A Literary Comparison of a Bear's Life and The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

Authors write using sentence structure and word classes to create environment and character in their stories; this essay will be analyzing and evaluating the differences between environment and character in two short stories. It’s A Bear’s Life and The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. This essay will also be discussing how accents and dialect have changed on the BBC from the 1980’s and in previous years, using evidence and references. As well as researching and referencing how social attitudes towards the standard and non-standard English had changed from media influences.

To make a short story sound interesting and keep the reader’s attention, authors must use effect writing to create environment that is suitable for children to understand but still effective enough to allow a child to use their imagination whilst reading the story, for example; “He liked breakfast, but not when it was so messy.” (It’s A Bear’s Life, 2005) This is a simple short sentence that lets the reader know that it is set at breakfast, assumingly in the kitchen, but that the environment is in a mess. This sentence used can also be relatable and create memories for children as they can remember a time when they might have had breakfast with their teddy bear and perhaps getting it dirty. Using small sentences is also found in children’s book. “He liked playing, but not when it hurt.” (It’s A Bear’s Life, 2005) This makes it easier for children to read. Children’s story books also contain a lot of onomatopoeia like “Bang!” and “Crash!” to create sound whether being read out loud or not. Exaggerating short words and sentences make it easier for children to understand meaning whilst still being entertained. The sentence “AND it’s cornflakes again... Bears don’t even LIKE cornflakes!” (It’s A Bear’s Life, 2005) show’s exaggeration through incorrectly using capital letters in the sentence, this could be to show that the bear is not happy and rather annoyed that cornflakes are being messed on him. Another way to create environment is through senses, such as smell; “He woke up to a delicious smell wafting in through the train window.” This indicates that the bear smells something, using his sense of smell. “Mmmm... Honey! PANCAKES and honey!” (It’s A Bear’s Life, 2005.) This indicates what the bear is smelling, but the writer has exaggerated the word ‘pancakes’ to show that the bear is fond of that food more than the other. Creating character in a children’s book can be easy as most children’s short stories are illustrated with pictures. Children can see that the bear is brown or that the boy has brown hair, this doesn’t need to be mentioned in the story if it is shown in the pictures. “There were bears everywhere, big bears, small bears, tall bears and bald bears” (It’s A Bear’s Life, 2005) this describes all the different bears that are seen in the hotel, but are accompanied by pictures. “Suddenly Parker felt rather shy.” (It’s A Bear’s Life, 2005) this is creating character, telling the reader that Parker is a sky character. This could also make the bear feel more relatable as some children might be shy as well.

“No two writers go about things in exactly the same way. We all are inspired and motivated in different ways.” – Stephenie Meyer. Most adult short stories do not contain illustrations and pictures, but just words. This allows the writer to add more detail when creating character development and environment, using verbs and adverbs to describe their characters and even the smallest of objects in such fine detail. ”They all wore long, dark cloaks with deep hoods.” (The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, 2010) this simple sentence is describing clothes of a couple of vampires. The author sets an atmospheric scene by using eerie words such as dark cloaks, a piece of clothing we don’t see often in today’s society but also the word ‘dark’, though describing an item of clothing, could also be describing the environment. “The sun was rising fast. The black pine trees were showing hints of evergreen.” (The Short Second Life, 2010) this is describing the environment again but this time it’s daylight, we know this because the author has written ‘the sun was rising fast.’ And has used more soft words like ‘hints of evergreen’ to describe the new day, that the characters are no longer in a dark scene. Using a collection of verbs and adverbs to describe the environment is common in adult books as they are allowed to expand their writing as it will be more understood than if a child was to read it. “The blood was warm and sweet. It quenched the fire in my throat, calmed the nagging, itching emptiness in my stomach.” This sentence describes how the character, a vampire, is feeling when her hunger is subsided by the blood she is drinking. ‘The blood was warm and sweet.’ The author is describing the taste of blood to the reader, doing this can give an idea of what blood might taste like to the reader, or putting them into the story as if they tasted the blood. Verbs like ‘fire’, ‘nagging’ and ‘itching’ are used to described how the character felt before they drank the blood.

