1. DRAFTS OF QUESTIONS ON COMPARATIVE STUDIES
A. HIGHER LEVEL
Themes and Issues
- 'The dramatic presentation of a theme can greatly add to the impact of literary texts." Discuss this statement in relation to your study of texts in a comparative way.
- Comment on how your understanding of a theme or issue has been informed by your reading of texts in a comparative manner,
- Outline your views on the relationship between the themes and issues which literary texts address and the creation of significant characters.
- Show how a theme or issue affects the narrative shape or structure in two contrasting texts.
- 'The language and imagery chosen by the author are important expressions of theme.' Discuss this statement in relation to texts you have studied in a comparative mode.
Literary Genre
- Contrast your experience of reading a novel with that of attending a play or seeing a film.
- Who tells the stoW in the texts you studied? Contrast the viewpoint of the narrators and their attitude and relationship to the other characters in the texts.
- Discuss the narrative approach of the texts you have read. Which story did you find the most convincing and enjoyable and why?
- Comment on the texts you have studied in relationship to their being either realistic or romantic in their viewpoint, Which kind of writing do you enjoy most?
- In relationship to either your understanding of comedy or tragedy compare the texts you have studied as exemplars of those literary genres.
Cultural Context
- Compare the rituals of relationships in some selected texts.
- Comment on the relative social status of men and women in texts.
- Discuss where power and influence reside in the cultures in texts.
- Comment on the significance of race or class in the texts.
B. ORDINARY LEVEL
Heroes Heroines and Villains
- Compare the behaviour of two of the leading characters in the texts you have read.
- Which heroes or heroines did you admire most in the texts you studied? In your answer refer to at least two characters from differerent texts.
- Villains, heroes and heroines can be either stereotypes or original and individual in their behaviour. How would you classify those in the texts read by you?
- Heroes/heroines usually face serious challenges. What was the nature of the challenges the characters in the texts faced? Were there similarities in the way they approached these challenges?
- What were the central values of the main characters in the texts read? Compare their respective value-systems. Which of them did you find most interesting?
Social Setting
- Contrast the social setting of two texts under at least two of the following headings: place and time; general value systems and beliefs; characteristic rituals and behaviour of the people.
- Would you have liked to live in the social world created in the texts read? Describe and comment on one you think you could possibly live in and on one which you might find uncomfortable.
- Did the setting of the texts detract from or add interest to the overall impact in your view? How important was the particular setting for making the text successful in telling its stoW and putting across a particular viewpoint?
- Which aspects of the setting of the texts did you find either most interesting or significant? Explain your choices.
Relationships
- Taking two or more of the texts you studied, compare the relationships which were of most interest to you.
- Describe and comment on the importance of one relationship in each of the texts.
- 'Some relationships are creative and some are destructive.' Choose a relationship from each of the two texts and compare those two relationships in the light of the above statement.
- Describe one relationship in each of your texts. In each of the relationships choose the person you felt most sympathetic towards and compare the behaviour and attitudes of these characters.
2. QUESTIONS ON UNSEEN POETRY - ORDINARY LEVEL
ADVICE TO MY SON
The trick is, to live your days,
as if each one may be your last
(for they go fast, and young men lose their lives
in strange and unimaginable ways)
but at the same time, plan long range
(for they go slow: if you survive
the sheltered windshield and the bursting shell
you will arrive
at our approximation here below
of heaven or hell).
To be specific, between the peony and the rose
plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes;
beauty is nectar
and nectar, in a desert, saves
but the stomach craves stronger sustenance
than the honied vine.
Therefore, marry a pretty girl
after seeing her mother;
show your soul to one man,
work with another,
and always serve bread with your wine.
But son,
always serve wine.
Peter Menke
Read this poem slowly and carefully a number of times. Try to think about the pictures it makes and the feelings that those pictures give you. Don't be worried if you cannot catch the full meaning of the poem; just talk about the parts that have most meaning for you.
Q. 1 In lines 1-10 what line(s) give you the most powerful picture? Outline the picture and the feelings and ideas it brings. Is there any other place in the poem where those same feelings can be found? Write about those lines.
Q.2 In your view does this poem give a sad view of life or a happy view of life or a mixture of the two? Explain your answer by selecting some lines to illustrate your viewpoint.
