OCR GCSE English Literature Exploring modern and literary heritage texts November 2020 question paper J352/01

Anita and Me by Meera Syal and Spies by Michael Frayn

Read the two extracts below and then answer both part a) and part b).

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on part a) and 30 minutes on part b).

For part a), you should focus only on the extracts here rather than referring to the rest of your studied text.

Extract 1 from: Anita and Me by Meera Syal

In this extract from near the end of the novel, Meena is returning home from hospital with her parents.

I was still smiling as we drove up the one main road leading into Tollington. The familiar fields were brown moon surfaces coated with ice, the trees stark against the dark sky like charcoal skeletons, but as we turned around the corner upon which our house stood, my smile faded. The horizon glowed a sticky neon yellow, the fields opposite our house had been marked out with white sticks and tape which snagged in the breeze and there were motionless yellow diggers in what was the old mine yard next to the Big House. The crumbling low-roofed office was gone and slabs of concrete ripped from the yard lay in a haphazard pile like slices of old Christmas cake, even though there were five days to go.

‘What’s been happening!’ I cried, furious that neither of my parents had mentioned that Tollington was being carved up in my absence.

‘What?’ said papa, confused and then cottoned on as we drove past the violated fields towards the entrance to the communal yard. ‘Oh, well the motorway is open now, you knew about that didn’t you?’

‘But,’ I stammered. ‘Everything else…’

‘Oh, right,’ papa continued. ‘Apparently Mr Pembridge has sold some of the land opposite us, don’t know what for…There’s been talk about new houses but it’s just a rumour…’

Anita’s back gate was shut and barely recognisable, a few slivers of paint remained, clinging

to the exposed wood and I noticed that the back upstairs window was cracked and held together with sellotape. Sam Lowbridge’s moped stood in its usual space, but looked unused and rusty, its Union Jack flag was just a rag which drooped morosely from the aerial at the back. A few items of frozen underwear hung stiffly from a washing line and Blaze, the mad collie, sniffed at a pile of old newspapers, his orange and white fur the only slash of colour in this black and white landscape.

I never remembered it all looking so shabby, so forgotten.

Extract 2 from: Spies by Michael Frayn

This is an extract from a novel that starts with the narrator visiting the London streets where he grew up fifty years earlier. At that time in his childhood, the Second World War was being fought.

The main road’s full of fussy new traffic arrangements, the shops have impersonal new commercial names and frontages, and the stringy prunus saplings I remember along the verges of the avenue are now wise and dignified trees. But when I turn the corner once again, off the avenue into the Close …

There it is, as it always was. The same old quiet, sweet, dull ordinariness.

I walk slowly up to the little turning circle at the end. The same fourteen houses sit calmly complacent in the warm, dull summer afternoon, exactly as they always did. I walk slowly back to the corner again. It’s all still here, exactly as it always was. I don’t know why I should find this so surprising. I wasn’t expecting anything different. And yet, after fifty years …

As the first shock of familiarity subsides, though, I begin to see that everything’s not really as it was at all. It’s changed completely. The houses have become tidy and tedious. I remember each of them as being a world unto itself, as different from all the others as the people who occupied them. Each of them, behind its screen of roses or honeysuckle, of limes or buddleia, was a mystery. Now almost all that luxuriant growth has vanished, and been replaced by hard standing and cars. More cars queue silently along the kerb. The fourteen separate kingdoms have coalesced into a kind of landscaped municipal car park. The mysteries have all been solved.

I look up at the sky, the one feature of every landscape and townscape that endures from generation to generation and century to century. Even the sky has changed. Once the war was written across it in a tangled scribble of heroic vapour trails. There were the upraised fingers of the search-lights at night, and the immense coloured palaces of falling flares. Now even the sky has become mild and bland.

a) Compare how the writers present people coming home in these two extracts. You should consider:

• the situations and experiences faced by the characters

• how the characters react to these situations and experiences

• how the writers’ use of language and techniques creates effects.

