Write a descriptive essay in which you capture how the landscape reflects the transition of the seasons. You may choose to include some or all of the seasons in your essay. (2018)
Essay 1
#625Lab. Marked 93/100 by an experienced examiner. You may also like: Complete Guide to Leaving Cert English (€).
Who are we when we are at home? Beneath our dust jackets? To what extent are we shaped by our surroundings, to what extent do we shape them?
Life ends in October, a seemingly strange and somewhat wonderful contradiction to the beginning of my own. Part autumn and part winter, in October I am strong. I challenge the elements to a duel, feel the power at my command against a backdrop of gasping cold air and the knowledge that my birthday is only around the corner. Trees sigh off their leaves in a blazing fire of sunset oranges and warm ochres, crescendoing (M)(L)into a whirlwind and eventually subsiding to a gentler palette of warm browns and smoky reds. This is the season for realising that you really have no clue what you’re doing, who you are or what you want, the season where the morning skies are heartbreakingly beautiful, a stained glass(L) window straight into heaven.
Behind Wicklow Street, like a message on a folded piece of notepaper, there is a place where they sell old vinyls and leather-bound books, every edition of the National Geographic back to 1988 and magazines about rock music. The old book smell emanates from every corner and my hands become edged with remnants of dust that no one remembers. New acquisitions crinkle in their brown paper bag as I walk out into the alleyway, past walls overflowing with concert posters and advertisements for new doughnut shops, into the street where people ask me for money and where there’s no phone reception. “The sky is a pale grey,” I write, “and water reluctantly falls from it.” This is a November in Dublin.
A Tuesday evening, no, night. December. Six o’clock and black as your bedroom at 3am, the middle of a strange nightmare, the events of which you can’t really put your finger on upon waking. Still five days left until we cross the threshold of the 21st, and thank God that’s all there is left. Out of the corner of my eye little jagged tree trunk shadow-ghosts flash threateningly in and out of my field of vision, disappearing when I turn to meet their faces. The cracks in the footpath are amplified by the small orangish light emanating at intervals from lampposts that really should have been replaced years ago. It’s something about the unnerving blackness of the bin’s shadow, a darkness that crawls up your chest and lets you know that, if you let it in, could spread and spread and spread and consume. Voraciously. The moon is following me, constant if ever changing, a contradiction like me and the month of my birth, the watchful guardian who is my bone-white foil to the depth of the darkness. I hurry home.
The increasingly ever-evident trickle of the sand timer announces January. I am greeted by Janus, the two-headed god, looking forwards and backwards, within and without, the new and the old. Misty fog bleaches the world the shade of a Robert Frost poem and it were as if nothing and no one else in the world were real except for my very own self. Floating headlights over my shoulder the only objection to the otherwise pristine secretiveness of the all-encompassing condensation. A curl of steam, visible as its contemporaries outside, drifts up from my mug, my breath at the bus stop that morning. White, paper blank, ready for you to write your story on it. I close shut the blinds and pretend the distant echoes of dead things are not there. As if I am unable to hear them. The dead things, the fox sleeping through winter but not waking up in spring, small shards of ice sparkling like cold diamonds on his fur as he lies on the side of the road.
Outside I am billowed up into the air, an envelope (empty), flitting here and there between pools of light in the day-old snow (harsh, too bright, somehow strangely welcoming). I am, am not, have no mass, no substance. The landscape is noncommittal, refusing to let me know if tomorrow will be any better, if this winter will end soon. I am cold. Shuffling home, looking out of a face that feels like marble, old, cracked bleeding lips. My mother buys me a tiny radiator to put in my room. Things improve.
I am propelled forwards into February, our Act III of the year. The point of no return, the turning point (or so my study schedule hopes), when the order of events means that with one accumulated action things can never be the same again. I understand this, understand it in a way where I am nostalgic for something I am in the midst of, understand it to the very core of my being. I understand it as I sit my final set of practice exams before the real thing, understand it as I commit myself entirely to my goals, understand it in every conversation I have with my peers. Nature agrees with me, as the year melts into March and I see how all of winter’s hard and thus far thankless work begins to show flower buds, which eventually bloom. This is encouraging, I think to myself.
