Read or listen to the first four chapters of Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl, and consider how the author ensures that the reader sympathises with the foxes.
Read Frances Frost’s poem “Night Heron”. In groups, decide how many “hunters” there are, what each is hunting and why, and which is the “real” hunter.
In the final paragraphs of chapter 1 of Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the boys have their first encounter as hunters. Examine how Golding uses repetition, detail, dialogue and emotive language to convey the pig’s terror, the boys’ moment of realisation, their reactions after the event.
Study the shooting story in chapter 7 of The Pickwick Papers (to “proceedings of the morning”), and consider how Dickens uses character, dialogue and irony to create a humorous situation.
Act IV.i.109-133 of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream begins with Titania and Oberon making up their quarrel, and moves on to Theseus and Hippolyta discussing hunting hounds. Consider (a) the undercurrents in this exchange and (b) how Shakespeare raises a description of hounds to high poetry?