AND

b) Explore another moment in Anita and Me where changes are important.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Little Green Man by Simon Armitage

Read the two extracts below and then answer both part a) and part b).

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on part a) and 30 minutes on part b).

For part a), you should focus only on the extracts here rather than referring to the rest of your studied text.

Extract 1 from: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

In this extract from Chapter Fifteen, Kathy and Tommy (finding themselves alone in Norfolk) decide to search for a copy of Kathy’s lost Judy Bridgewater tape.

At the start, we kept going into the wrong sort of places: second-hand bookshops, or shops full of old vacuum cleaners, but no music at all. After a while Tommy decided I didn’t know any better than he did and announced he would lead the way. As it happened, by sheer luck really, he discovered straightaway a street with four shops of just the kind we were after, standing virtually in a row. Their front windows were full of dresses, handbags, children’s annuals, and when you went inside, a sweet stale smell. There were piles of creased paperbacks, dusty boxes full of postcards or trinkets. One shop specialised in hippie stuff, while another had war medals and photos of soldiers in the desert. But they all had somewhere a big cardboard box or two with LPs and cassette tapes. We rummaged around those shops, and in all honesty, after the first few minutes, I think Judy Bridgewater had more or less slipped from our minds. We were just enjoying looking through all those things together; drifting apart then finding ourselves side by side again, maybe competing for the same box of bric-a-brac in a dusty corner lit up by a shaft of sun.

Then of course I found it. I’d been flicking through a row of cassette cases, my mind on other things, when suddenly there it was, under my fingers, looking just the way it had all those years ago: Judy, her cigarette, the coquettish look for the barman, the blurred palms in the background.

I didn’t exclaim, the way I’d been doing when I’d come across other items that had mildly excited me. I stood there quite still, looking at the plastic case, unsure whether or not I was delighted. For a second, it even felt like a mistake.

Extract 2 from: Little Green Man by Simon Armitage

In this extract, the narrator Barney is unhappy with his adult life and is searching his attic for a little green man figure from his childhood.

In the far corner I click open the two locks of the big trunk and lift its giant lid. My name stares me in the face, neatly stencilled onto the lining, and the long list of my address, beginning with this house and this street, then running all the way into the universe. A smell drifts up from the trunk – the smell of the past. Memory. More books and magazines, a bag of golf balls, a dartboard with stubble sprouting through the wire frame, a pair of goalkeeping gloves, a commemorative wallet for a full set of decimal coins – all prized out of the holder and spent. Rolled-up papers are slotted in a cardboard tube: a cycling-proficiency certificate, exam results, a football programme, second prize in a photography competition, an Airfix catalogue. Loads of pencils bundled together like kindling, tins of pens and crayons like rounds of ammunition. A compass. A fob watch with my grandfather’s name etched on the cover. I pile them all to one side.

In the bottom-left-hand corner of the trunk, under a plastic bag full of magnets and marbles and polished stones, there’s a shoebox, mummified with insulating tape and coils of string. I slit it open with the modelling knife, take out the objects one by one. A deflated football, like a punctured lung. Photographs, documents. And a leather pencil-case. I pull back the zip and bring out a roll of cloth, tied with a length of wool. When I tease out the knot, the bundle unravels towards the floor, and a weight within it begins to shift and fall. I yank the cloth quickly upwards, like a yo-yo, and as it unfurls and flaps open, it throws its possession into the air – spinning, hanging, waiting to drop. I snatch it cleanly with my right hand. When I open my grip, the little green man is snug in my palm, slightly hunched, his long robe flowing around his feet.

He’s heavier than I remember, but smaller – no bigger than a pepper pot – and he’s cold, like a piece of carved, green ice. I can feel the blood pumping in my head, in my ears, and feel blood flooding the engine in my heart, and blood driving the little turbines in my wrists and thumbs, rising to the stop-tap under my throat.

a) Compare how the writers present people looking for something from their past in these two extracts. You should consider:

• the situations and experiences faced by the characters

• how the characters react to these situations and experiences

• how the writers’ use of language and techniques creates effects.