April and May pass by in a blur that surely can’t have been more than a week in length, and before I know it it (L)is June. The weather is beautiful and we are so close. So close. I know several things. I know that July will be a blur of long car journeys sending texts that go nowhere (“No Service”, my phone will complain), grey days spent lying around will be filled with misty rain, the twin of the Atlantic saltwater that loves to rush up my nose and burn the back of my throat, a month leading through the old mossy overgrown path, the one that goes into the church at the end of the world. It will be, I am certain, a summer that is so much more and so much less than it promises to be. The kind of summer that washes the sand and dirt from beneath your fingernails, soaks your clothes and leaves your hair matted with salt and silt. Someday soon after that the stars will come out as the sun goes down. The world will go from the colour of spilled water (used to clean a cobalt blue watercolour paintbrush seconds earlier) to the blue glow of a shadow on a sunny day. You will look back and remember that later everything turned black but how, for that moment, we were still engulfed by the constellations above and all around us. You will remember how there was something about walking up a mountain as the sun went down and the universe was laid out above you that made it seem like everything was right where it should be. It was. And maybe it still is.
After all, October is on her way.
A very well written descriptive piece. Lovely description throughout. Sensual language used. Very much on task in terms of genre. Slight reservation in relation as to what is driving the piece. It comes across as a series of snap shots. More of a smooth transition between sections.
30-P-28
30-C-28
30-L-27
10-M-10
93/100
Essay 2
Suddenly, there comes an evening dimmer than the ones before, bringing with it a crispness that enlists the slow, surreptitious diminishing of the sun to mark the beginning of summer’s expiry. With it, (add punc) gradually ceases the daily slapping of flip-flops across pavements, the clinking of ice cubes against my teeth and the carefree gaiety of week-long getaways to beaches and (with) holiday homes and pool-sides. The sea – now too cold to swim in – warns that I will soon have to cover bare, bronzed arms with scratchy jumpers on evening ambles along the pier, and the (separate into two sentences) smell of sea salt tickles the back of my throat, though no heat radiates from the bounding waves. No towels nor parasols line the shore, and children’s voices can no longer be heard outside my front gate past 8pm, for a school night forbids it. I always wonder if the sun’s rays purposely beam brighter during back-to-school season, desperately gleaming through windows, illuminating classrooms and libraries to cling to summer for as long as they can. I try to savour the last serotinal (serotoninal?) sweetness on my lips too, but eventually accept that the transition of the seasons is inescapable, no different than any other year. Slowly, and then all at once, my carefree energies fizzle into humdrum routine just like a sunset sinks into a faraway horizon, and the ripe autumn days arrive.
As my tan fades, and the freckles across my nose melt into nothing, the days will grow equally as plain. I know that September’s deceptive sun will provide blinding light but no warmth, and I’ll be left with the uncomforting idea (consider rephrasing (eg) uncomfortable knowledge) that a cold, prolonged term of misery is ahead. The wavering uncertainty of the ever-changing weather will unsettle me, as it always does, and as I take a yearly scissors to my chestnut locks, rusty leaves will whoosh off the arching branches over my head and gather in piles under my feet, crunching beneath my navy school shoes as I tread home.(Again very long sentence, two separate activities going on, consider rephrasing) I’ll grasp at summer’s heels by jabbing Airpods into my ears and blasting July’s hits, but the lyrics will feel out of place under the streetlights, fuzzy from fine rain, miles away from the familiar music festivals at which they were born. I’ll settle instead for mellow blues and seasoned jazz, the melodies more melancholic and my heart more wearisome with each day’s darkening of the silver sky above me.
Soon afterwards, the trees will be completely bare, the shelter of their leaves cruelly abandoning me for months. I’ll feel the heaviness of humid air on my eyelids, shoulders and chest, and the burden will spread to my limbs once the seasonal flu claims its yearly consumption of my body. As I struggle through the study-dominated days, November’s flaming poppies will scream at me to put things into perspective, but I’ll instead associate their shrieks with the unfairness and untimeliness of death, and I’ll cry. The clouds will grow blacker and slump lower in the sky, emptying their hard raindrops onto my head and attacking the foggy thoughts in my brain like tiny bullets. Crashes of thunder and strikes of lightning will follow me as I trudge through the thickness, slowly but surely, towards the hustling and bustling of winter.
