CATHOLIC JUNIOR COLLEGE JC1 Promotional Examination 2012 Higher 2 3 Oct 2012

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH 9748/01 9748/03

Paper 1 Reading Literature Paper 3 The Individual and Society in Literature

3 hours Additional Materials: Answer Paper Set texts may be taken into the examination room. They may bear underlining or highlighting. Any kind of folding or flagging of pages in text (e.g. use of post-its, tape flags or paper clips) is not permitted.

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST Write your name, class and question number on all the work you hand in. Write in dark blue or black pen on both sides of the paper. Write your answer to each question on a fresh sheet of paper. Do not use paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid on your work. Answer three questions, one from each of Sections A, B and C. You are reminded of the need for good English and clear presentation in your answers. At the end of the examination, fasten each of your answers separately. All questions in this paper carry equal marks.

This document consists of 6 printed pages including this cover page.

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Section A

1 Either (a)

Write a critical commentary on the following poem, considering in detail ways in which language, style and form convey a sense of identity.

Richard Cory Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich - yes, richer than a king - And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.

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Edwin Arlington Robinson (18691935)

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OR (b) Write a critical commentary on the following poem, considering in detail ways in

which your response is shaped by the writers language, style and form.

Schoolsville Glancing over my shoulder at the past, I realize the number of students I have taught is enough to populate a small town. I can see it nestled in a paper landscape, chalk dust flurrying down in winter, nights dark as a blackboard. The population ages but never graduates. On hot afternoons they sweat the final in the park and when it's cold they shiver around stoves reading disorganized essays out loud. A bell rings on the hour and everybody zigzags into the streets with their books. I forgot all their last names first and their first names last in alphabetical order. But the boy who always had his hand up is an alderman and owns the haberdashery. The girl who signed her papers in lipstick leans against the drugstore, smoking, brushing her hair like a machine. Their grades are sewn into their clothes like references to Hawthorne. The A's stroll along with other A's. The D's honk whenever they pass another D. All the creative-writing students recline on the courthouse lawn and play the lute. Wherever they go, they form a big circle. Needless to say, I am the mayor. I live in the white colonial at Maple and Main. I rarely leave the house. The car deflates in the driveway. Vines twirl around the porch swing. Once in a while a student knocks on the door with a term paper fifteen years late or a question about Yeats or double-spacing. And sometimes one will appear in a windowpane to watch me lecturing the wallpaper, quizzing the chandelier, reprimanding the air.

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Billy Collins (1941)

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Section B

EDITH WHARTON: The Age of Innocence

2 Either Or

(a) (b)

The novel is not just a love story. It is a study of a young mans quest for maturity. How far do you agree with this comment on The Age of Innocence? Write a critical commentary on the following passage, relating it to the presentation of form and conventions here and elsewhere in the novel.

It was thus, Archer reflected, that New York managed its transitions: conspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in all good faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age. There was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generally she) had surrendered the keys, what was the use of pretending that it was impregnable? Once people had tasted of Mrs. Struthers's easy Sunday hospitality they were not likely to sit at home remembering that her champagne was transmuted Shoe-Polish. I know, dear, I know, Mrs. Archer sighed. Such things have to be, I suppose, as long as amusement is what people go out for; but I've never quite forgiven your cousin Madame Olenska for being the first person to countenance Mrs. Struthers. A sudden blush rose to young Mrs. Archer's face; it surprised her husband as much as the other guests about the table. Oh, Ellen she murmured, much in the same accusing and yet deprecating tone in which her parents might have said: Oh, the Blenkers. It was the note which the family had taken to sounding on the mention of the Countess Olenska's name, since she had surprised and inconvenienced them by remaining obdurate to her husband's advances; but on May's lips it gave food for thought, and Archer looked at her with the sense of strangeness that sometimes came over him when she was most in the tone of her environment. His mother, with less than her usual sensitiveness to atmosphere, still insisted: I've always thought that people like the Countess Olenska, who have lived in aristocratic societies, ought to help us to keep up our social distinctions, instead of ignoring them. May's blush remained permanently vivid: it seemed to have a significance beyond that implied by the recognition of Madame Olenska's social bad faith. I've no doubt we all seem alike to foreigners, said Miss Jackson tartly. I don't think Ellen cares for society; but nobody knows exactly what she does care for, May continued, as if she had been groping for something noncommittal. Ah, well Mrs. Archer sighed again. Everybody knew that the Countess Olenska was no longer in the good graces of her family. Even her devoted champion, old Mrs. Manson Mingott, had been unable to defend her refusal to return to her husband. The Mingotts had not proclaimed their disapproval aloud: their sense of solidarity was too strong. They had simply, as Mrs. Welland said, let poor Ellen find her own leveland that, mortifyingly and incomprehensibly, was in the dim depths where the Blenkers prevailed, and people who wrote celebrated their untidy rites. It was incredible, but it was a fact, that Ellen, in spite of all her opportunities and her privileges, had become simply Bohemian. The fact enforced the contention that she had made a fatal mistake in not returning to Count Olenski. After all, a young woman's place was under her husband's roof, especially when she had left it in circumstances that ... well ... if one had

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cared to look into them ... Madame Olenska is a great favourite with the gentlemen, said Miss Sophy, with her air of wishing to put forth something conciliatory when she knew that she was planting a dart. Ah, that's the danger that a young woman like Madame Olenska is always exposed to, Mrs. Archer mournfully agreed; and the ladies, on this conclusion, gathered up their trains to seek the carcel globes of the drawing-room, while Archer and Mr. Sillerton Jackson withdrew to the Gothic library.

(Chapter 26)

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Section C

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Othello

3 Either Or

(a) (b)

Othello is an individual who embodies extremes of conduct and outlook. How far do you agree with this assessment? In Venice they do let God see the pranks They dare not show their husbands. (Othello, Act 3 Sc 3) Discuss the presentation of female characters in Othello in the light of this comment.

END OF PAPER

Copyright acknowledgements: Question 1b Billy Collins; The Art of Drowning; 1995. Permission to reproduce paper this should be sought from Catholic Junior College.