In 1981 the BBC television broadcasted Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding. The language used is old fashioned, very precise or proper English. Almost like the Queen’s dialect, we call this Received Pronunciation. It doesn’t have an accent but the audience still knows that it is a British accent. In 1947, Queen Elizabeth II was married and the BBC broadcasted the event. Here we hear an even more precise pronunciation as it was forty years ago. This was in black and white whereas Princess Diana’s wedding was shown in colour, another change in generation and technology. In 2011, when Princess Kate was married, the BBC broadcasted the event again. Although it is a new age and generation for TV and radio, we still hear the Received Pronunciation but it does have more of an accent along with it. From a foreign perspective, some might think that England has one accent, might more than likely is Received Pronunciation or how the Queen speaks, which isn’t true. There is a verity of accents around England, to name some; Liverpool has the ‘Scouse’ accent and Yorkshire is known to have the ‘Geordie’ accent.

This is because of settlers from other countries such as Italy and the Romans, France, Scandinavia and the Vikings, that we have different accents and dialogues. The English language is made up of a lot of borrowed words from different languages. The Romans invaded Britain first, borrowing words such as ‘cheese’, ‘butter’, ‘pound’, ‘wall’ and ‘street’ amongst many others. Some Latin words were originally themselves borrowed from Greek, which shows that even ancient languages borrowed from one another. A few years later, the Vikings invaded Britain, thus borrowing words like ‘club’, ‘ransack’ and ‘slaughter’. Words for animals were borrowed from Norse language such as ‘bug’, ‘bull’ and ‘reindeer’. The English language has borrowed a lot more verbs and adjectives from Norse than any other foreign language. A few decades after the English language was introduced to William Shakespeare, a play writer who made up a lot of his own words, some we use into days language. Words such as ‘amazement’, ‘kissing’, ‘puking’ and ‘shocking’ amongst many others are what we use into days modern language. Shakespeare was also known for making what phrases such as; ‘catch a cold’, ‘a dish fit for the gods’ and ‘eaten me out of house and home.’ Although we don’t use as many phrases anymore in today’s society, you will hear it being said within the older generation. With new technology and the age of social media, we see old English die out as new words and phrases are presented.

When text messaging was invented people had to pay a certain amount per letter, hence we get abbreviation. Simple sentences such as ‘How are you?’ gets translated to ‘How R U’ or even shorter to ‘HRU’. This is seen in ‘talk to you later’ – ‘TTYL’, fewer letters mean the less money is spent on sending text messaging. However, this doesn’t apply to today’s text messaging as it is all unlimited without any character or word count. Social media platform, Twitter, still has this in place, having only one hundred and forty characters per tweet. Because of this the social attitude towards Standard English has changed from influences from social media and even celebrities. Even the dictionary has changed slightly, filling up with new words and new meanings. The word ‘twerk’ was then spelt ‘twirk’ in the Oxford Dictionary in 1820, but got popularised by singer Miley Cyrus in 2013, changing the spelling and meaning. Another thing to consider is slang; England has different accents in its region and within the accents comes slang. Slang differs in different towns but people can usually tell where a person is from just by the slang they use. A person from Yorkshire could use the word ‘pet’ instead of ‘love’ which is common in areas such as Wigan and Leigh. Some slang words revolve around food, ‘bap’ or ‘barm cake’ is slang for a bread roll. In some parts in England ‘lunch time’ is changed to ‘dinner time’ and dinner/supper time is changed to ‘tea time’ – which can commonly be mistaken for lunchtime, or a time where people eat tea in cakes, stereotypically speaking. In the news on TV and radio, Standard English is still used to some degree. This is to keep speech clear and understanding to those who don’t have English as their first language. In the workplace Standard English is spoken to maintain a professional image. The attitude towards Standard and Non-Standard goes both ways, the older generation complains that younger people aren’t ‘speaking properly’ and the younger generation complaining that the elderly are speaking to old fashioned. Received Pronunciation will always be around, never dying out, but growing with the new age of the English language. 

In conclusion, authors have more freedom to when it comes to writing for adults whom have a better understanding of character and environment, however, keeping in mind when writing for children who won’t understand bigger and more descriptive words. It is important to set the scene for the reader when writing short stories as they can picture if a character is wearing a blue shirt or a brown hat. The English language is forever changing, but never dying out as it is a large role in today’s society, but the social attitude towards slang, accent and dialect might differ around parts of the United Kingdom.