Crocodiles · a valued home and a departure under pressure
Explain home as a lived place rather than a deficit · Keep the father’s reported story distinct from witnessed events · Read changing scale and sensory comparison through a child’s knowledge
Section 2025-P3-A · 2025–2027 · Set-text extract response
Exam scope and assessment notes
0408 preparation for exam year(s) 2025, 2026, 2027. The assessment changes in 2028; follow the component and selected texts for your year. Original StudyForA teaching for the 2025–2027 Paper 3 option In the Sea There Are Crocodiles, by Fabio Geda, translated by Howard Curtis. Twenty-eight lessons teach the Author’s Note and all six country chapters, with passage, whole-book essay, voice and retrieval workshops. All three complete 2025–2027 selected-work entries link this whole-book teaching pathway. Reading completion, qualified teacher assessment and calibrated full papers are not certified by these self-review exercises. Read the entire unabridged centre-selected book; lessons and models do not replace it. The public reader is a reflowed 133-page version; its page numbers are locators, not certified centre-edition pagination. Use your copy for exact wording, typography and paragraph breaks. The protected book is linked, not reproduced here. Questions and models are original self-review and do not award Cambridge marks or grades. Other well-supported readings can be valid. Qualified literature-teacher review and calibrated full papers remain unfinished. In 2025–2027, Paper 3 is closed book: 90 minutes, one extract response and one whole-text essay, 25 marks each. This book is not a 2028–2030 Paper 3 option. It is excluded from 2025–2027 coursework because it is on those years’ Paper 3 lists; private candidates cannot enter 0408. The lessons analyse a narrative of past experience, not present-day travel, legal or personal-safety advice.
Before you begin
- Read the Author’s Note and the named chapter scenes in the centre’s complete Howard Curtis translation. Use the linked reader’s text version if needed; its page numbering differs from print editions.
- Distinguish the experiencing child, the later narrating Enaiat, Fabio’s conversational questions and the authorial/translation process. Reconstructed dialogue is not a certified recording.
- Read all six country chapters before the whole-book workshops. Teaching availability does not certify individual reading, mastery or an official assessment result.
Work on paper. Try each question before revealing help, and explain why your method works.
Quick readiness check
What should support a claim about a literary text?
What you will learn
- Explain home as a lived place rather than a deficit
- Keep the father’s reported story distinct from witnessed events
- Read changing scale and sensory comparison through a child’s knowledge
Crocodiles · home, scale and coercion
- Read the named scenes in the complete centre-selected book or the linked public reading before answering. The protected book is not reproduced here.
- Reader page numbers identify this web version only. Use chapter and scene locators when working with another edition.
- Write your own developed response before opening the model. Use brief accurate evidence from your copy; paraphrase plainly when exact wording is uncertain.
Original whole-book teaching and self-review, not official Cambridge questions, marks, coursework or a calibrated full paper. The lessons and models do not replace reading the complete centre-selected book or qualified assessment.
A place worth losing
Read the remembered village, family threat and journey out, reader pp.9–15.
1. How does Geda make the departure a loss as well as an escape?
Compare after trying
The fruit, food, courtyard and stars give Nava a dense remembered value. Its limited technology does not cancel those attachments, and the narrator’s reluctance prevents the departure from reading as a simple rejection of home.
The father’s reported story and threats to the children explain why remaining is dangerous. I therefore find escape painful: it answers a pressure while taking away a familiar life. The account needs both parts, rather than a contrast between an entirely bad homeland and an already secure destination.
Why this response fits
- Use the concrete remembered place.
- Retain the difference between an urgent escape and a guaranteed better future.
A growing world
Compare the child’s understanding of mountains, city sounds and travel with the later explanations, reader pp.6–13.
1. What do the child’s changing ideas about place contribute to the voice?
Compare after trying
The child first measures a country by the valley and mountains he knows. His explanation of city noise similarly uses a small range of experience to interpret a much larger place. The comparisons make limited knowledge intelligible from within.
The later voice can qualify those ideas while preserving the remembered attention to sounds, food and stars. This gives the account both proximity and distance: I can follow the child’s expectations without pretending that he understood the whole journey or that every mistaken idea invalidates his experience.