The hibernal daytimes will be smoky and grey as ever. The sizzling of rashers and sausages at the breakfast table each morning will try its best to distract me from the ominous silence of the pre-Christmas season, but the mornings will only get darker and quieter as I crawl towards the winter solstice. A turning-point, or so I hope. Jack Frost will conceal the blackest nights with a blanket of wispy snow, each new morning erasing the sooty footprints of the night before. I’ll find comfort in the yellow glow of the million fairy lights lining the streets of Dublin city, hoping that those who have left us are celebrating and rejoicing in this brightness, too. Come December 25th, I’ll glut my appetite with crispy potatoes and crumbly turkey stuffing and creamy chocolate truffles, and walk off the humongous meal in the park with my younger cousins, whose eyes will gleam with innocence and amazement at the day’s magic. We’ll return home, cheerful and contented, with the luminescence of the frosted sky illuminating our wonderland, guiding us on our way.
The winter’s delicate snowdrops becoming covered by the ferny foliage of hyacinths, crocuses and daffodils will mark the revival of nature, at last, with the arrival of spring. Jack Frost’s ice sheets will melt into lush, green meadows. As animals retire (emerge, surface) from hibernation, so too will I. I’ll find motivation in the sprightly movement of the world to shake off the rain and snow from the gloomy autumn and winter. With the ascension of the thunderclouds I’ll dust away the cobwebs and make room for a growth within myself that will reflect the vitality of the flowers and plants springing up around me. With everything in its prime and busy as the buzzing bees, I’ll dive into projects with a newfound vigour, the growth surrounding me subconsciously giving me the “green” light to march valiantly towards the summer.
With the ever-accommodating “stretch in the evenings”, I’ll venture out on twilight bike rides under the apricot skies, catching salty drops of perspiration on my lips and allowing my hair to billow out behind me as it catches the April breeze like a kite. My beloved freckles will make a return, peppering themselves across my face like sprinkles on a 99 cone. I’ll complain of the ice-cream van blasting “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic” through its speakers as it rambles around the neighbourhood, but fondly remember the dusks I used to spend playing kick-the-can and longing to hear that very sound as the weather got warmer. The kids next door will be out until dark and accidentally kick about twenty footballs over the hedge, and as I kick them back, I’ll listen for the boing of the springs on their trampoline with tears in my eyes. I’ll realise how close I am to reliving summer again, the lazy dog days under smouldering heat, the feeling of hot sand between my toes, the sea and sky melting into a vast sapphire sheet enveloping me in what I hope will last longer than last time. And as I go back inside to get a peaceful night’s rest before my summer exams, I’ll gaze up at the sky once more, a roseate window straight into heaven, knowing that once the wispy clouds part it will finally be within my reach.
An ambiguous ending which leaves the reader wondering what will be within reach, the summer or perhaps a more final oblivion.
The language and imagery improve as the piece progresses. It may be suggested that to develop the sense of foreboding in the early part of the response, the sentences could be shorter echoing the gloom being felt. Another possibility would be to make the joy of summer more obvious at the outset, then introduce the uneasy feeling of its disappearance. This would give the piece a fine sense of coming full circle with the sounds of the ice cream van or the parasols by the beach ‘framing’ the description.
That said, there is a clear capable command of the English language here, with excellent descriptive and aesthetic language used. The senses are tantalised, Plath’s poppies shriek, and there is a sense of relief with the colloquial ‘grand stretch in the evenings’ of the final section.
P: 28/30
C: 27/30
L:27/30
M:10/10
92/100
Essay 3
See the best bits highlighted in navy.
Summer. My favourite time of the year. Twelve weeks of freedom. Autumn, the season after my favourite season. The gloomy, creepy decline to winter. Winter. The cold, dark, miserable period of time gracefully broken up by Christmas. Spring. The triplet of months in which everyone eagerly awaits the chance to say the word, summer. And before we know it, summer returns.
I wake up from a peaceful sleep, slightly drowsy, after celebrating the beginning of summer. To the left of my bed is my duvet, which made me too uncomfortably sweaty during the humid night. As I walk out into the garden, I can feel the sudden blast of heat in my face. My hands become slightly sweaty. I look up to a clear, empty blue abyss. The warm, soft grass heats the bottom of my bare feet. I can hear the planes flying, every few minutes, the occasional ‘zoom’ breaks up the silence, along with the comforting sound of birds chirping. The trees are effortlessly green, beautifully placed in front of an empty blue sky. Hours later I decide to cycle into town to meet a few friends. I can feel the sun hit my face, on my pores. Maybe its just the day, but the grass looks greener, that one single cloud in the sky looks gracefully whiter, and the tarmac on the road looks a lot darker.