Q.3 How would you describe the way the poem uses words? Choose from the following the phrases that describe the poem best for you: a) like a friendly chat, b ) like a sermon, c) like a serious message, d) like a song, e) like a set of friendly instructions. Choose some words and phrases from the poem to support your opinion.
Q.4 Some phrases from the poem are like 'wise sayings' or 'proverbs', e.g. 'plan long range', 'beauty is nectar'. Pick out some other phrases like this and talk about what they bring to the poem.
JULY DAY SPECTACULAR
I sit in the third row of
gray rocks upholstered
with lichen. Light pours
from the flies of heaven
on a thirty mile stage-set;
and there, by the footlights
of breaking water,
oystercatchers,
going through their old routines,
put on their black-and-white minstrel show
watched by a bandmaster pigeon
with built-in epaulettes.
Norman MacCaig
Q.1 Read this poem a number of times and then decide how the poet is feeling about what he sees.
Q.2 Choose some of the following words which you think would be appropriate to describe the scene in the poem as the poet presents it: lively, serious, dull, monotonous, entertaining, light-hearted. Could you suggest another word to describe the poet's viewpoint?
Q.3 The poet is describing a seaside scene. To what does the poet compare it and what is the impact of that comparison?
Q.4 Pick out some words in the poem which you found interesting and/or surprising and talk about them.
SPRING RACE
The chestnuts have it.
One before all the rest
in that line of twelve where the road swings by Foley's farm
his hitched limp green rags
to every spiked twig it owns
and the rags life,
thicken in moist light,
fan upon fan. Translucent.
As new ghosts, they own no shade.
Beyond, the spread corduroy of spring plowing
and iambs shouting into the morning.
Kerry Hardie
Read this poem a number of times until you can imagine clearly the scene being presented in terms of place, events and time of the year. Note down your own response to the poem, i.e. what images/feelings/ideas did it create in you? Then respond to the following questions.
Q.1 In her description of the coming of Spring the poet uses some unusual words to describe things. Pick out the words you found unusual and write about their effect in the poem.
Q.2 There is a strong sense of a particular place in this poem. What details and references are important in your view for giving this sense of place?
Q.3 What picture does the title of the poem create for you? What lines in the poem keep the same picture going?
EILY KILBRIDE
On the north side of Cork city
where I sported and played
On the banks of my own lovely Lee
Having seen the goat break loose in Grand Parade.
I met a child Eily Kilbride
Who's never heard of marmalade,
Whose experience of breakfast
Was coldly limited,
Whose entire school day
Was a bag of crisps,
Whose parents had no work to do,
Who went, once, into the countryside,
Saw a horse with a feeding bag over its head
And thought it was sniffing glue.
Brendan Kennelly
Q.1 In your view why did the poet write this poem?
Q.2 How does the poet feel about Eily? Choose at least two from the following list of descriptive words which you think describe the way he is feeling: sad, angry, gentle, happy, shocked, uncaring, frustrated. Explain your choices.
Q.3 The first verse includes a line from a popular and well-known song about Cork, 'On the banks of my own lovely Lee'. Why is that line included here?
Q.4 What part of Eily's experience would you see as the most upsetting? Explain your choice by describing the kind of picture it gives you and the feelings related to it.
DID ANYTHING HAPPEN AT THE FIELD TODAY, DEAR?
The photograph shows
the frozen horror of that moment in time
the airship
booming into flame
the people
tiny
running to and fro arms
raised in fright
and looking closer we can see
one person
unconcerned
walking from the field
not having noticed the panic
behind him
striding
hands in pockets
head bowed in thought
he walks away
admiring the splendid polish
of his boots
Richard Hill
Read this poem a number of times and when you feel you have some sense of it attempt the following questions.
Q. 1 There are two different viewpoints on a certain moment given in this poem, i.e. what the 'people' saw and what the 'person' saw. Describe what each of these saw according to the poem. What feelings and ideas do these two pictures give?
Q.2 Who do you think is talking to whom in the title of the poem? Explain how the title hints at what the poem is about.
Q.3 Select from the poem four phrases which for you carry the main impact of the poem. Explain your choice.
