Generic Conventions Present in "The Flats" by James Bradley.

Published in 2011, Jame's Bradley's short story "The Flats" can be read for free here. We were only given an excerpt and had 20 minutes in an exam setting to read and respond. This was my response to how generic conventions positioned me as the reader to respond to the ideas within the text.

I have reviewed and edited the response, and if you are studying English I highly recommend getting in touch so I can send you the notes as they will make excellent study. My notes also make the text much better! As it is, it's a nice pass, but not an amazing response.

This short segment of ‘The Flats’, written by James Bradley, is seen by the reader as a young boy’s path to darkness. By using generic conventions, such as the setting, the characters and the symbolism, he has portrayed the idea danger on ‘the Flats’ even before the reader can truly understand the danger. Bradley hints at further danger in his text, the shortened text ending in a position of great interest.

The text is cut off just as Bradley allows a feeling of horror to settle around the reader. Horror at what a seemingly two innocent boys could possibly do with fire and two mice. He starts in paragraph six to explain what enjoyment the two boys got out of their ‘relatively innocent activities’. Yet the first sentence of the next paragraph instantly warns the reader. ‘But there have been other games as well’. What games can there be that are not the innocent ones played by children. Bradley then goes to explain what he meant by other, that word that is so easily feared by humans.

For as long as humans have walked this planet fir has been a fear, a sign of destruction and death. Hell is given the world of flames, a place out of everyone’s nightmares. Even at the very start of the text, as the boys clambering over the ‘padlocked gate’, Bradley hints at what future they are walking in to. Humans are the only animals that have learnt to tame the burning flames and use it for their own purposes. When Bradley give these two boys that power he is setting a darkness in them that the reader immediately becomes cautious of. No longer are these characters the young, innocent children that Bradley portrayed for the reader and other characters (‘the man in the shop’) to see. They have started down a path of darkness.

Yet they were not always seen like this. At first Bradley portrayed them as innocent little children. He made it the Father's job to introduce the characters to darkness, to his ‘childhood’ of ‘wilder landscape’. Just as his father first brought him to ‘the Flats’, it is suggested that his father went through a similar upbringing. Perhaps the reason he had not mentioned it until then was because he too was tainted by the darkness in this place.

This place is ‘the Flats’ where nature roams free of man’s touch. When seen from this perspective the reader sees it not as this dark place, but as a place of natural wonder and beauty, where a fox stand majestically before the two boys. A place full of ‘sandhills to the west’ and ‘foxholes in the scrub’, nature untainted by the roads and towns around it. This place is where many animals ‘make the place their home’, such as the beetles.

So it is as the boys begin to destroy this beautiful nature that the readers see the darkness. This is not a darkness seen in the land or the boys but rather the result of the two combining together. I believe that Bradley tries to tell us using these generic conventions that he does not believe we can co-exist with nature without such a darkness growing and spreading between both.

This is a good point to make, and can be easily elaborated on. The rest of the introduction is pretty horrendous though, and shouldn’t ever be reused. This is an interesting point that was never really made. The fear of ‘other’. Though not quite mentioned here, it can be used in the future. The fact that there IS an instant wariness instilled in the reader at that sentence, “But there have been other games as well”, accompanied with the connotations of the word “other” can be elaborated at a later date. Reuse it. This is a key point that could have had more emphasis to enhance the essay. Yet it didn’t, and really didn’t have any sway or effect at all. This essay sucks. I wasn’t sure I had improved at all, but now I know I must have at least a little bit, hopefully. The point of Father’s being responsible for their kids could have been made. Ideas and ideologies. Setting the blame on the upbringing, not outside influences. Sexism, why is it not the mother’s job to introduce children to an active world that would also lead to their demise into the depths of the dark? So many different points that could have easily been suggested and portrayed and I seemed to have missed them all! Now nature is being blamed for their upbringing. Who exactly am I meant to be blaming for this? Not the kids, apparently, because of their introduction as naïve and innocent. Their corruption needs to have a source, so who am I trying to pin it on? Their father, their society, their environement? Pick one and elaborate, not briefly skim over all possibilities with no explanation. In truth, it is solely the kids fault and no one else’s, though others could have prevented it. This is a good point. The moment when a barrier between man and nature is broken down and the two forces combine. In that instant, the author has suggested that the two powers cannot exist at once. “One cannot live while the other survives”. The combination of the two leads to this ‘darkness’ I speak of, and eventually one force shall destruct the other.