Crocodiles · earnings, friendship and promises tested by survival
Distinguish the shopkeeper’s proposal from guaranteed security · Read Sufi’s solidarity and limits without idealising the street · Examine ethical contradictions the narrator acknowledges
Section SET-2026-3 · 2026 · Paper 3 · In the Sea There are Crocodiles
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
- Distinguish the shopkeeper’s proposal from guaranteed security
- Read Sufi’s solidarity and limits without idealising the street
- Examine ethical contradictions the narrator acknowledges
Crocodiles · a wider choice with new costs
- 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.
Work one can choose to question
Read the offer, departure from the samavat and eventual sleeping arrangement, reader pp.27–35.
1. How does the change of work expand choice without completing a rescue?
Compare after trying
The shopkeeper distinguishes gratitude from liking the work and offers independent earnings. That exchange opens a question which the child has not fully allowed himself to ask. Rahim’s less hostile than expected response also complicates the adult relationships.
The smaller share and lack of immediate shelter, followed by a shop whose key remains with its owner, keep the new freedom qualified. I read the change as a real movement in agency, but not a guarantee that money alone can provide safety, equality or unrestricted movement.
Why this response fits
- Use the actual changing terms, not an invented equal partnership.
- Distinguish earnings, sleeping space and control of access.
A teller who admits contradiction
Read the fight, friendship, acknowledged selling deception and later retaliation, reader pp.31–36.
1. How does the account resist making survival a story of a perfectly obedient hero?
Compare after trying
The narrator acknowledges conduct in the bazaar that conflicts with the promise against cheating. Friendship changes the balance in the confrontation without preventing injury, and the later retaliation cannot be described as no violence at all.
These admissions do not remove the pressures or the kindnesses on which survival depends. They make judgement more demanding: I can respond to the restricted choices and still recognise that the account does not claim every action is justified or every instruction perfectly followed.
Why this response fits
- Use the narrator’s acknowledgement rather than invent a flawless character.
- Keep sympathy and ethical judgement in the same response.
A new choice still carries unequal terms
Osta sahib asks whether Enaiat likes the work, not merely whether he is grateful to have it. The distinction opens a possibility which the child’s first answer misses. The proposed share of profit gives him money of his own but leaves him with the smaller part and no immediate sleeping place. When he explains his decision to Rahim, the response is less hostile than he expected. Such details complicate an easy division of adults into total villains and perfect saviours. A changed arrangement can expand agency while leaving important needs unmet.
The street offers company without becoming safe
The theft and confrontation introduce the Hazara boys and Sufi, whose friendship makes returning to the old arrangement less attractive. The group’s presence changes the balance of a conflict, but it does not prevent Enaiat from being hurt. Shared food and humour supply another form of belonging alongside precarious sleep and unwanted selling. The motorbike episode also complicates Sufi’s quiet nickname. Analyse the tone’s capacity to include comic memory without making injury, poverty or danger into a harmless adventure.
A promise is tested rather than automatically fulfilled
The narrator acknowledges selling tricks that conflict with his mother’s instruction against cheating. The later stone thrown after a shopkeeper’s attack also makes a claim of perfect nonviolence untenable, even though he distinguishes damaging property from intending to hit the man. The teaching should not endorse those actions or turn survival pressure into a simple moral exemption. Osta sahib eventually offers clean sleeping space but keeps the key, so improved shelter still limits movement. The scenes ask how choices are made within pressure, not whether a child can be divided neatly into an entirely innocent or entirely guilty type.
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 shopkeeper’s offer immediately give Enaiat both an equal profit share and his own keys to safe housing?
Worked example
Improve “He follows every promise without ever compromising”.
Show the worked solution
- Use the narrator’s own recognition about the selling tricks.
- Keep the later retaliation distinct from a claim that no violent response occurs.
Answer The account invites ethical judgement by exposing pressure and contradiction rather than supplying a flawless hero.
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.
Why does osta sahib correct the first answer about liking the job?
Give me a hint
Separate gratitude for having work from satisfaction with it.
Compare my reasoning
- The child initially answers a different question.
- The correction makes another kind of judgement possible.
The exchange reveals how dependence can narrow what a person thinks they are allowed to ask of work.
Look for these in your work
- Track the correction
- Explain its effect on choice
How does Sufi complicate the account of working in the bazaar?
Give me a hint
Use friendship beside continued hardship.
Compare my reasoning
- Shared food and support create attachment.
- Selling and sleeping remain uncomfortable and precarious.
Belonging can make a difficult life more bearable without converting it into safety.
Look for these in your work
- Use countervailing details
- Avoid a perfect-rescue story
Qualify a claim that hardship makes all conduct morally simple.
Give me a hint
Use the teller’s own acknowledgement of a broken instruction.
Compare my reasoning
- Pressure shapes the available choices.
- The narrator still recognises a conflict with the promise.
The account can invite sympathy while leaving ethical judgement active.
Look for these in your work
- Explain pressure
- Retain acknowledged responsibility
Common mistakes
- Do not say the original stolen gum is recovered; the account ends the fight with a different item retained.
- Do not present remembered sales tricks or retaliatory violence as instructions for a learner to copy.
What can you explain now?
Does the shopkeeper’s offer immediately give Enaiat both an equal profit share and his own keys to safe housing?
Compare with the explanation
No; he receives the smaller share, first lacks shelter, and later sleeps in a locked shop without the keys.
Money, shelter and freedom of movement change at different times and on different terms.
After trying it yourself, choose your next review. This is your self-assessment.
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Make it stick
Does the shopkeeper’s offer immediately give Enaiat both an equal profit share and his own keys to safe housing?
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.