Please note the annotated version of ‘Rhinoceros Beetle’ below. Click on the image to enlarge it.

You will note in the annotations, a number of specific text features which you will need to be aware of in preparing for your first assessment.

• Narrative perspective- third person omniscient narration. The narrator of the short story is all-knowing, which gives the story a certain irony in that the ‘little girls’ in the narrative know a great deal more than the men, whose ‘knowledge’ is considered more important and valuable.
• Notice the verbs, adverbs and adjectives which have been identified. It is important that you’re able to identify how particular vocabulary choices influence a reading of the text and construct specific ideas. Here, the verbs and adverbs I’ve selected construct masculinity as aggressive, domineering and challenging.
• The text uses language in an ironic manner in places. The writer suggests that the rhinoceros beetles ‘accompanied’ the boy to school. However, it’s clear that the beetles have very little say in the matter.
• Notice how the structure of the text invites the reader to ask questions.
• Notice how the text foreshadows the ending.
• The infantilisation of women is constructed through the repetition of ‘little girls’ and how the men use fear to subjugate them.
• The ending of the story is understated. There are gaps and silences here that add to the horror.
• The text invites the reader to ask how the boy’s psychopathic tendencies were developed. Was it the apparent remoteness of the mother (whose construction challenges stereotypical notions of motherhood; she seems distant)?, is it the lack of ‘companionship’ as a young boy, the remoteness of the community he grew up in? Was it just his personality, that he ‘kept himself to himself’? Are his teachers complicit in the encouragement of the boy’s violent tendencies or are they just constructed as naive? What does the text have to say about the construction of society and the value of the women’s knowledge? What other questions are promoted/prompted by the text?

Think about what the men know and what the women know. Explore how the text constructs a toxic and patriarchal society in which the women’s knowledge is regarded as worthless.

How are the men constructed in the text? How is this in contrast to the construction of women?

How does the text challenge the old saying ‘boys will be boys’?