Prose Non-Fiction

Prose non-fiction includes real-world texts such as:

1. Memoirs and autobiographies
2. Biographies
3. Essays
4. Speeches
5. Articles and opinion pieces
6. Travel writing
7. Letters

These texts aim to inform, persuade, reflect, or express personal experience, and are typically written in continuous prose without fictional elements.

Key Features to Look For

1. Purpose and Context

Ask:

1. Why was this written?
2. What is the author trying to achieve?
3. What broader context (social, political, personal) influences the piece?

Look for:

1. Calls to action
2. Personal reflections
3. Historical or cultural references

2. Narrative Voice and Tone

1. First-person voice (e.g. memoirs) vs. third-person (e.g. biographies)
2. Formal, informal, reflective, critical, nostalgic, humorous?
3. How does tone evolve over the course of the text?

3. Structure and Form

1. Linear or non-linear narrative?
2. Use of anecdotes, fragments, lists, repetition?
3. Are there shifts in time, tone, or focus?

4. Language and Stylistic Devices

Watch for:

• Figurative language (metaphors, similes, personification)
• Imagery (visual, sensory)
• Syntax and diction (sentence length, emotive or rhetorical language)
• Rhetorical devices (triadic structure, anaphora, rhetorical questions)

5. Characterisation and Perspective

1. How are people or ideas presented?
2. Bias, subjectivity, or reliability of the narrator?
3. How does the narrator reflect on others or themselves?

How to Analyse a Prose Non-Fiction Text

Prose Non-Fiction Model Answer

Text Extract: Between Words (Memoir Style)

I remember the day I stepped off the plane in London, clutching the strap of my bag like it was the only stable thing in my life. The air felt different—colder, thinner—as if the atmosphere itself was warning me: you’re not home anymore. My mother, walking slightly ahead, didn’t look back to see if I was still following. I don’t blame her. She had enough weight to carry, starting over with two children and no certainty. She had aged ten years on that single flight, though I don't think she realised. Or maybe she did, and that was why she couldn’t bear to look back.

The taxi ride from Heathrow was long and quiet. I pressed my face against the window, trying to memorise everything: the grey sky, the brick buildings, the unfamiliar trees. Everything looked so still, so self-assured. It was as if the whole city knew where it belonged. I envied it.

The flat we moved into was on the third floor of a crumbling council estate, with windows that didn’t shut properly and wallpaper that peeled at the corners like sunburned skin. The walls were thin—you could hear the neighbours coughing through them at night—and the radiator made strange clicking sounds like it was trying to speak. I would lie on the mattress on the floor and imagine the walls whispering in a language I didn’t understand. Sometimes, I would try to whisper back.

School was no kinder. The teachers spoke quickly, and the other students moved even faster. They called me “Freshie” under their breath—loud enough to sting, quiet enough to dodge punishment. I laughed with them so they wouldn’t hear the crack in my voice. I laughed so they wouldn’t see the silence I carried in my lunchbox, the smell of unfamiliar spices on my clothes, the shame I hadn’t yet learned how to name.

Still, I learned. I learned the rhythm of English jokes, the sharpness of sarcasm, the way some laughter was designed to exclude. I learned how to keep my hands down, how to disappear into corners, how to swallow the wrong answers before they escaped my mouth. Most of all, I learned how to sound like them. I practised in front of the bathroom mirror every night: the roundness of vowels, the clipped edges of consonants. I smoothed out my accent like ironing a wrinkled shirt, trying to sound less like myself and more like someone who belonged.

By the end of that first year, I had become fluent in the art of pretending. I pretended I didn’t miss the mango tree that leaned into our old bedroom window. I pretended I didn’t remember the street vendor who sold steamed buns outside our school. I pretended that London’s streets felt like home, even though they didn’t, even though they swallowed my footsteps without leaving a trace.

And yet, despite everything I had unlearned, one thing remained. In my dreams, I was still home. I was back in my grandmother’s kitchen, where the ceiling fan creaked and the air smelled like rice and ginger. I could still hear her voice—soft, strong, certain—telling me that I was meant to grow roots, not erase them.

Guiding Question:

How does the writer use language and structure to explore the theme of displacement in the extract?

Essay Outline:

1. Introduction
   1. Contextualise the extract as a reflective prose memoir about a young narrator’s migration to London.
   2. Define the theme: Displacement as more than geographical—it’s emotional, psychological, and cultural.
   3. Thesis statement:
      The writer explores displacement through the use of figurative language, tone, and a progressive narrative structure, presenting it as a state of emotional dislocation, fragile identity, and the quiet erasure of belonging.
2. Body Paragraph 1 – External Displacement and Environmental Alienation
   1. Point: The extract opens with physical sensations that reflect the narrator’s emotional instability and unfamiliarity with her new surroundings.
   2. Evidence:
      1. “The air felt different—colder, thinner”
      2. “Clutching the strap… like it was the only stable thing”
      3. “The whole city knew where it belonged. I envied it.”
   3. Techniques:
      1. Pathetic fallacy, personification, simile
   4. Explanation: