Hearing Helen: School Edition Gr 11 SAL

By Carolyn Morton

Helen is desperate to get into the Music Academy, but her piano teacher, Madame Pandora, will not hear of it. Life at home also seems to revolve around her talented elder brother, her parents are too exhausted to notice her and the gorgeous Kean has eyes only for June, who is sickeningly perfect. When Helen finally gets the chance to make her dreams come true, she realises that not all opportunities are meant to be taken. What will her decisions cost those for whom she cares the most? An uplifting tale of courage, determination and friendship.
This school edition includes:
• an introduction to the short novel
• word definitions and explanations of difficult terms
• enrichment activities
• questions, activities and answers based on CAPS
• a bilingual glossary

• Language: English
• Publisher: Human & Rousseau
• Release date: Sep 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9780798171724

Carolyn Morton

Carolyn Morton het in Kaapstad grootgeword en na skool behaal sy ’n B.A.-graad in Engels en Latyn, en ’n B.Phil. In Joernalisme aan die Universiteit van Stellenbosch. Sedertdien het sy haar M.A.-graad in Toegepaste Linguistiek voltooi – wat fokus op skryfvaardighede vir dowe kinders – ’n onderwerp wat gemotiveer is deur haar eie gehoorgebrek. Sy en haar man woon nou in Port Elizabeth en sy gee onderrig in Engels, skryf en doen vryskut-redigering en vertaling. Afgesien van haar liefde vir onderrig en skryf, is sy ook ’n groot liefhebber van diere en stap in die natuur. Sy is ook ’n ywerige klavierspeler.

Book preview

For David, my parents and Hannah, with much love

— C. M.

Section 1: Introduction

Note: Throughout this study guide, you will find underlined words. These words have been defined in the study guide glossary.

At the back of this book you will also find a glossary which defines words from each chapter of Hearing Helen.

Characteristics of a short novel

Hearing Helen is written as a short novel. A short novel is similar to a novel but, as the name suggests, it is shorter than a novel. Another name for the short novel is the novelette¹. There isn’t a fixed length for a short novel.

Like a novel, the short novel usually has the following characteristics:

•It tells a story for a specific purpose – to reveal a message or a theme to the reader. There can be several themes/messages in one story. In Hearing Helen, the author tells a story about a teenage girl and her relationships in order to share messages about valuing others, about treating people with disabilities with respect, and about following our dreams.

•A short novel contains characters. These are the people who are in the book. In this story, the main characters are Helen, June and Hank. Kean, Madame Pandora, Mrs Smith, Helen’s parents and Caryn also play important roles.

•A short novel has a narrator. This is the person who is telling the story. In this book, the narrator is Helen. She is telling the story from her point of view. When a character from a book tells the story and uses words like I and me and my, he or she is called a first-person narrator. You will see that Helen uses I and me and my because she is a first-person narrator.

•The story contains conflict (arguing/disagreement) between people which builds up and is finally resolved (solved/sorted out) in some way at the end of the story. This is called external conflict. In Hearing Helen, Helen experiences conflict with her friend June, with her brother, Hank, and with her parents. This conflict is solved in the end, and Helen strengthens her relationships with these people.

•Conflict can also take place in characters’ minds (for instance, a character might struggle between making the right decision and the wrong decision). This is called internal conflict. For example, Helen experiences this as she struggles to choose between her friendship with June and her interest in Kean, a boy at her school.

•The story takes place within a specific time frame. In Hearing Helen, the story happens chronologically, which means that the writer starts at the beginning of the story and continues until the story ends. There are some flashbacks to the past (memories of the past), though, when Helen remembers what life used to be like before now. These help us understand why Helen is so desperate to improve her life; she remembers how much better life was in the past.

Explanation of type of short novel

Hearing Helen is a specific type of short story, called a bildungsroman. The bildungsroman is a story about how the most important character grows². This means that the story focuses on how the main character, called the protagonist, develops as a person because of the difficulties he or she experiences.

In Hearing Helen, the protagonist (main character) is Helen Booysens. At the start of the book, Helen is only concerned about herself. She dreams of getting Kean, from her Grade 9 class, to be interested in her, and she also dreams of taking part in the music competition to get into the Music Academy, but she is selfish in the way she tries to achieve her dreams. When she gets to know June and experiences how her relationship alters after June’s illness, Helen starts to change for the better. This is a bildungsroman because Helen grows as a person and starts to care about, and value, other people besides herself.

Contextualising the short novel

Hearing Helen deals with the need for understanding and acceptance, which all teenagers experience, by telling the story of Helen and her struggle to be valued by her family and peers. At the same time, the book discusses the experiences of those with disabilities through the stories of June and Mrs Smith. This is a very relevant topic in South Africa because there are many people in our country who have disabilities. Official statistics may be too low, but there are at least 2 255 982 people in South Africa who are living with a disability, and of those, 20% have a hearing problem, like June³.

All people should be treated equally, whether they have a disability or not. This is stated in the South African Constitution, which says what people’s rights are. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa⁴ says that no one may discriminate against someone with a disability. This means that theoretically, all people should be treated equally in South Africa.

In reality, though, many people with disabilities are still treated unfairly. They also often do not have the same opportunities, especially in education. For example, the Deaf Federation of South Africa⁵ comments on the very low reading and writing levels that most deaf people have at the end of their schooling.