AND

b) Explore another moment in Never Let Me Go where an important discovery is made.

Animal Farm by George Orwell and Blacklands by Belinda Bauer

Read the two extracts below and then answer both part a) and part b).

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on part a) and 30 minutes on part b).

For part a), you should focus only on the extracts here rather than referring to the rest of your studied text.

Extract 1 from: Animal Farm by George Orwell

This extract takes place on the morning that the animals have awoken, after a stormy night, to find the windmill in ruins.

With one accord they dashed down to the spot. Napoleon, who seldom moved out of a walk, raced ahead of them all. Yes, there it lay, the fruit of all their struggles, levelled to its foundations, the stones they had broken and carried so laboriously scattered all around. Unable at first to speak, they stood gazing mournfully at the litter of fallen stone. Napoleon paced to and fro in silence, occasionally snuffing at the ground. His tail had grown rigid and twitched sharply from side to side, a sign in him of intense mental activity. Suddenly he halted as though his mind were made up.

‘Comrades,’ he said, quietly, ‘do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!’ he suddenly roared in a voice of thunder. ‘Snowball has done this thing! In sheer malignity, thinking to set back our plans and avenge himself for his ignominious expulsion, this traitor has crept here under cover of night and destroyed our work of nearly a year. Comrades, here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball. “Animal Hero, Second Class”, and half a bushel of apples to any animal who brings him to justice. A full bushel to anyone who captures him alive!’

Extract 2 from: Blacklands by Belinda Bauer

This is an extract from a novel where a family are having a meal. The narrator Steven, his younger brother Davey and their mother Lettie have moved in with Lettie’s mother (Nan), after they lost their home. Adapted from B Bauer, 'Blacklands', pp13-15, Corgi Books, 2010. Item removed due to third party copyright restrictions.

a) Compare how someone being blamed is presented in these two extracts. You should consider:

• the situations and experiences faced by the characters

• how the characters react to these situations and experiences

• how the writers’ use of language and techniques creates effects.

AND

b) Explore another moment in Animal Farm in which there is an unexpected development.

An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley and The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard

Read the two extracts below and then answer both part a) and part b).

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on part a) and 30 minutes on part b).

For part a), you should focus only on the extracts here rather than referring to the rest of your studied text.

Extract 1 from: An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley

This extract takes place moments after the Inspector has mentioned how Eva changed her name to Daisy Renton, and he has left Gerald and Sheila alone while he goes to speak to Arthur Birling. J B Priestley, 'An Inspector Calls', p23, Penguin Classics, 2001. Item removed due to third party copyright restrictions.

Extract 2 from: The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard

In this extract, Max has been waiting for his wife Charlotte to return from what she has told him is a business trip abroad. However, he has found her passport in a drawer, so knows she has been lying to him. Charlotte is shocked that Max has been searching her things.

T Stoppard, 'The Real Thing', p150-151, Faber 7 Faber, 1999. Item removed due to third party copyright restrictions.

a) Compare how someone accusing someone else is presented in these two extracts. You should consider:

• the situations and experiences faced by the characters

• how the characters react to these situations and experiences

• how language and dramatic features create effects.

AND

b) Explore another moment in An Inspector Calls where someone is blamed for something.

My Mother Said I Never Should by Charlotte Keatley and I Read the News Today by Willy Russell

Read the two extracts below and then answer both part a) and part b).

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on part a) and 30 minutes on part b).

For part a), you should focus only on the extracts here rather than referring to the rest of your studied text.

Extract 1 from: My Mother Said I Never Should by Charlotte Keatley

At the start of Act One Scene Ten, Rosie is 8. She enters carrying Margaret’s doll, Suky.

