Frozen Pizza and Other Slices of Life
“Frozen Pizza and Other Slices of Life” Frozen pizza and other slices of life, by Antoinette Moses, is a very good book which tells us eight different stories about different people who show us the same country (England) but from their own point of view and tells us eight different stories about their particular lives. In the last four chapters, we can find other new British’s point of view and many lessons from each chapter. Here is what we have learned from the last four chapters.
To start with ‘Sweetie’, in this chapter, the story represents a student life, whose plot talks about Nikki Apton, a student college, who is not quite good at managing on her life. Her characteristic is the same as other students who are not able to arrange what is the priority thing to do. She is always irresponsible for the negative results that are made by her. Fashionable student ‘Nikki Apton’ leads a fun-loving life, exploiting parents for money and leaning on her friend Sue to cover up for absences at seminars. Her father loses his job and cannot subsidize her; meanwhile the bank stops her cash card.
Sue complains to lecturer Mrs. Martins about the way Nikki puts pressure on her. Nikki receives a letter saying she has failed the course. She remains convinced that she has a bright future despite her academic failure. In this story, the author does not give us know the story by the main character narrating. She runs the story by Nikki, the main character, sending E-mails to her friend, her boyfriend, her parents and her lecturer. The language and style that the author uses is just daily-life words. It is easy to understand even though there is some unseen slang found.
Nikki’s characteristic is like her sending Emails. She never faces up with the problems directly. She uses E-mail to deal with them. It shows that she is not quite sincere because when writing E-mail, we have to think each word over repeatedly. Sometimes, we may not mean that as we exactly feel but have to use those sentences just because it sounds better. After finishing this chapter, Nikki reminds me to look at myself. She is the mirror that reflects my life and warns me not to do like her. The lesson that I have got from the chapter is ‘As you sow, so shall you reap. From the story, Nikki does not do her duty by herself, asking someone help and also complaining him or her when it is not what she expects. Finally, She deserves to fail in her academic at the end of the story. Next chapter is ‘The Star Reporter. ’ The plot of this chapter is associated with a student reporter, Mike, who makes the news about a flooded area near his college, and this event changes his life forever. There are three main characters in this chapter; Mike, Angela, and Carol. Mike’s characteristic is curious and sympathetic.
Angela is an ambitious editor of the Student News team who does not care what is right or wrong. The last main character is Carol, a Robbie’s mother who lives in the flooded area. She cannot accept any truth that she did. Mike, a student who was in the Student News Team, made the news about the nearby area, which had flood every year. Angela, the editor, agreed with him and sent him to give the people who lived in the flooded area an interview and also sent Sue with him in order to take the photographs. In the flooded village, Mike met Carol, who was lifting a buggy up to the stairs while carrying her baby, Robbie.
While Sue was taking a photo of her, Carol was so frightened that she forgot her baby and things in her arms but covered her face instead. Luckily, Mike was fast enough to catch the baby in time. After talking with Carol, Mike was very pleasant and felt that she was a very good mother. Moreover, he was eager to know why Carol was afraid of journalist. So he returned to find more information about Carol and he discovered that she was headline in the news long ago as a child murderer. When she was eleven years old, she usually took care of the children around her neighbor as a babysitter.
According to the news, she hit the child to make him stop crying until he died. But Carol said a child had fallen off a slide and smashed hit head. Carol was sent to a prison for young people and she had to stay there until she was sixteen. While Mike was reading the news, Angela came in and saw it. Angela took that news to the publishers and they published the news as “WE FIND CHILD KILLER’S SECRET HOME! ” Carol and Robbie had to be separated from each other. Mike resigned from the college and travel abroad. At last, He gave up the idea of journalist and decided to become a teacher instead.
The language and style that the author uses in this chapter is easy to understand. She often uses many dialogues in order to continue the story smoothly. In addition, she also uses metaphors to illustrate the readers. For example, she compares the Tabloids with two years old kids who scream when they are hungry or lose their toys because the tabloids get the readers’ attention by using a big headline. For the mood of this story, the narrator, Mike tells the story depressingly and guiltily. ‘Something that you do not intend to do can make others suffer’ is the lesson we have learned from this story.
Mike does not mean to let Angela knows about Carol’s background, but Angela knows it accidentally and finally Carol had to separate from her child. Another lesson is ‘Just one mistake can change your life forever. ’ From the story, Mike decided to become a teacher instead of a journalist after this happening. The third account ‘Don’t Miss the Mozart’ is involved with Melanie, a woman who is sent to pick up a pianist, Louise Conte at the train station, but she picks up a wrong woman with misunderstanding, so she is fired from her work.
Finally, she takes her revenge by abducted the pianist so that Louise Conte will miss her concert. There are two main characters in this chapter; Melanie and Nicole Leconte. Melanie is too careless to check that the person she picks up is the real pianist. And Nicole Leconte, a university scientist from France who comes to England to do a seminar, is too innocent to realize that there is something wrong with this hospitality. Melanie was sent to the train station at Norwich, England to pick up French pianist, Louise Conte.
