Short Story - The Teacher by Catherine Lim

CHARACTER

Main (The Teacher) 

1. Big mouth

• Always tell to his friends about his student’s weakness.

2. Anger

• Always angry with his student’s grammar mistake.

Minor Character (Teacher’s Friend)

1. Good listener

• Always listen to his friend’s problem.
• Try to understand the problem.
• Try to have a solution for his friend’s problem.

Static Character (Tan Geok Peng)

1. Weak

• Always do the same mistakes when the teacher ask her to write an essay.

2. Shy and timid girl

• She never told her problems to her teacher.

Dynamic Character (Tan’s Father)

1. Heartless

• Always beat Tan and her mother when he drunk.
• When he is in good mood, he allowed Tan to continue her study.

PLOT

1. EXPOSITION

• The teacher asks his friend to read the composition written by a student in secondary four. The teacher was angry because the student makes a lot of grammar and tense mistakes.

2. RISING ACTION

• The student try to tell her teacher about her problem through a message (composition),but the teacher can’t understand about what she want to tell him.
• The teacher is impatient with his student’s grammar mistakes and makes him want to resign.

3. FALLING ACTION

• His friend’s colleague try to calm down him.(all student is same, they just do the grammar mistakes even pre-university’s students)

4. RESOLUTION

• Tan Geok Peng commits suicide.
• The teacher was regret with his attitude which playing an irresponsible teacher. 

THEME

• The teacher that was not sensitive with his students’ problems.
• The teacher did not go through his student’s condition. He just saw the tenses mistakes that his student did. He did not go through to the story that had been telling by Tan Geok Peng that storied about her problem.

SETTING

Physical setting

1. At the staffroom

• Where the teachers doing their work.
• Tan Geok Peng’s teacher does the correcting composition exercises by his students.

2. Cake stall

• Tan Geok Peng’s father sells cakes to earn money.

3. Eleventh floor

• Tan Geok Peng jumped down from there.

Social setting

• The teacher that did not bordered about his students in detail and just saw the weakness by the tenses mistakes that have been done by Tan Geok Peng.
• The father that irresponsible with his wife and children. Ask his daughter to quick from study and helps him to sell the cakes.