English Literature · OCR H472 · Comparative and contextual study · November 2020
Write a critical appreciation of this passage, relating your discussion to your reading of American
Literature 1880–1940.
In this passage, Studs Lonigan has lost all his money on the stock market and is trying to find a job.
James T Farrell, Judgment Day (a novel from the Studs Lonigan trilogy), 1935
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In your answer to Question 2, you must compare at least two texts from the following list. At least one of these must be taken from the two texts given at the top of the list in bold type.
F Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
‘Social gatherings are a significant feature of American fiction.’
By comparing The Great Gatsby with at least one other text prescribed for this topic, discuss
how far you agree with this view.
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John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
‘The sense of a journey is an important part of American writing.’
By comparing The Grapes of Wrath with at least one other text prescribed for this topic,
discuss how far you agree with this view.
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‘Corruption and greed often lie at the heart of American literature.’
By comparing at least two texts prescribed for this topic, discuss how far you have found this to be the case.
In your answer you must include discussion of either The Great Gatsby and/or The Grapes
of Wrath.
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The Gothic
Answer Question 3.
Then answer one question from 4(a), 4(b) or 4(c). You should spend 1 hour and 15 minutes on each question.
3 Write a critical appreciation of this passage, relating your discussion to your reading of the Gothic.
In this passage, Randolph Carter and Harley Warren investigate what Warren believes to be a stairway to the underworld.
The place was an ancient cemetery; so ancient that I trembled at the manifold signs of immemorial years. It was in a deep, damp hollow, overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds, and filled with a vague stench which my idle fancy associated absurdly with rotting stone. On every hand were the signs of neglect and decrepitude, and I seemed haunted by the notion that Warren and I were the first living creatures to invade a lethal silence of centuries. Over the valley’s rim a wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapours that seemed to emanate from unheard-of catacombs, and by its feeble, wavering beams I could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and mausolean facades; all crumbling, moss-grown, and moisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation. My first vivid impression of my own presence in this terrible necropolis1 concerns the act of pausing with Warren before a certain half-obliterated sepulchre, and of throwing down some burdens which we seemed to have been carrying. I now observed that I had with me an electric lantern and two spades, whilst my companion was supplied with a similar lantern and a portable telephone outfit. No word was uttered, for the spot and the task seemed known to us; and without delay we seized our spades and commenced to clear away the grass, weeds, and drifted earth from the flat, archaic mortuary. After uncovering the entire surface, which consisted of three immense granite slabs, we stepped back some distance to survey the charnel scene; and Warren appeared to make some mental calculations. Then he returned to the sepulchre, and using his spade as a lever, sought to pry up the slab lying nearest to a stony ruin which may have been a monument in its day. He did not succeed, and motioned to me to come to his assistance. Finally our combined strength loosened the stone, which we raised and tipped to one side.
The removal of the slab revealed a black aperture, from which rushed an effluence of miasmal gases so nauseous that we started back in horror. After an interval, however, we approached the pit again, and found the exhalations less unbearable. Our lanterns disclosed the top of a flight of stone steps, dripping with some detestable ichor2 of the inner earth, and bordered by moist walls encrusted with nitre3. And now for the first time my memory records verbal discourse, Warren addressing me at length in his mellow tenor voice; a voice singularly unperturbed by our awesome surroundings.
“I’m sorry to have to ask you to stay on the surface,” he said, “but it would be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down there. You can’t imagine, even from what you have read and from what I’ve told you, the things I shall have to see and do. It’s fiendish work, Carter, and I doubt if any man without ironclad sensibilities could ever see it through and come up alive and sane.”
H P Lovecraft, The Statement of Randolph Carter, 1920
1 : literally ‘city of the dead’, a large cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments.
necropolis
2 : from Greek mythology, a fluid that flows like blood in the veins of the gods.
ichor
3 : saltpetre or potassium nitrate.
nitre
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In your answer to Question 4, you must compare at least two texts from the following list. At least one of these must be taken from the two texts given at the top of the list in bold type.
*Candidates writing about The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories should select material from the whole text.
Either
Bram Stoker: Dracula
‘Gothic writing places ordinary human characters under extraordinary pressure.’
Consider how far you agree with this statement by comparing Dracula with at least one other
text prescribed for this topic.
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Angela Carter: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories *
‘In Gothic writing, settings often reflect the moods of the characters.’
By comparing The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories * with at least one other text prescribed
for this topic, discuss how far you agree with this view.
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‘Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror.’
By comparing at least two texts prescribed for this topic, discuss how far you have found this to be the case.
In your answer you must include discussion of either Dracula and/or The Bloody Chamber
and Other Stories *.
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Dystopia
Answer Question 5.
Then answer one question from 6(a), 6(b) or 6(c). You should spend 1 hour and 15 minutes on each question.
5 Write a critical appreciation of this passage, relating your discussion to your reading of dystopian
literature.
