Pigeon English: Overview (AQA GCSE English Literature): Revision Note
Exam code: 8702
Pigeon English: Overview
The Pigeon English question is part of Paper 2, Section A of your GCSE examination. You are expected to write one essay-length answer to one set question and, unlike with the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions, you will not be given an extract from the text. This can seem daunting at first, but this page contains some helpful information, and links to more detailed revision note pages, that will enable you to feel confident answering any question on Pigeon English. This page includes:
Who is Stephen Kelman?
A summary of Pigeon English
A brief overview of what is required in the exam
Pigeon English characters
Pigeon English context
Pigeon English themes
Pigeon English quotes
Top tips for the highest grade
Who is Stephen Kelman?
Stephen Kelman is an English novelist, born in Luton in 1976, where he grew up on a council estate. He worked in warehousing, marketing and care before he turned to writing. Pigeon English, published in 2011, was his first novel, and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Two real things lie behind the book. The first is the murder of Damilola Taylor, a ten-year-old Nigerian boy killed in Peckham in 2000. Kelman has said this tragedy is what made him start writing. The second is his own childhood: the estate Harri lives on is built partly out of the Luton estate Kelman grew up on, and partly out of the London Damilola knew.
Kelman is writing social realism: a fictional estate inside a real city, so that readers recognise the world even if they have never lived in it. His most important choice is the voice. He tells the story in the words of eleven-year-old Harri, which lets him show the reader things Harri does not understand himself. For more on how he does it, see the Pigeon English: Writer’s Methods and Techniques page.
Pigeon English summary
Pigeon English is a novel by Stephen Kelman, published in 2011. It is narrated by Harrison “Harri” Opoku, who has recently moved to a London council estate from Ghana with his mother and his sister Lydia, while his father and baby sister remain behind.
The novel opens at a crime scene: an older boy from Harri’s school has been stabbed to death outside Chicken Joe’s, the local takeaway. Harri, standing behind the police line with his friend Jordan, is fascinated rather than frightened, and the death shapes the five months the novel covers.
Harri and his best friend Dean decide to investigate the murder themselves, borrowing their methods from television detectives. Their game brings them steadily closer to the estate’s real gang, the Dell Farm Crew, and to Marcus “X-Fire” Johnson and Jermaine “Killa” Bent, whom Harri admires and fears in equal measure. Lydia, meanwhile, is drawn into her own difficulties with her friend Miquita.
Threaded through it all is the pigeon, whom Harri befriends and who narrates sections of the novel — a guardian figure who seems to know what is coming. Harri’s investigation ends as the reader has feared it might: like the boy whose blood he studied in the opening pages, and like Damilola Taylor before him, Harri is killed by children.
For a more detailed summary, please see the Pigeon English: Plot Summary page.
How is Pigeon English assessed in the exam?
Paper 2 requires you to answer four questions (three on poetry) in 2hrs 15min. That means you have approximately 45 minutes to plan, write and check your Pigeon English essay
Paper 2 is worth 96 marks and accounts for 60% of your overall GCSE grade
The Pigeon English essay is worth 34 marks in total, because it also includes 4 marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar
Section A of Paper 2 contains the Pigeon English question and you are required to answer only one of the two printed questions on the novel
Unlike the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions, you will not receive an extract of the novel in your exam
It is also a closed-book exam, which means you will not have access to a copy of the text in your exam either
You will be asked a question that asks you to analyse and write in detail about an aspect of Pigeon English
For a much more detailed guide on answering the Pigeon English question, please see our revision notes on How to Answer the Modern Prose and Drama Essay Question.
Pigeon English characters
The characters you should focus on when revising Pigeon English are:
Harrison “Harri” Opoku
Lydia Opoku
Miquita
Marcus “X-Fire” Johnson
Jermaine “Killa” Bent
The Pigeon
It is always vital to remember — when considering Pigeon English, or any text — that characters are deliberate constructions created by a writer for a purpose. These characters often represent ideas, or belief systems, and a writer like Kelman uses them to explore those ideas. For more details, please see the Pigeon English: Characters revision notes page.
Pigeon English context
Understanding how to include context in a GCSE essay is challenging, so it is first necessary to figure out what examiners really mean when they talk about context. They define context not as historical information, or biographical facts about a writer, but as the ideas and perspectives explored by a writer through their text. Therefore, the Pigeon English context you should explore in your essay response is not a history of the Damilola Taylor case, or facts about Stephen Kelman’s own life, but ideas about:
The immigrant experience in Britain
Youth violence and gang culture
Inequality and poverty
Lots of these ideas and perspectives are still relevant today, so your own opinions on them are valid, and examiners welcome them in an essay. For a detailed breakdown of the contextual topics listed above, see the Pigeon English: Context page.
Pigeon English themes
Understanding the themes that are prevalent in Pigeon English will enable you to reach the highest levels of the GCSE mark scheme. This is because to be rewarded top marks on your essay, you need to take what examiners call a “conceptualised approach”: a detailed and perceptive exploration of Kelman’s ideas and intentions. The main themes explored by Kelman in Pigeon English are:
Immigration and identity
Inequality, discrimination and societal pressures
Loss of innocence
Masculinity and violence
Death
You are encouraged to explore other themes that Kelman examines in his novel, because bringing original ideas when interpreting a text is always rewarded highly at GCSE. However, the above list makes a great place to start, and detailed breakdowns of each of these themes can be found on our Pigeon English: Themes page.
Pigeon English quotes
It is of course important to learn quotations for your Pigeon English exam question, especially since it is a closed-book exam and you will not have a printed extract on your paper. However, it is worth stating here that examiners value “references” to the novel just as highly as direct quotations: this is when students pinpoint individual moments in the novel, rather than quoting what the characters say. In order to select references really successfully, it is extremely important that you know Pigeon English itself very well, including the order of the events that take place. This detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the plot will help you to revise the chronology of Pigeon English.
Of course, it is also useful to revise a few — very well selected — quotations from the novel that can be used in a variety of essays on different themes and characters. Luckily, we have made that selection for you! For a detailed analysis of each of these quotations, see our Pigeon English: Key Quotations page, and for quotations grouped by character see the Pigeon English: Character Quotations page.
Top tips for the highest grade
Please see our revision pages on the Modern Prose and Drama exam for guides on:
Sources
Kelman, S. (2011). Pigeon English. Bloomsbury
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