Crocodiles · the mountain’s time and the limits of witness
Trace the changing effect of repeated duration promises · Distinguish witnessed death, abandonment and retrospective totals · Analyse an ethically difficult act without removing its cost
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
- Trace the changing effect of repeated duration promises
- Distinguish witnessed death, abandonment and retrospective totals
- Analyse an ethically difficult act without removing its cost
Crocodiles · duration, witness and moral memory
- 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.
Time that can no longer be promised
Read the repeated questions, the summit and arrival at Van, reader pp.77–81.
1. How does the writing make time on the mountain more than a list of days?
Compare after trying
The original three-day promise creates a scale against which each further day becomes an exposure of unreliable authority. Repeated questions gradually lose the expectation that an answer will correspond to experience.
Images give duration weight and movement, while the counted summit and descent retain a sequence. The extra days before Van matter because reaching a high point is not immediate release. I experience time as both measurable and increasingly hard to endure.
Why this response fits
- Analyse repetition and imagery, not only chronology.
- Keep the summit, descent and later arrival distinct.
What a survivor can tell
Read the abandoned travellers, frozen bodies, shoes and head count, reader pp.79–81.
1. How does the narrative keep survival from becoming a simple personal triumph?
Compare after trying
The teller cannot supply every cause or final moment. The fading voice, seen bodies and later head count are different forms of knowledge, so survival brings an awareness of loss without complete mastery of its story.
The shoes allow Enaiat to continue, but the language of taking and the later gratitude prevent another person’s death from becoming merely useful. The continuing memory makes the act troubling and personal. I read survival here as indebted and morally pressured, rather than a victory which leaves others behind without consequence.
Why this response fits
- Respect the limits of witness.
- Connect the practical action with its later emotional and ethical residue.
Repeated answers lose their power to reassure
The promised three days become a measure against which the trek is painfully experienced. Questions about the remaining distance recur, while answers no longer connect convincingly with what the walkers endure. The narration counts days and gives passing time material images: duration can drip away or become something carried on the body. These effects combine chronological precision with felt extension. The summit comes on the twenty-sixth day, descent on the twenty-seventh, and arrival at Van requires two more days. Van is not reached after three days, nor is the summit already the end of the journey.
Not every loss is known in the same way
When a Bengali boy collapses, the narrator does not know the medical cause. The walkers try to help, but exhaustion and armed threats force abandonment; the last heard voice does not supply an eyewitness account of his final moment. The later fight also leaves its cause uncertain. By contrast, the frozen bodies are directly seen. The head count at the summit reports twelve deaths among seventy-seven walkers, including losses the narrator had not noticed. Read that retrospective total alongside the limits of his attention, rather than claiming that he witnesses twelve individual deaths.
Necessity does not make the act emotionally simple
Taking the dead man’s shoes helps Enaiat continue, but the narration still names the taking as theft and preserves a gesture of gratitude. Remembering the man later resists treating him as a convenient object in a survival story. The scene connects bodily need, another person’s death and a continuing moral memory without offering a comfortable verdict. The arrangement which lets people take turns feeling warmth near the summit supplies a contrasting collective action. Such assistance matters, but the travellers remain controlled and exhausted; one act of care does not make the whole passage safe.
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 summit head count mean that Enaiat has directly witnessed each of the twelve deaths?
Worked example
Why is “Enaiat watches twelve people die” too certain?
Show the worked solution
- The head count identifies losses retrospectively.
- Some deaths have gone unnoticed during the walk.
Answer The reported total is not the same kind of evidence as witnessing every final moment.
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 repetition change the questions about distance?
Give me a hint
Track what happens to the promised answer.
Compare my reasoning
- Early reassurance creates an expectation.
- Continuing hardship makes repeated replies lose credibility.
The recurring question records the erosion of trust as well as the length of the journey.
Look for these in your work
- Trace a developing effect
- Use duration and expectation
Sort the mountain’s evidence into three forms.
Give me a hint
Keep seeing, losing contact and later counting distinct.
Compare my reasoning
- Frozen bodies are directly seen.
- An abandoned boy’s voice fades; a later head count gives a total.
Different levels of knowledge intensify the loss without licensing invented details about every death.
Look for these in your work
- Name the three forms
- Retain what is unknown
How does gratitude complicate taking the shoes?
Give me a hint
Read survival beside later memory.
Compare my reasoning
- The shoes answer an urgent bodily need.
- The gesture and later recollection preserve the dead man as a person.
Necessity explains the action, while gratitude and the word theft keep its ethical difficulty alive.
Look for these in your work
- Explain the need
- Retain the moral tension
Common mistakes
- Do not diagnose the collapsed boy or invent the cause of the later fight.
- Do not make the dead man’s shoes an uncomplicated reward for the survivor.
What can you explain now?
Does the summit head count mean that Enaiat has directly witnessed each of the twelve deaths?
Compare with the explanation
No; the total includes losses he had not noticed during the trek.
The narrative distinguishes a later reckoning from the child’s limited attention on the walk.
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Make it stick
Does the summit head count mean that Enaiat has directly witnessed each of the twelve deaths?
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.