In Hearing Helen, Mrs Smith and June both experience discrimination because of their disabilities. The story focuses particularly on the experiences of June; her educational future is threatened by her deafness, and she becomes very lonely after she loses her hearing. Just as June feels lonely and rejected, Helen also experiences loneliness and rejection from others because she doesn’t feel accepted and valued by her family and schoolmates. In the end, these two friends find that when they treat each other with compassion and kindness, the loneliness goes away. So the book’s wider message is that by caring for others, we ourselves often find companionship and friendship.

Biography of the author: Carolyn Morton

Carolyn Morton, the author, grew up in Cape Town and has always had a love of writing and music. While still at school, she won the regional Varia Publishers competition for a short story called Journey to Jedburgh. After matriculating, she attended Stellenbosch University where she obtained a B.A. cum laude in English and Latin, and thereafter her B.Phil. in Journalism cum laude. She subsequently obtained her M.A. in Applied Linguistics cum laude at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), completing a dissertation that compared the writing of deaf children with the writing of hearing children. It was this research, along with her own hearing loss, that inspired her to write Hearing Helen.

Her short story Collage was a finalist in the 2007 HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award competition, and this story was published in Africa Pens: New Writing from Southern Africa 2007 (prize winners selected by Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee). She was a finalist in the Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature competition, run with Tafelberg Publishers, in both the 2011/2012 and the 2013/2014 competitions.

Pre-read discussion

The title, the cover, and the back cover can reveal important information that helps us to understand the story.

The title: Hearing Helen

The title tells us about the main character, Helen Booysens. The title also gives important information about the messages or themes of the book. The word hearing gives a hint about what two of these messages/themes are:

•One theme is how important it is for all human beings to be noticed and valued by others: When we truly hear what someone is saying and try to understand him or her, then we are noticing and valuing that person as a unique human being. An important message in this book is that we all want, and need, to be noticed and valued – that is, everyone wants to be heard. The book asks the following question about this theme: Do we really hear others – in other words, are we really valuing other people as unique human beings?

•Another theme is about how to treat people with disabilities: The word hearing hints that the book will focus on someone with hearing loss. The book also looks at disability in general and asks us the following question: How should we respond to people who have disabilities? In other words, how should we treat them?

Pre-reading questions

•What does the title Hearing Helen mean to you? Do you think that Helen feels that other people are hearing her – that is, does Helen feel that other people notice and value her?

•If not, why do you think Helen doesn’t feel noticed and valued? Who might the people be who don’t notice or value her? Why would they not notice or value her?

•Why is it important to notice and value other people? How does it make other people feel if they are not noticed/valued? How does it make other people feel if they are noticed/valued?

The cover

The cover gives the title of the book, Hearing Helen, and the name of the author, Carolyn Morton. Besides this information, it can also include (1) a picture and (2) a shout line (a sentence or two that gives information about the book, and catches the reader’s attention).

The picture

The picture is of a girl standing on her own, looking at the sea. As we will discover in the book, the girl is Helen. She has red hair, like the girl in the picture, and she is the main character.

The sea is one of the symbols in the story. A symbol is usually something that we can see or touch that represents something that we can’t see or touch. For instance, a light bulb is something we can see or touch, and it can represent a bright idea. So, in cartoons, we often see a light bulb above the head of a cartoon character who has a clever idea.

In Hearing Helen, the sea symbolises Helen’s past. We will look at this in more detail later under the heading Symbols.

Pre-reading questions

•Helen is standing alone. What does that suggest to you about her as a person?

•What does this cover picture suggest to you about the setting of the story? The setting means where the story takes place. This is a South African book – where in South Africa do you think Helen lives?

•What does the sea mean (symbolise) to you?

The shout line

The shout line is the writing on the front of the book that tells us more about the book and title (the shout line does not include the title). It gives us a hint as to what the book is about and grabs the reader’s attention to make him or her want to read the book. The shout line for Hearing Helen is the following:

How far will she go to make her dreams come true?

This tells us a whole lot of valuable information:

•Firstly, Helen has dreams. This makes us as readers curious and attracts our attention because it makes us wonder, What are Helen’s dreams?

•Secondly, it seems that Helen might be prepared to go to great lengths to achieve her dreams as the shout line asks how far she will go. This also makes us curious. We will ask ourselves, How is she trying to achieve her dreams? Does she actually achieve her dreams?

Pre-reading questions

•What do you think Helen’s dreams are?

•Do you think she achieves her dreams? Why do you think this?

The back cover

The back cover has a short quote from the book to grab our attention and make us want to read the book. The short quote for Hearing Helen says:

When you discover that life is no longer just about you, you have to make choices. Sometimes, you need to put yourself first. At other times you need to put yourself on hold, because you know someone else’s needs are more important right now.

This makes us ask many questions that we will only be able to answer by reading the book:

•Who discovers that life is not just about you? Is it Helen? Do other characters discover this too?

•When do characters in the book have to put themselves first?

•When do characters in Hearing Helen have to put other people’s needs first?

This quote also makes us think about how these words might be true in our own lives.

Pre-reading question

•Do I always know when to put myself first and when to put others’ needs ahead of mine?

The back cover also has a short summary of important details from the story:

Helen is desperate to escape from her run-down high school and to get into the Music Academy, but her piano teacher, Madame Pandora, will not hear of it. That’s not Helen’s only problem; life at home seems to revolve around her talented elder brother, her parents are too exhausted to notice her and the gorgeous Kean has eyes only for June, who is sickeningly perfect. When Helen finally gets the chance to make