Rosie: It’s my birthday today and it’s all gone wrong already. I’m going to bury you, Suky. Eight is too old for dolls. I want a Sex Pistols T-shirt. Some hope. Unless Jackie brings me one! I’d have buried you ages and ages ago, Suky, if you hadn’t been mum’s. I couldn’t care less now if mum sees me doing this. (Digs in the tub.) Suky. Stupid name. Even cutting your hair off it won’t go punk. I bet mum cuddled you and stuff, didn’t she? Well I only hug people when I want to, not when it’s visitors. (Holds doll over her face. Pause.) When I want to I can hug harder than anyone. In the world. (Pause.) I’m saving it. (Pause. Digs hole. Lowers the doll over it, then holds it closer to her.) I was going to give you away to the Toy Collection at School, d’you know that? Mummies give their babies away sometimes. They do. (Pause. Slowly lays the doll in the hole.) Shut up crying. There, see, I’m putting you in this urn. People get buried in urns. (Covering the doll over with earth.) Jackie’ll be here soon. She never cries. No one else at school has a sister who’s a grown up. I might easily run away with Jackie and live with her. Then you’d be sorry, Suky. So would mum. (Suddenly bright, as if enormously relieved.) I’m going to paint the cherry tree now – for Jackie.

Rosie lies on the grass painting. Jackie enters with a very lavish birthday cake and candles.

Jackie: Happy-birthday-to-you!…Rosie?

Rosie: Why did you buy me one? Mum usually makes me one.

Extract 2 from: I Read the News Today by Willy Russell

In this extract, Ronny has interrupted a radio broadcast to complain on air about advertisements and the lies they tell.

Ronny: Look, like, you know that advert, the one for the tee shirts, the one where they say that all you have to do is get one of these tee shirts, an’ then you’ll get loads of dates. Well you won’t you know. Wearin’ one of them tee shirts won’t make any difference at all. People should start to realise that. It’s the same with all the stuff they tell you about on this station an’ on the telly an’ the sides of buses. You know, the stuff that they say’ll change your life. Well listen, it won’t. All the tee shirts, an’ cars, an’ washing machines, an’ fridges, an’ radios, an’ stereos, knife sharpeners, holidays, books, an’ make-up, an’ things that they sell you – none of it’ll ever change you, you know, if you’re no good in the first place. If you’re no good, you stay no good. An’ the lies that they tell you, the lies about all them things, if you believe them, they just make it worse for you. An’ you know what the biggest lie is, eh? You know the biggest lie of all? The music! That’s the killer. ’Cos you listen to it, don’t you? At night, out there, you listen to the music driftin’ out an’ it makes you feel good, doesn’t it? As though everything’s good around you an’ inside you. When the music plays, it’s as though the world was made for you, an’, an’ tomorrow’s gonna be a good day, an’ everythin’s gonna be all right, an’ every road goes somewhere. There’s birds singin’, an’ the moon’s always big an’ yellow. There’s a girl to love you an’ hold you an’ look after you forever. But it’s only music, you know. It’s only a load of tapes in a box really.

a) Compare how characters expressing anger are presented in these two extracts. You should consider:

• the situations and experiences faced by the characters

• how the characters react to these situations and experiences

• how language and dramatic features create effects.

AND

b) Explore another moment in My Mother Said I Never Should where characters are upset.

DNA by Dennis Kelly and Grief by Mike Leigh

Read the two extracts below and then answer both part a) and part b).

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on part a) and 30 minutes on part b).

For part a), you should focus only on the extracts here rather than referring to the rest of your studied text.

Extract 1 from: DNA by Dennis Kelly

In this extract, Mark is explaining what happened to Adam.

Mark: We went up the grille. You know, that shaft up there on the hill. Just a big hole really, hole with a grille over it, covering, just to see if he’d climb the fence, really and he did, and we thought, you know, he’s climbed the fence which we didn’t think he’d do so walk, you know, walk on the grille, Adam, walk on the, and he did, he’s walked on, you know, wobbling and that but he’s walking on the grille and we’re all laughing and he’s scared because if you slip, I mean it’s just blackness under you, I mean it’s only about fifteen foot wide so, but it might be hundreds of feet into blackness, I dunno, but he’s doing it, he’s walked on the grille. He’s on the grille. He is.

