Crocodiles · arriving in Italy and being understood
Compare imagined bodily control with the actual landing · Analyse misunderstandings without turning people into national stereotypes · Trace how particular acts of help make a place seem inhabitable
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
- Compare imagined bodily control with the actual landing
- Analyse misunderstandings without turning people into national stereotypes
- Trace how particular acts of help make a place seem inhabitable
Crocodiles · a country encountered through people
- 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.
The action the body cannot rehearse
Read the crane, landing and first help, reader pp.116–117.
1. How does the opening of Italy continue the book’s complicated picture of agency?
Compare after trying
Enaiat rehearses an effective escape, but unexpected machinery and exhausted legs interrupt the imagined plan. The comparison between intention and action prevents the episode from becoming a display of effortless control.
The workers do not enact the pursuit he fears, and strangers later provide help. He still makes decisions, yet his progress depends on responses he cannot command. I read agency here as active but bodily limited and relational.
Why this response fits
- Connect the imagined and actual actions.
- Retain assistance rather than attributing every outcome to individual skill.
What makes somewhere worth staying?
Read the cyclists, boy, train misunderstanding and conversation about settling, reader pp.117–119.
1. How do these encounters make Italy a possible home without proving it is a perfect place?
Compare after trying
The strangers’ actions answer immediate needs even when their language or knowledge is limited. The train misunderstanding adds impatience and comedy, then permits a small connection when the destination is understood.
The later conversation qualifies the initial sense of paradise: settling is connected with treatment and not wanting to leave, rather than perfection. I find the place made attractive through particular relationships, while queues for food and the search for a friend keep uncertainty visible.
Why this response fits
- Use more than one kind of encounter.
- Distinguish personal hope from a universal judgement about a country.
A rehearsed escape meets an exhausted body
Italy opens inside the same uncertainty which closes Greece. Enaiat rehearses an agile departure, but a crane interrupts the expected movement and his cramped body cannot perform the landing he imagined. The workers’ surprise and one man’s encouragement differ from the pursuit he fears. A sign finally identifies Venice, but knowing the country does not supply language, relationships or a home. The gap between rehearsal and action continues the book’s resistance to an effortlessly competent hero. Assistance enters through people whose roles and motives are not all fully known.
Limited knowledge travels in both directions
The cyclists name famous footballers and the Taliban as shorthand for countries. The exchange makes unequal and reductive knowledge visible without making the strangers only hostile: they also stop, ask about need and give money. A boy then supplies food, washing, clothes and a ticket. The narrator imagines a kinship between this boy and the Greek woman through similar kindness, not through evidence that they are literally related. On the train, the misunderstanding between Rome and rum produces anger, a drink and finally recognition. The comic exchange does not prove that language barriers have disappeared.
A possible home is judged through treatment
The sight of Venice briefly prompts an expansive hope about all Italy. Later, the conversation with Fabio offers a more qualified account of settling: no place is perfect, but not wanting to leave is connected with how one is treated. Practical gifts and small acts of patience become evidence for a possibility rather than a scientific sample of a nation. Arrival in Rome still brings queues for food and the search for someone known. Keep gratitude particular, and do not use eventual settlement to erase confusion, poverty or the help on which movement continues to depend.
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 Rome/rum episode end with the fellow passenger reporting Enaiat to police?
Worked example
Improve “The boy in Venice is certainly the Greek woman’s relative”.
Show the worked solution
- The narrator links their actions through an imagined resemblance.
- No family connection is established.
Answer The connection is a way of thinking about transmitted kindness, not a verified genealogy.
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 landing qualify competence?
Give me a hint
Set the rehearsed movement beside bodily exhaustion.
Compare my reasoning
- He imagines a controlled jump and escape.
- His legs cannot carry out that plan.
The contrast preserves agency while showing how the journey limits what intention can achieve.
Look for these in your work
- Use the contrast
- Avoid a flawless hero
What does the football exchange expose?
Give me a hint
Keep the cyclists’ help alongside the shorthand.
Compare my reasoning
- The speakers recognise countries through a few public associations.
- The strangers nevertheless notice a need and assist.
Partial knowledge can be reductive without making each person’s whole response identical to the stereotype.
Look for these in your work
- Distinguish knowledge and action
- Avoid a national generalisation
How does the Rome/rum misunderstanding develop?
Give me a hint
Trace fear, mistake and eventual clarification.
Compare my reasoning
- The passenger first responds to a different request.
- Repetition finally produces understanding and reassurance.
Comedy comes from unequal interpretations, while the corrected exchange makes practical communication possible.
Look for these in your work
- Trace the sequence
- Do not invent a police outcome
Common mistakes
- Do not make the crane escape as physically controlled as the rehearsal.
- Do not equate one stranger’s knowledge of the Taliban with an endorsed claim that all Afghans are Taliban.
What can you explain now?
Does the Rome/rum episode end with the fellow passenger reporting Enaiat to police?
Compare with the explanation
No; the misunderstanding is resolved and they travel to Rome together.
The fear of what a stranger might do must be distinguished from the narrated action.
After trying it yourself, choose your next review. This is your self-assessment.
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Make it stick
Does the Rome/rum episode end with the fellow passenger reporting Enaiat to police?
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.