A few weeks later, I attend a music festival in Dublin. I can barely contain my excitement to witness some of the talent that is on offer. It’s Friday, the thirteenth of July. We’re on the 67 bus into Merrion square. The sun penetrates the back of my neck, making me slightly too warm. Dublin city is vibrant, vivacious, filled with people dressed in their carefully thought out festival outfits. Kimonos, glitter-covered faces, bum bags and tinted sunglasses line the streets of Dublin. The sun creates a sharp reflection against the river Liffey. A mixture of fluffy white clouds and a deep blue sky creates the iconic ‘summer’s day’. After a long day filled with jumping, singing, screaming, we, reluctantly, return home. A warm, free, restful 3 months have passed, now on to Autumn. (Excellent description. What makes it so great is how emotionally evocative it is. It’s clear that the author is nostalgic about this treasured memory.)
Autumn, the slow lingering death from the warmth and brightness of summer into the cold and dark winter. Autumn is widely seen as a season of transition, rather than a proper season in its own right. The stage of the year between summer and Christmas. But, I think the contrary. I love the unexpected warm days, the brilliant array of colours, the sunsets.
Although beautiful, atmospheric, I feel autumn brings with it a ‘creepy’ tone. The mysterious mush of golden-brown leaves, as alluring as they are, often reminds me of a ‘horror movie’ setting. Death is a constant reminder during autumn, as there is still the lingering warmth from summer, but there’s always a constant reminder of the cold to come. (Rephrase to avoid unintended repetition: Death has a presence during autumn: the lingering warmth from summer steadily gives way to the impending cold.) The Irish countryside is nothing less than dazzling during the autumnal months. Trees come to life and express their beauty. Mounds of rich, golden leaves form at the base of the tree, resembling a bronze sea. The branches become bare, and the leaves become sparse, almost as a notice that winter is approaching. The whistling of birds is noticeably absent during autumn, the birds have fled to warmer destinations for the winter months. Whistling winds, roaring gusts, lashing rain, all depict the average autumn night.
‘Tis the season of pumpkins, ghosts, fireworks, and it all climaxes on the last day in October. In any suburban housing estate, on the eve of ‘All Saints day”, the streets are crawling with young, ambitious children desperately bidding to collect candy. Houses are serenely lit with pumpkins, emitting a warm orange colour. The sound of children laughing, playing and the occasional firework crackle fills the air. One’s nose would tingle with the smells of wood fire, bonfires, and the gunpowder from the fireworks. (I can’t help but ask you to avoid personal use of fireworks in real life though!)
Alas, the impending ‘winter’, is finally upon us. The winter season is arguably a long build up to Christmas. When the snow arrives – which is usually about 3 months late for us in Ireland – it is easy to be overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and tastes that accompany it. The dark, cold, November mornings are not my favourite, I must admit. The chill of the air runs through my veins as I pour the hot water over the frozen windscreen of the car. The steam hisses and rises violently. The frozen earth crackles as I stand on it, and I can smell the bitterness of the morning frost. The grass is sprinkled with a thin coating of white frost. Water droplets form on top of the frost, creating a soft dew. As I speak, I watch a cloud appear and disappear in front of me. On the ground I can see the faint footprints of my dogs’ tiny paws. There’s not a cloud in the sky, yet its still bitterly cold. The morning sun carefully melts the frost on the leaves of the cherry blossom tree, which appears so dull and lifeless compared to its blossom in the spring. Instead of embracing the pulchritude of this fine winter’s morning, I can only focus on one thing: how cold my ears are!
The Christmas period could almost be a season in its own right. Icicles line the gutters of houses, illuminating the feeling of festivity. Elaborate displays of decorations are a paramount component to the Christmas period. Christmas trees fill every house. They flash and flicker with their gleaming lights. An angel or a star is perched on top, glittering with its flash-silver lustre. The collaboration of lights and bubbles leave me staring in awe at the LED lights.
Transition of the seasons is seamless, but if we really reflect on the differences between them, we would realise how different they really are.
Photo by Angela Compagnone on Unsplash