And someone’s pegged a stone at him.

Not to hit him, just for the laugh.

And you shoulda seen his face, I mean the fear, the, it was so, you had to laugh, the expression, the fear …

So we’re all pegging them. Laughing. And his face, it’s just making you laugh harder and harder, and they’re getting nearer and nearer. And one hits his head. And the shock on his face is so…funny. And we’re all just…

just…

really chucking these stones into him, really hard and laughing and he slips.

And he drops.

Into…

Into the er…

So he’s…

So he’s…

So he’s –

John Tate: Dead. He’s dead.

Extract 2 from: Grief by Mike Leigh

In this extract, Edwin and Dorothy are waiting for Dorothy’s daughter Victoria to return with news of her examination results.

The front door closes. Dorothy goes to the doorway of the room. Dorothy: Hello, darling. Victoria enters, carrying her satchel. She sits on the sofa. Edwin puts down his newspaper. What’s the news? Victoria: What d’you think? Dorothy: I don’t know. That’s what we’re waiting to hear. She sits down. Victoria: I failed. Pause. Dorothy: What d’you mean, you failed? Victoria: I failed my ‘O’-levels. Pause. Dorothy: What, all of them? Victoria: Yes. Dorothy: Even Maths? Victoria: I didn’t take Maths. Dorothy: What d’you mean, you didn’t take Maths? Victoria: I mean, I didn’t go to the exam. Dorothy: Why ever not? It’s your best subject. Victoria: Who says? Pause. Dorothy: Well, isn’t it? Pause. Then Victoria shrugs. How many other examinations did you miss? Victoria: Two. French and Latin. Pause. Dorothy: So, how many did you take? Victoria: Four, obviously. Pause. Dorothy: Victoria, I don’t know what to say. Victoria: Don’t say anything. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

She goes up to her room. Her bedroom door closes. Edwin has returned to his newspaper. Long pause. Edwin: Disappointing.

a) Compare how unwelcome news is presented in these two extracts. You should consider:

• the situations and experiences faced by the characters

• how the characters react to these situations and experiences

• how language and dramatic features create effects.

AND

b) Explore another moment in DNA where an unexpected event is presented dramatically.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Choose ONE question.

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.

EITHER

Explore the ways in which Dickens presents the need for revenge in this extract and elsewhere in the novel.

In this extract Orlick accuses Pip of turning Biddy against him and tells Pip he plans to murder him.

‘When didn’t you? It was you as always give Old Orlick a bad name to her.’

‘You gave it to yourself; you gained it for yourself. I could have done you no harm, if you had done yourself none.’

‘You’re a liar. And you’ll take any pains, and spend any money, to drive me out of this country, will you?’ said he, repeating my words to Biddy in the last interview I had with her. ‘Now, I’ll tell you a piece of information. It was never so well worth your while to get me out of this country as it is tonight. Ah! If it was all your money twenty times told, to the last brass farden!’ As he shook his heavy hand at me, with his mouth snarling like a tiger’s, I felt that it was true.

‘What are you going to do to me?’

‘I’m a-going,’ said he, bringing his fist down upon the table with a heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell, to give it greater force, ‘I’m a-going to have your life!’

He leaned forward staring at me, slowly unclenched his hand and drew it across his mouth as if his mouth watered for me, and sat down again.

‘You was always in Old Orlick’s way since ever you was a child. You goes out of his way, this present night. He’ll have no more on you. You’re dead.’

I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a moment I looked wildly round my trap for any chance of escape; but there was none.

‘More than that,’ said he, folding his arms on the table again, ‘I won’t have a rag of you, I won’t have a bone of you, left on earth. I’ll put your body in the kiln—I’d carry two such to it, on my shoulders—and, let people suppose what they may of you, they shall never know nothing.’

OR

‘ Great Expectations is a story about unrealistic expectations.’ How far do you agree with this view?

Explore at least two moments from the novel to support your ideas.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Choose ONE question.

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.

