At BFEM level, reading a literary text in English requires identifying narrative techniques, themes, style and meaning. 🔹 Key elements to analyse : 1. Setting — where and when (time period, atmosphere) 2. Characters — protagonist, antagonist, secondary characters 3. Narrator and point of view • 1st person (I) — subjective, inside the narrator's mind • 3rd person omniscient — narrator knows everything • 3rd person limited — follows one character's perspective 4. Plot and conflict — what happens and why 5. Theme — the central message 6. Tone and atmosphere — the mood created by the author 7. Style and literary devices : • imagery — vivid description using the senses • simile and metaphor • symbolism — objects representing ideas • irony — saying the opposite of what is meant • flashback — going back in time 🔹 African literary context : • Chinua Achebe — Things Fall Apart (Nigeria) • Mariama Bâ — So Long a Letter (Senegal) • Ousmane Sembène — God's Bits of Wood (Senegal) • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — contemporary African voice

📝 Read this extract and answer : 'The village was silent. Kofi walked slowly along the red dirt road, his sandals raising small clouds of dust with every step. He had not slept. Behind him, the blue smoke of the morning fires rose lazily from the thatched roofs. He did not look back. He could not afford to — not today, not with everything that had happened.' 1. What is the setting? → A village, in the morning (dust, fires, thatched roofs — suggests rural Africa) 2. What is the mood/atmosphere? → Tense, heavy, silent — something serious has happened 3. What does 'He could not afford to look back' suggest? → He is determined to move on; looking back would weaken his resolve 4. Identify an image appealing to the senses. → 'Blue smoke rising lazily' (sight); 'small clouds of dust' (sight/touch) 5. What is the point of view? → Third person limited (we follow Kofi's perspective) 6. What theme is suggested? → Departure, moving on, something difficult in the past