Crocodiles · an injured worker and a watch with a history
Analyse the conflict between a person’s body and the value of property · Trace the watch’s meaning beyond its price · Distinguish imagined retaliation and an uncertain observation from established events
Section 2025-P3-CROCODILES · 2025–2027 · Crocodiles · whole-book pathway
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
- Analyse the conflict between a person’s body and the value of property
- Trace the watch’s meaning beyond its price
- Distinguish imagined retaliation and an uncertain observation from established events
Crocodiles · different measures of value
- 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 stone, a body and a first watch
Read factory work, injury, the watch and the second expulsion, reader pp.63–67.
1. How does the watch’s meaning challenge the ways value is assigned around Enaiat?
Compare after trying
The foreman’s response to the broken stone gives a damaged object priority over the hurt worker. The watch then becomes a possession whose importance comes from personal history rather than a high price. It lets the child attach achievement and memory to something he can carry.
The later theft makes the difference between those measures painful: what seems barely worth taking to the policeman matters intensely to its owner. I find the contrast more specific than a general claim that money is bad, because it asks whose experience is permitted to give an object value.
Why this response fits
- Connect the two scenes through the priority given to objects and people.
- Do not reduce the watch to an interchangeable price.
An action corrected before it becomes a fact
Read the watch’s seizure and the flight at the end of Iran, reader pp.67–69.
1. How do self-correction and limited observation shape the reader’s response to the chapter ending?
Compare after trying
The offered attack gives anger a momentary form, but its immediate correction makes the actual loss more stark. The narrator can admit a retaliatory wish without claiming that he carried it out or recovered the watch.
During the flight, the falling man and the boy’s thoughts of invisibility likewise need different kinds of reading. Observation, inference and desperate imagination coexist. The chapter ends in a decision to leave, not a proved victory or a complete record of everyone’s fate.
Why this response fits
- Respect the correction and the actual loss.
- Keep intensity of feeling distinct from certainty about events.
Useful labour does not guarantee that a body counts
In Qom, kitchen work, shopping and other duties expose Enaiat to different forms of risk. Football provides a limited space of companionship within long working hours. When the stone breaks and injures him, the foreman’s immediate priority is the damaged order rather than the wound. The contrast makes value visible through an action and a command. A later scar carries the past into the teller’s present, but the account should not be converted into medical instructions or a diagnosis. Do not treat continued usefulness at work as proof that the injury is slight.
A first possession holds more than exchange value
The watch gives time a material shape and connects personal achievement with remembered family and a valued religious place. Its importance does not depend on it being expensive. After the second expulsion, a policeman takes it during the return journey; this is not the first raid and not a voluntary sale. The contrast between the child’s singular attachment and the taker’s disappointment at its low value explains why buying a replacement could not simply undo the loss. The object has accumulated a history which a price alone cannot describe.
A correction exposes anger without making it an assault
The narrator briefly offers a retaliatory attack, then immediately corrects the account: he shows his wrist instead. That self-interruption can let the reader feel a wish before recognising what actually happened. It must not be summarised as a bite or a fight with the policeman. In the later flight, a man falls and Enaiat supposes he has been hit; the account does not certify a witnessed death. Thoughts of being small or invisible register desperation, not literal immunity. The decision to seek Turkey grows from renewed fear rather than from a successful victory over it.
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’s brief description of attacking the policeman remain the event he says actually happened?
Worked example
Why is “Enaiat bites the policeman and wins back his watch” false?
Show the worked solution
- Follow the immediate correction of the retaliatory account.
- The actual narrated response is showing his wrist and losing the object.
Answer The telling exposes an impulse and the power which prevents it from becoming the triumphant action imagined.
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 foreman’s reaction develop the treatment of labour?
Give me a hint
Compare the broken stone with the injured worker.
Compare my reasoning
- The valuable delivery is named first.
- The worker is ordered to clear the pieces while hurt.
The command exposes a hierarchy of value in which usefulness does not secure humane care.
Look for these in your work
- Use the response’s priority
- Explain an effect
Why can a replacement watch fail to replace this one?
Give me a hint
Distinguish price from accumulated experience.
Compare my reasoning
- It is the first watch he has chosen and treasured.
- Its meaning includes memories and an attempt to make time his own.
A different object could perform the function without restoring the particular history.
Look for these in your work
- Explain more than symbolism
- Use its place in the sequence
Audit a summary of the flight after the theft.
Give me a hint
Keep thought, observation and inference apart.
Compare my reasoning
- He sees a man fall and supposes a cause.
- His own thoughts make smallness an imagined protection.
The passage communicates fear intensely without certifying every consequence or a literal escape power.
Look for these in your work
- Retain attribution
- Do not add a death
Common mistakes
- Do not make low monetary value mean the watch is unimportant.
- Do not turn the falling man into a confirmed death or the boy’s wish for invisibility into a real power.
What can you explain now?
Does the narrator’s brief description of attacking the policeman remain the event he says actually happened?
Compare with the explanation
No; he immediately corrects it and says he showed his wrist instead.
A self-correction changes the status of the preceding imagined action.
After trying it yourself, choose your next review. This is your self-assessment.
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Make it stick
Does the narrator’s brief description of attacking the policeman remain the event he says actually happened?
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.