EITHER

Explore how Austen presents the importance of reputation in this extract and elsewhere in the novel.

In this extract Elizabeth tells Darcy of Lydia’s elopement with Wickham.

‘No, I thank you,’ she replied, endeavouring to recover herself. ‘There is nothing the matter with me. I am quite well. I am only distressed by some dreadful news which I have just received from Longbourn.’

She burst into tears as she alluded to it, and for a few minutes could not speak another word. Darcy, in wretched suspense, could only say something indistinctly of his concern, and observe her in compassionate silence. At length, she spoke again. ‘I have just had a letter from Jane, with such dreadful news. It cannot be concealed from anyone. My younger sister has left all her friends–has eloped;–has thrown herself into the power of–of Mr. Wickham. They are gone off together from Brighton. You know him too well to doubt the rest. She has no money, no connections, nothing that can tempt him to–she is lost for ever.’

Darcy was fixed in astonishment. ‘When I consider,’ she added in a yet more agitated voice, ‘that I might have prevented it!– I who knew what he was. Had I but explained some part of it only–some part of what I learnt, to my own family! Had his character been known, this could not have happened. But it is all, all too late now.’

‘I am grieved indeed,’ cried Darcy; ‘grieved–shocked. But is it certain–absolutely certain?’

OR

‘It is impossible to sympathise with Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s attitude to marriage and family life.’ How far do you agree with this view?

Explore at least two moments from the novel to support your ideas.

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Choose ONE question.

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.

EITHER

Explore how Wells presents helplessness in this extract and elsewhere in the novel.

In this extract the narrator describes the chaos caused by the Martian invasion.

Had the Martians aimed only at destruction, they might on Monday have annihilated the entire population of London, as it spread itself slowly through the home counties. Not only along the road through Barnet, but also through Edgware and Waltham Abbey, and along the roads eastward to Southend and Shoeburyness, and south of the Thames to Deal and Broadstairs, poured the same frantic rout. If one could have hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives, each dot a human agony of terror and physical distress. I have set forth at length in the last chapter my brother’s account of the road through Chipping Barnet, in order that my readers may realise how that swarming of black dots appeared to one of those concerned. Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. The legendary hosts of Goths and Huns, the hugest armies Asia has ever seen, would have been but a drop in that current. And this was no disciplined march; it was a stampede—a stampede gigantic and terrible—without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of civilisation, of the massacre of mankind.

OR

‘ The War of the Worlds is a novel with a happy ending.’ How far do you agree with this view?

Explore at least two moments from the novel to support your ideas.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Choose ONE question.

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.

EITHER

Explore how Stevenson presents the character of Utterson in this extract and elsewhere in the novel.

In this extract Utterson is introduced before he begins his walk with Mr Enfield.

He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove.

‘I incline to Cain’s heresy,’ he used to say quaintly: ‘I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.’ In this character it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.

No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendships seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle readymade from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer’s way. His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object.

OR

‘ The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a story about the desire for control.’ How far do you agree with this view?

Explore at least two moments from the novel to support your ideas.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Choose ONE question.

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.

EITHER

Explore how Brontë presents feelings of terror in this extract and elsewhere in the novel.

In this extract Jane has been locked in the red room alone.

I doubted not — never doubted — that if Mr Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls — occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaming mirror — I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr Reed’s spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child, might quit its abode — whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed — and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it — I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room; at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort.

OR

‘Jane Eyre has a good understanding of her own feelings.’ How far do you agree with this view?

Explore at least two moments from the novel to support your ideas.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Choose ONE question.

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.

EITHER

Explore how Dickens presents changes in this extract and elsewhere in the novel.

In this extract Scrooge witnesses the door-knocker transform into the face of Marley.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it night and morning during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including – which is a bold word – the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven years’ dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change: not a knocker, but Marley’s face.

Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be, in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

OR

‘The novel encourages us to feel pity for Scrooge.’ How far do you agree with this view?

Explore at least two moments from the novel to support your ideas.