Q.4 From the list below choose the phrase which is very close to or very different from your own reading of the text and explain your choice:
- The two different viewpoints make the airship disaster seem more sad and tragic
- The presence of two viewpoints means that the reader's attention is drawn away from the airship disaster.
- The poem makes people seem insignificant and unimportant.
POT ROAST
I gaze upon the roast,
that is sliced and laid out
on my plate
and over it
I spoon the juices
of carrot and onion.
And for once I do not regret
the passage of time.
I sit by a window
that looks
on the soot-stained brick of buildings
and do not care that I see
no living thing - not a bird,
not a branch in bloom,
not a soul moving
in the rooms
behind the dark panes.
These days when there is little
to love or to praise
one could do worse
than yield
to the power of food.
So I bend
to inhale
the steam that rises
from my plate, and I think
of the first time
I tasted a roast
like this
It was years ago
in Seabright.
Nova Scotia:
my mother leaned
over my dish and filled it
and when I finished
filled it again.
I remember the gravy,
its odour of garlic and celery,
and sopping it up
with pieces of bread.
And now
I taste it again.
The meat of memory
The meat of no change.
I raise my fork in praise,
And I eat.
Charles Peters
This is a poem which uses food and the memory of food in an interesting way. While sitting at a meal a person starts remembering other meals. Read the poem a few times and jot down whatever it suggests to you. Then respond to the following questions and proposals.
Q. 1 'There are feelings of warmth and love here but also feelings of coldness and death.' What do you think? In your view which finally is the dominant feeling in the poem?
Q.2 since this poem describes eating there should be sensuous words present in it. Select some words which created for you a sense of rich tastes, textures and scents.
Q.3 At the end the poet raises his 'fork in praise'. Why does he do this? Is he praising food, meat, his mother, himself or what?
Q.4 'Poems can add rich meanings to the ordinary events of life?' Would this be true of this poem?
RUNNING ON EMPTY
As a teenager I would drive Father's
Chevrolet cross-country, given me
reluctantly: 'Always keep the tank
half full, boy, half full, ya hear?'
The fuel gauge dipping, dipping
towards Empty, hitting Empty, then
thrilling way below Empty,
myself driving cross-country
mile after mile, faster and faster,
all night long, this crazy kid driving
the earth's rolling surface,
against all laws, defying chemistry,
rules, and time, riding on nothing
but fumes, pushing luck harder
than anyone pushed before, the wind
screaming past like the Furies ...
I stranded myself only once, a white
night with no gas station open, ninety miles
from nowhere. Panicked for a while,
at standstill, myself stalled.
At dawn the car and I both refilled. But,
Father, I am running on empty still.
Robert Nicholls
This poem apparently tells about an incident from the poet's teenage years. Read it a few times and try to get a clear picture of what actually happened. Having read it note down any words that interest/surprise you or any ideas, images and feelings it raised and then respond to the following proposals and questions.
Q. 1 'The poem is full of a sense of movement and risk.' Where in the poem can you find these feelings? How is the language used to give that sense of movement?
Q.2 Why did the poet take such pleasure in 'running on empty'? Choose some words and phrases which suggest his reasons.
Q. 3 What feeling does the last line create? Choose from the following the words which match the line's impact on you: sad, happy, defiant, hopeless, helpless, angry, arrogant, bitter.
Questions on Poetry: Higher Level
1 (a) Philip Larkin's poems focus vividly, if unemotionally, on ordinary things, but hiscoldness towards them leaves us pessimistic and depressed.
(b) UNSEEN
TEA AT THE PALAZ OF HOON
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?
Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
Wallace Stevens
QUESTION
Under the headings o f tone and imagery compare this poem with any poem by Philip Larkin.
Or
Say whether you think this poem offers us a different or similar experience (view of the world) to that found in the poetry of Philip Larkin. You may refer to one or more of Larkin's poems.
2 (a) Many o f Eavan Boland's poems observe our violent history in a vivid and moving way; in spite of this, she does not take sides except to mourn the hurt. Discuss.
(b) UNSEEN
FUTILITY
Move him into the sun
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything must rouse him now
The Kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
Wilfred Owen
QUESTION
Discuss how this poem in its choice of subject and its use of imagery expresses the poet's belief in the futility of war.
Or
Read the poem carefully. In your opinion, how successful is the poet in expressing his belief in the futility of war?