In this passage, set in the USA in the 1980s, Andrew Gill has been making a delivery and has witnessed a series of nuclear explosions which he judges to be evidence of ‘a war of some sort’. He has just met a woman and made love with her.
Already he wanted to find her again; he had never met or seen anyone like her. And did she do it because of shock? he wondered. Was she in her right mind at the time? Had she ever done such a thing before … and, more important, would she ever do it again?
However, he kept on going, not turning back; his hands felt numb, as if they were lifeless. He was exhausted. I know there’s going to be other bombs or explosions, he said to himself. They landed one on the Bay Area and they’ll keep shooting them off at us. In the sky overhead he saw now flashes of light in quick succession and then, after a time, a distant rumble seized his bus and made it buck and quake. Bombs going off up there, he decided. Maybe our defenses. But there will be more getting through.
Then, too, there was the radiation.
Drifting, overhead, now, the clouds of what he knew to be deadly radiation passed on north, and did not seem to be low enough yet to affect life on the surface, his life and that of the bushes and trees along the road. Maybe we’ll wither and die in another few days, he thought. Maybe it’s only a question of time. Is it worth hiding? Should I head north, try to escape? But the clouds were moving north. I better stay here, he said to himself, and try to find some local shelter. I think I read somewhere once that this is a protected spot; the winds blow on past West Marin and go inland, toward Sacramento.
And still he saw no one. Only the girl – the only person he had seen since the first great bomb and the realization of what it meant. No cars. No people on foot. They’ll be showing up from down below pretty soon, he reasoned. By the thousands. And dying as they go. Refugees. Maybe I should get ready to help. But all he had in his VW truck were pipes and cans of tobacco and bottles of California wine from small vintners; he had no medical supplies and no know-how. And anyhow he was over fifty years old and he had a chronic heart problem called paroxysmal tachycardia. It was a wonder, in fact, that he had not had an attack of it back there when he was making love with the girl.
My wife and the two kids, he thought. Maybe they’re dead. I just have to get back to Petaluma. A phone call? Absurd. The phones are certainly out. And still he drove on, pointlessly, not knowing where to go or what to do. Not knowing how much danger he was in, if the attack by the enemy was over or if this was just the start. I could be wiped out any second, he realized.
But he felt safe in the familiar VW bus, which he had owned for six years now. It had not been changed by what had happened; it was sturdy and reliable, whereas – he felt – the world, the rest of things, all had undergone a permanent, dreadful metamorphosis.
He did not wish to look.
Philip K Dick, Dr Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After The Bomb, 1965
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In your answer to Question 6, you must compare at least two texts from the following list. At least one of these must be taken from the two texts given at the top of the list in bold type.
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
‘Dystopian fiction almost always makes use of bleak settings.’
By comparing Nineteen Eighty-Four with at least one other text prescribed for this topic,
discuss how far you agree with this view.
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Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale
‘Dystopian fiction shows that people adapt surprisingly easily to new ideas of what is “normal”.’
By comparing The Handmaid’s Tale with at least one other text prescribed for this topic,
discuss how far you agree with this view.
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‘Societies in dystopian fiction often develop elaborate systems of social class.’
By comparing at least two texts prescribed for this topic, explore how far you agree with this view.
In your answer you must include discussion of either Nineteen Eighty-Four and/or The
Handmaid’s Tale.
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Women in Literature
Answer Question 7.
Then answer one question from 8(a), 8(b) or 8(c). You should spend 1 hour and 15 minutes on each question.
7 Write a critical appreciation of this passage, relating your discussion to your reading concerning
Women in Literature.
This passage involves a meeting between Basil Doye and Alix Sandomir, both artists. Basil, a First World War soldier, is home on leave with an injured hand; Alix’s brother has died at the Front.
Alix saw him first; he looked listless and pale and bored and rather cross, as he had done last time she saw him, a week ago. Basil was finding life something of a bore just now, and small things jarred. It was a nuisance, since he was on this ridiculous fighting business, not to be allowed to go and fight. There might be something doing any moment out there, and he not in it. His hand was really nearly all right now. And anyhow, it wasn’t much fun in town, as he couldn’t paint, and nearly every one was away.
His eyes followed a girl who passed with her officer brother. He would have liked a healthy, pretty, jolly sort of girl like that to go about with … some girl with poise, and tone, and sanity, and no nerves, who never bothered about the war or anything. A placid, indifferent, healthy sort of girl, with all her fingers on and nothing the matter anywhere. He was sick of hurt and damaged bodies and minds; his artistic instinct and his natural vitality craved, in reaction, for the beautiful and the whole and the healthy…
Looking up, he saw Alix standing at the corner of the Strand, leaning on her ivory-topped stick and looking at him. She looked pale and thin and frail and pretty in her blue coat and skirt and white collar. (The Sandomirs never wore mourning.) He went up to her, a smile lifting his brows.
‘Good. I was just feeling bored. Let’s come and have tea.’