Why this response fits
- Explain how a comparison reveals the scale of experience.
- Keep later correction distinct from contempt for the child.
Home is valuable before it is left
Nava is described through fruit, stars, food, family space and familiar games. The absence of electricity does not make it an empty or worthless place. The narrator repeatedly refuses the idea that he would willingly have abandoned it. Such details make departure a loss of a meaningful life, rather than an inevitable improvement from a place with nothing to offer. Read specific attachments alongside danger. A response that describes the village only through deprivation risks repeating the limited view which the remembered pleasures complicate.
The family threat is not a directly witnessed death
The father’s account is explicitly given as a story received from others. Coerced transport, lost goods, demands for repayment and threats against the children connect one death with continuing pressure on the household. The mother’s attempts to conceal the boys are practical responses, though the child questions their logic. Do not claim that he personally sees his father killed or supply an exact age where the voice is uncertain. The limits of the account belong in an analysis of its telling rather than being silently replaced by certainty.
Scale changes as knowledge changes
The child initially imagines Afghanistan within the mountains he knows, and interprets the sound of a city as a difference between countries. These explanations reveal the small scale of an experienced world. The later voice can correct or qualify them without making the child merely foolish. Counts of stars, damaged infrastructure and city impressions place ordinary attention beside signs of violence. The initial excitement about a journey also belongs to limited knowledge, not proof that no coercive pressures exist. Explain the distance between wanting an adventure and choosing the conditions that force departure.
Sources for this lesson
- Cambridge World Literature 0408 · 2025–2027 · Version 2
- Cambridge 0408 · revised 2025–2027 component weightings
- Cambridge World Literature 0408 · 2028–2030 · Version 1
- Geda · In the Sea There Are Crocodiles · Howard Curtis translation · public 133-page reading and text version
- Howard Curtis · first-person account of translating Geda’s book · English PEN
- In the Sea There Are Crocodiles · publisher’s edition and translator record · Penguin
Pause and explain
Does the narrator claim to have watched his father’s death?
Worked example
Why is “The boy leaves because he dislikes everything about home” unsupported?
Show the worked solution
- Use the sensory and domestic detail attached to Nava.
- Set his stated reluctance beside the continuing threats against the children.
Answer The narrative makes departure intelligible through pressure while preserving the value of what is lost.
Try a topic test
Choose Easy, Normal or Difficult. Save your answers and open worked review after finishing.
Test this topic →From guided practice to a new situation
Write your answer and reasoning first. Use a hint only if you are stuck. The model solution is for self-checking; your written work is not automatically marked.
How does the fruit-filled courtyard affect an account of forced departure?
Give me a hint
Ask what the detail gives the reader to value.
Compare my reasoning
- The description makes a familiar home concrete.
- The threats show why remaining there becomes dangerous.
The contrast gives loss a substance beyond a generic label of hardship.
Look for these in your work
- Use a particular attachment
- Connect it to pressure
Why does the narrator qualify the father’s story before telling it?
Give me a hint
Consider the source of his knowledge.
Compare my reasoning
- The events precede what he can directly recount.
- He tells them through what others have passed on.
The qualification lets the family history matter without falsely certifying eyewitness access.
Look for these in your work
- Identify the reporting chain
- Retain its limit
Revise a claim that excitement proves free choice.
Give me a hint
Separate a child’s immediate anticipation from the surrounding circumstances.
Compare my reasoning
- He imagines an unfamiliar journey as exciting.
- He does not yet understand the threats and permanent loss involved.
Limited anticipation does not remove the constraints under which the departure is arranged.
Look for these in your work
- Separate perspectives
- Avoid a false inference of consent
Common mistakes
- Do not treat descriptions of hostile groups as timeless facts about every member of a country or religion.
- Do not replace uncertain ages or durations with exact figures the narrative does not establish.
What can you explain now?
Does the narrator claim to have watched his father’s death?
Compare with the explanation
No; he explicitly recounts a story told to him and qualifies what he can guarantee.
Reported family history should not be converted into an eyewitness scene.
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Make it stick
Does the narrator claim to have watched his father’s death?
If you needed the solution, close it and solve the problem again from a blank page. A correct answer is stronger when you can explain the reason for each step.