulity here, a sense of disbelief.
18. sense of distance when describing home – arouses pity;

Team 3
19. ‘Well, the rules…no other competitors?’ – you realise here she is being quite modest, humble and quite instantly likeable; the father thinks so too.
20. ‘Please father….May I go to England?’ – feeling emboldened and brave from the win and sensing her father might be more open to suggestion she puts the question to him she wants to ask the most.
21. ‘my heart gave a giant lurch’ – a sense of shock and amazement her father might say yes; this is everything she has wished for.
22. ‘How marvellous it was simply to be alive!’ – the sense of euphoria, of intense delight is alien to her – she feels something incredible here as her Cinderella moment might come true.
23. ‘Going to England is like entering heaven.’ – this simile is bigger than it looks. Yes, it means she will have freedom, it will be amazing, but the wording here turns this into a day of judgement (see Holy of Holies) in which her father can send her to heaven or to hell.
24. ‘Writer!’ he scoffed. – the irony here is that we are reading her writing. She is most famous for being an author.
25. ‘Who will read your writing?...don’t you think the native English speakers can write better than you?’ – so, he becomes firm again; he dismisses this and she knows this temperament, staying silent out of fear of contradiction and reverence.
26. ‘You will go….you will go…..you will specialise in obstetrics.’ Father is used to speaking in imperatives, commands.
27. figurative language (simile and metaphor), especially about cosmos – heaven, stars, dawn, reaching, etc – builds the hope and tension;

Team 4
28. ‘Women will always be having babies…..you will learn….that’s a foolproof profession for you. Don’t you agree?’ – well, she can’t really disagree! Second, he’s right: women will always be having babies. Third….is this a sign he has forgiven her for killing his wife/her mother? Surely there must be a sense of forgiveness, of ‘God’ pronouncing judgement and allowing her to enter heaven? Of atonement for past sins?
29. ‘Agree?….I would study anything he wished.’ Adeline will do anything here to get her to England; it also shows how good and obedient she is.
30. ‘Wordsworth’s poem’ – she is quoting a famous English poet as she wants to go to England.

31. ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive’…yes, the sense is bliss, of intense sweet emotion, but the metaphorical ‘dawn’, of leaving an old life full of misery to ‘heaven’, comparatively, is intensified by the use of italics.
32. ‘Thank you very, very much’ – repetition of very shows how sincere she is about it.
33. dialogue – to bring the characters and situation to life;
34. capital letters – ‘Holy of Holies’ suggests he is god, distant from his all-too-human daughter;
35. build-up of suspense (withheld information by father because he’s avoiding her/he’s evil) in first part.
36. ‘stretch out my hand to reach the stars’ this hyperbole tells us what high hopes she has for her future and builds our sense of hope that she will be determined enough to achieve her dreams by the end of the novel.