Alix wasn’t really altogether what he wanted. She was too nervy. Some nerve in him which had been badly jarred by the long ugliness of those months in France winced from contact with nervous people. Besides, he suspected her of feeling the same shrinking from him: she so hated the war and all its products. However, they had always amused each other; she was clever, and nice to look at; he remembered vaguely that he had been a little in love with her once, before the war. If the war hadn’t come just then, he might have become a great deal in love with her. Before the war one had wanted a rather different sort of person, of course, from now; more of a companion, to discuss things with; more of a stimulant, perhaps, and less of a rest. He remembered that they had discussed painting a great deal; he didn’t want to discuss painting now, since he had lost his finger. He didn’t particularly want cleverness either, since trench life, with its battery on the brains of sounds and sights, had made him stupid…
Rose Macaulay, Non-Combatants and Others, 1916
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In your answer to Question 8, you must compare at least two texts from the following list. At least one of these must be taken from the two texts given at the top of the list in bold type.
Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility
‘Secrecy is an important part of the female role in literature.’
By comparing Sense and Sensibility with at least one other text prescribed for this topic,
discuss how far you have found this to be the case.
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Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway
‘Independence of thought and action is often the goal of female characters in literature.’
By comparing Mrs Dalloway with at least one other text prescribed for this topic, discuss how
far you agree with this view.
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‘Female characters are shown to be more emotional and expressive than their male counterparts.’
By comparing at least two texts prescribed for this topic, explore how far you agree with this claim.
In your answer you must include discussion of either Sense and Sensibility and/or Mrs
Dalloway.
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The Immigrant Experience
Answer Question 9.
Then answer one question from 10(a), 10(b) or 10(c). You should spend 1 hour and 15 minutes on each question.
9 Write a critical appreciation of this passage, relating your discussion to your reading concerning
the Immigrant Experience.
This passage is set in Toronto in the 1970s, and features an elderly real-estate agent called Lillie, who is a survivor of a German concentration camp.
She’d say, ‘The way some peoples live – like pigs! These are not nice peoples. But you’ll make it new – a different house, you wouldn’t recognise it!’ She believed this – that with a little effort and a lot of faith a pig pen could be transformed into something wonderful, or at least something habitable. Something a lot better than it had been before.
She specialized in smaller houses on neglected streets, downtown – old Victorian row houses or dark, narrow semi-detached brick boxes, owned by Portuguese families who’d stuck wrought-iron porch railings onto them, and before that by who knows? These neighbourhoods were stopovers – people lived in them right after they got off the boat, before they made good and moved on. That was the way it had been once. Now, young couples were seeking out such places – such cheap places. Artistic people were seeking them out.
Such people – Lillie said pipples – such people needed someone to take them by the hand, help them buy at a decent price, because they weren’t practical, they didn’t know from furnaces, the sellers would take advantage. Lillie would haggle the price down though it made her own commission smaller, because what was money? When the deal was signed she’d present the young artists with a celebration gift, a bowl filled with cookies she’d make herself – hard, beige, European cookies – and then she would follow the transformation of the house as the artistic youngsters set to work…
Lillie had come to the real-estate business late in life. Long ago she’d been a young girl, and then she’d married, a fine man, and then she’d had a baby; all of that was in another time, on the other side of the ocean. But after that came the Nazis, and she’d been put into a camp and her husband had been put into a different one, and the baby was lost and never found again. But Lillie had made it through, not like most, and miraculously she’d located her husband after the war was over, he’d made it through as well, it was a blessing, and then they’d moved to Canada, to Toronto, where a person did not have to be reminded. Such a name for a city, Toronto – it had an Italian sound, though it wasn’t an Italian word at all, and the winters could be long; but a person could get used to it, and Lillie had.
The babies grew up, they were fine children, you couldn’t ask for better, they spoiled her, and then the husband died. Lillie didn’t speak of him, but she kept his suits in the closet; she couldn’t bear to give them away. Dead was not an absolute concept to her. Some people were more dead than others, and finally it was a matter of opinion who was dead and who was alive, so it was best not to discuss such a thing. Similarly she did not speak of the camp she’d been put into, nor of the lost baby. Why speak? What difference would it make? Who’d want to hear? Anyway she’d been luckier than most. She’d been so lucky.
Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder, 2006
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In your answer to Question 10, you must compare at least two texts from the following list. At least one of these must be taken from the two texts given at the top of the list in bold type.
Henry Roth: Call it Sleep
‘The life of the immigrant offers a rich mixture of competing experiences.’
By comparing Call it Sleep with at least one other text prescribed for this topic, discuss how
far you agree with this view.
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Mohsin Hamid: The Reluctant Fundamentalist
‘Immigration narratives show a shifting balance between losses and gains.’
By comparing The Reluctant Fundamentalist with at least one other text prescribed for this
topic, discuss how far you agree with this view.
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‘Immigrants in literature are shown to be in danger of losing sight of their cultural origins.’
By comparing at least two texts prescribed for this topic, discuss how far you agree with this view.
In your answer you must include discussion of either Call it Sleep and/or The Reluctant
Fundamentalist.
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The paper as printed
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