She was a soloist who will play Mozart Concerto at festival concert. Melanie misunderstood that a French scientist, Nicole Leconte, was the pianist, so she took her to a luxurious hotel, which surprised Nicole. Nicole thought this was a surprising hospitality, but does not realize there must be something wrong. When arriving at the festival office, they just know the truth. Mel was very angry. Later, Mel took revenge on Louise Conte by disguising herself to be Conte’s driver and taking her to the north, so it made Conte miss the concert.
The author explains the two main characters’ feeling clearly so that the readers can understand easily that this situation is an accident, Melanie does not want to mix Nicole up with Madame Conte. Moreover, the author uses hyperbole to demonstrate the readers. For example …Nicole heard her ask, as if it was the most marvelous surprise to find her there, at the moment…. Another device the author uses in this chapter is foreshadowing. According to the middle of the story, Nicole told Melanie not to miss the Mozart concerto hat would be played one evening but at the end of the story, Melanie made Louise Conte miss it.
The lesson from this chapter is ‘Carelessness will lead to disaster. ’ From the story, Melanie did not check carefully that the person she met was the true pianist, Louis Conte, so she was fired from her job. The plot of the last chapter “The Shivering Mountain” is about an Italian school student, Paulo, who expects the city life in England, must be fun. On the other hand, the Fowler family’s activities in their free time, which he stays with, make him annoyed and disappointed. Finally, there has an incident to make him realize why the British family loves doing those activities.
There are two main characters: Paulo and Nick. The characteristics of Paulo are stubborn, grumbling and pessimistic while Nick is easy going and a nature lover. Paulo who was an Italian School student had to spend his summer with the Fowler family in England. Paulo enjoyed the city life just in the first week but after that time he found it miserable to join with the family trip to the Peak District and activities that the Fowler planned to do like going walking and bird watching. Moreover, he felt disappointed his friend’s behavior, Nick Fowler, that it was not the same as if Nick became a different person.
One morning, Paulo walked alone into the hills without unawareness of the danger. Getting lost into the mist, he almost stepped off a cliff but fortunately; Nick could help him in time. Finally, the incident brought them closer together. The language and style that author usually uses is common words and informal language. So it is easy to understand. Moreover, the author always describes the story with lots of adjectives and adverbs that make us easily imagine the pictures along with the story. The language device that author usually uses is the metaphor. It also compares two things.
You can see two examples in the story: it was like being inside a cloud and you’d look like a sheep. Moreover, author also uses hyperbole as one of the language devices. From the story “The clothes, for a start, would make them laugh till they were sick”, you can see that it is impossible for someone laughing until he or she is ill. It is the technique to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but not meant to be taken literally. What I have learnt from this story is that we should adapt ourselves to the new environment. Try to learn the new activities in our leisure time of another society.
And you will find sometimes the differences are not worse like you think. For example, Paulo whose family, his friends and people in Italy love spending their summer swimming, playing football and sunbathing on the beach, while the Fowler family enjoys spending their holidays living with the nature in the countryside. British family is quite the nature lover. They like looking at many kinds of birds through binoculars, walking up to a hill, sleeping in a tent. Especially, for British family to use guidebooks and maps makes Paulo surprised. It seems that people in Italy do not take an interest in a map.
At last, Paulo understood why his friend, Nick, loves coming to the Peak District after he had seen a goshawk flying over his head. The story we dislike the most is ‘Don’t Miss the Mozart’ because the way Melanie solved her problem by abducting the pianist instead of accepting he mistake is unreasonable and desperate, so we think the story should not end like this. On the other hand, our favorite story is ‘Sweetie’ because this story usually happens in daily life and in every culture. This story also reflects the college society that students have to deal with many problems.
Besides the consequence of Nikki’s behavior is what she deserves. There are many reading strategies we have learned from the class can apply to this reading of narrative text. The first technique is to guess meaning from the context. From the entire stories we have read, we barely look up the word in the dictionary for. We usually try to guess the meaning from the context first. Using note-taking technique while reading is so utile that when we want to get the important detail, we can abruptly recall knowledge from the note we take before.
Moreover, making an inference is one we usually use to get the implied meaning of something. It is a crucial skill that must be mastered for us to have real comprehension. When we recall prior experiences that are similar to what we are reading, it helps us much to get the valuable lessons of each chapters. In conclusion, the stories from the fifth chapter to the last chapter reveal us the culture, the ways of life, people attitude, and the media in the United Kingdom’s society including personal thought, opportunity, and problem, media effects, and social adaptation.
Because of the easy language, we can enjoy the stories and imagine along with when reading. Moreover, these stories are the common situations that can occur in everyday lives but can be the social problems by not paying attention. Finally, all the valuable lessons in every chapter reflect every aspect of people’s lives and can be applied in our daily lives. Chadaratch Kalyasiri 5311100265 Yanisa Treerat 5311100290 Tharin Rienjongdee 5311100338 Puttamas Limchaisawat 5311100443
