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IGCSE · Cambridge (CIE) · 0408

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

Cambridge IGCSE World Literature 0408 · 2025-P3-CROCODILES / 2025-P3-A / 2025-P3-B / SET-2025-3 / SET-2026-3 / SET-2027-3
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. 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. 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

Pause and explain

Does the summit head count mean that Enaiat has directly witnessed each of the twelve deaths?

Put the idea to work

Worked example

Why is “Enaiat watches twelve people die” too certain?

Show the worked solution
  1. The head count identifies losses retrospectively.
  2. 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.

1 · Guided

How does repetition change the questions about distance?

Give me a hint

Track what happens to the promised answer.

Compare my reasoning
  1. Early reassurance creates an expectation.
  2. 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
2 · Independent

Sort the mountain’s evidence into three forms.

Give me a hint

Keep seeing, losing contact and later counting distinct.

Compare my reasoning
  1. Frozen bodies are directly seen.
  2. 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
3 · Transfer

How does gratitude complicate taking the shoes?

Give me a hint

Read survival beside later memory.

Compare my reasoning
  1. The shoes answer an urgent bodily need.
  2. 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.
Recall without your notes

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.

After trying it yourself, choose your next review. This is your self-assessment.

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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.

Keep learning World Literature

Course scope and assessment

238 original lessons provide 714 guided, independent and transfer tasks, plus 431 reading-tracker and long-response prompts. Twenty skill and route entries, three year-specific Cherry Orchard entries, two Anowa entries, three Crocodiles entries, one 2027 Little Foxes entry, two year-specific Volume 1 poetry entries, one historical 2025 Volume 2 poetry entry and three year-specific Volume 2 story entries link teaching. Anowa has ten lessons through the Prologue and all three phases, with thirty staged tasks and ten original developed responses. Complete primary reading locators support analysis of the contested community frame, partnership, enslavement, the children, remembered dream, separation and ending. The protected play is linked rather than reproduced; editorial BECE material is not reused. Both eligible 2025–2026 Anowa rows link the whole-play pathway. Twenty-eight lessons teach the Author’s Note and all six country chapters of In the Sea There Are Crocodiles, with eighty-four staged tasks and sixty original developed responses. Four workshops teach passage analysis, whole-book argument, layered voice and retrieval/revision. All three complete 2025–2027 book entries link the whole-book pathway; the existing supplemental route remains available without adding another counted requirement. The public reflowed reading is linked rather than reproduced, with edition limits explicit. Twenty-two Little Foxes lessons teach all three acts for 2027, with sixty-six staged tasks and forty-eight original developed responses. Hospitality, silenced voices, the mill, financial negotiation, the proposed marriage, Horace’s return and refusal, the bonds, Birdie’s disclosure, withheld help, the final bargain and Alexandra’s decision are taught through actual stage directions and dialogue locators. Four workshops develop passage analysis, whole-play argument, stagecraft and corrective retrieval. SET-2027-2 links the full sequence; the existing supplemental route remains available without inflating counted requirements. The protected acting script is linked rather than reproduced; exact centre-edition wording and revisions must be checked. The Cherry Orchard has an 18-lesson whole-text sequence with five actual Julius West excerpts and three argument models. The 2026–2027 poetry option has teaching for all fourteen members, three complete public-domain poems and close-reading, comparison and retrieval workshops. Twenty-four lessons teach all ten 2026–2028 Stories of Ourselves Volume 2 members, with named reading and writing sequences and evidence, passage-context, essay and ten-member retrieval workshops. Two complete public-domain narratives, nineteen actual prose extracts and Katie’s complete twenty-line poem within Besant’s prose story support close reading and whole-story writing. The Shrinking Shoe follows the original 1895 prose and its five sections; the embedded poem is not a Paper 2 set poem. All three eligible ten-story selection rows link the complete pathway. Wodehouse and Woolf use brief quotations and original commentary with complete reading sources; their full texts are not reproduced here. Twelve lessons teach twelve compulsory 2028–2030 Volume 3 poems, with thirty-six staged tasks and twenty-four developed-response prompts. The Dutt and Kingsley excerpts and Cissoko’s exact translation still need verified reading and teaching; full-selection workshops remain unfinished, so all three complete poetry rows remain unlinked. Fourteen lessons teach seven 2029–2030 Volume 3 stories with thirty-five developed-response prompts. Twelve actual older primary excerpts support four stories; Achebe, Desai and Danticat use original commentary with complete primary reading links rather than reproducing their protected texts. A separate partial-member pathway supports The Necklace, The Model Millionaire, Sultana’s Dream, The Interlopers, The Sacrificial Egg, Sale and New York Day Women without linking either complete ten-story row. The three other members and full-selection workshops remain unfinished. Read the full centre-selected works and protected anthology; check edition differences, including Weissenhorn’s older Necklace translation. The historical 2025 poetry pathway teaches all fourteen members through eighteen lessons, fifty-four staged tasks and fifty-one developed-response models. Three complete public-domain poems remain printed with line breaks; eleven protected poems use complete primary reading links and original commentary. Four workshops teach close analysis, whole-poem argument, preparation comparisons and specific retrieval of all fourteen members. The complete SET-2025-5 option links this sequence; the historical supplemental route remains without increasing counted requirements. Archival Cambridge and WJEC papers supply primary poems, not reused questions or later-year assessment rules. Centre-edition differences remain explicit. Forty-six lessons provide original teaching and practice for nine historical 2025 story members: The Doll’s House, The Gold Watch, A Visit, A Walk to the Jetty, In the Mountains, Mrs. Sen’s, Promenade, The Plantation and The Paper Menagerie. Together they provide one hundred and thirty-eight staged tasks and one hundred and one developed-response models. A Visit uses complete primary reading visually checked across printed pages 306–310. Promenade follows the complete seven-page narrative on printed pages 416–422; its four lessons trace bodily control, wordless meetings, the interrupted circuit and changed final walk. Mrs. Sen’s has six lessons through the complete story, with eighteen staged tasks and thirteen developed-response models. Teaching follows the collection scan from its unnumbered opening through printed p.135, with food, letters, recordings, separate journeys and the changed final care arrangement. The Plantation has five lessons, fifteen staged tasks and eleven developed-response models through all four numbered sections, visually checked against printed pages 423–429 through the final dawn bird-call. In the Mountains has seven lessons, twenty-one staged tasks and fifteen developed-response models through the final invitation to eat. The complete publisher transcription supports scene-based reading; automated-text errors and subscription access remain explicit, and original printed pages were not visually verified. A Walk to the Jetty has seven lessons, twenty-one staged tasks and fifteen developed-response models through the complete six-page retype’s final berth. Reader annotations and the appended question are separate; the complete publisher version has wording differences, so exact quotations require the approved edition. The centre edition remains required for exact quotations. The protected stories are linked, not reproduced. The partial member pathway is supplemental; Words and full-selection workshops remain unfinished, so SET-2025-6 stays unlinked. Fifteen year-specific prescribed-work entries remain unfinished; complete centre-selected coursework reading also needs substantive text-specific teaching. The 51-entry map is a StudyForA preparation map, not official numbered syllabus sections or a percentage of student mastery. Written practice is self-checked and is not officially marked. Full timed papers and qualified literature-teacher assessment remain unfinished. Fictional exercises are labelled separately from actual excerpts; alternative well-supported readings can be valid. Centre-authenticated coursework and Cambridge moderation are separate from self-check practice.

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