'So where does love come in? It's not strictly necessary, is it?' What are Barnes' views of the role of love in history and in this novel? [A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters]

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‘So where does love come in? It’s not strictly necessary, is it?’ What are Barnes’ views of the role of love in history and in this novel?         In this novel, Barnes makes little reference to love in any of the ‘main’ chapters of the novel, however he explores the concept in some depth in the ‘parenthesis’ chapter. He seems to display very confused and contradictory views of love, his opinion oscillating wildly as the chapter progresses.         Julian Barnes, at the beginning of the chapter, starts to ponder on the necessity of love. He begins by listing various languages’ words for ‘I love you’, and muses upon the concept of tribes without words for the saying. ‘Or have they all died out?’ he wonders. This seems to be idle thought, in which Barnes merely hypothesises that, perhaps, without love humanity cannot survive. However, he later expands upon and contradicts this idea.        ‘Our love does not help us survive… Yet it gives us our individuality,
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our purpose.’ States Barnes. It is perhaps worth noting the conclusive tone evident in this phrase; here, he doesn’t pose a question, but instead offers an answer. This appears to imply that he has a certain confidence in his answer, that he has reached a personal conclusion in his mind. Therefore, one can read into it that Barnes decisively views love ass being superfluous to survival in practical terms, but is necessary to make us ‘human’, and as a driving force.        The idea that fulfilling ‘human’ lives requires love, in Barnes’ view, is supported with the phrase ‘if love didn’t ...

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The Quality of Written Communication poses no problems in the presentation of grammar, spelling and punctuation. All have been used expertly to help shape the candidate's meaning and convey their ideas accurately and precisely.

The Level of Analysis here is good in various parts and in fact provide some very interesting and insightful thoughts about Julian Barnes' novel. The candidate makes sensitive and appreciative comments about the idea of love according Barnes in his book 'The History of the World' whilst commenting explicitly on the ambiguity of his thoughts and some of the many interpretations of these thoughts. There are some parts that see the candidate merely interpreting the novel with more easily understandable lexes, most likely unbeknownst to them, and whilst these are excellent interpretation they are not revealing a great deal of analysis and so, were these avoided, this would help the essay be lifted up to the A grade it's only a few marks short of.

The candidate here presents a very good essay which nicely focuses on the question. Their essay structure is effective - taking one chunk of information at a time so to ensure clear and precise cohesion, however there analytical skills require some work. Whilst the answer is exceptionally confident in it's writing style, some of the analysis is not very deep and barely scratches the surface. Elsewhere the analysis is ample and serves the candidate's flair for writing well. For the most-part this makes the essay a good but fairly inconsistent read. To ensure this does not happen, candidates must look into only what they can confidently write at lengths about e.g. writing a lot about a little will garner more marks that spreading your analytical skills thinly over a range of poorly explored ideas.