3 (a) 'By means of language that is elliptical and terse, linked to graphic images culled from the natural world, Shakespeare in his sonnets returns again and again to the themes that preoccupy him - love, death, the ravages of time.' Discuss, supporting the points you make by reference to the Shakespearean sonnets on your course.
(b) UNSEEN
ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the shattering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers no bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Wilfred Owen
QUESTION
What attitude to war and death is conveyed in this poem? Discuss any two devices used by the poet to show his feelings on the subject.
Or
Point out some areas of similarity and contrast between this poem and one or more of those by Shakespeare on your course.
4 (a) 'The nuances of human relationships, garbed in language that is evocative and fresh, are significant features of the poetry of Seamus Heaney.' Discuss, drawing on your knowledge of the poems by Heaney on your course to support the points you make.
(b) UNSEEN
ALL LEGENDARY OBSTACLES
All legendary obstacles lay between
Us, the long imaginary plain,
The monstrous ruck of mountains
And, swinging across the night,
Flooding the Sacramento, San Joaquin,
The hissing drift of winter rain.
All day I waited, shifting
Nervously from station to bar
As I saw another train sail
By, the San Francisco Chief or
Golden Gate, water dripping
From great flanged wheels.
At midnight you came pale
Above the negro porter's lamp.
I was too blind with rain
And doubt to speak, but
Reached from the platform
Until our chilled hands met.
You had been travelling for days
With an old lady, who marked
A neat circle on the glass
With her glove, to watch us
Move into the wet darkness
Kissing, still unable to speak.
John Montague
QUESTION
What are the dominant feelings in the poem? How are these feelings conveyed in the language?
5 (a) 'What fascinates the reader of Emily Dickinson's poetry is the oddness or eccentricity of her approach to her subject matter.' Discuss.
(b) UNSEEN
TEA IN A SPACE-SHIP
In this world a tablecloth need not be laid
On any table, but is spread out anywhere
Upon the always equidistant and
Invisible legs of gravity's wild air.
The tea, which never would grow cold,
Gathers itself into a wet and steaming ball,
And hurls its liquid molecules at anybody's head,
Or dances, eternal bilboquet,
In and out of the suspended cups up
Ended in the weightless hands
Of chronically nervous jerks
Who yet would never spill a drop,
Their mouths agape for passing cakes.
Lumps of sparkling sugar
Sling themselves out of their crystal bowl
With a disordered fountain's
Ornamental stops and starts.
The milk describes a permanent parabola
Girdled with satellites of spinning tarts.
The future lives with graciousness.
The hostess finds her problems eased,
For there is honey still for tea
And butter keeps the ceiling greased.
She will provide, of course,
No cake-forks, spoons or knives.
They are so sharp, so dangerously gadabout,
It is regarded as a social misdemeanour
To put them out.
James Kirkup
QUESTION (answer both) (i) Would you agree that the language and images chosen by this poet present the reader with a less than serious view of space travel? Support your points by detailed reference to the text. (ii) To what extent can this poem be read as a satire on mankind's preoccupation with manners? Support your view by quotation from the text.
6 (a) 'Sensuousness and symbolism are characteristics of the poetry of John Keats.' Discuss (max. 500 words), using the poems by Keats on your course to illustrate the points you make.
(b) Comment on subject matter and expression in the poem below. How does the style compare to that of Keats?
MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
W.H. Auden
3. DRAFT APPROACHES TO PAPER 1. LANGUAGE
These sample questions are representative of the format and approach of the Paper 1 in the new Leaving Certificate English Examinations.
Paper 1
Ordinary Level. Time: Two and a half hours
The General Topic of this paper is Relationships
SECTION 1
Read carefully the following texts and then attempt to answer the questions as directed.
Answer Q.1 and Q.2 on one text.
Answer Q.3 o n one o f the other texts.
Text A
Margaret Atwood, 'Buddy'
My brother had a job. He was two years older than I was, and now he was a Junior Ranger, cutting brush by the sides of highways somewhere in northern Ontario, living in tents with a batch of other sixteen-year-old-boys. This was his first summer away. I resented his absence and envied him, but I also looked for his letters every day. The mail was delivered by a woman who lived on a nearby farm; she drove it around in her own car. When there was something for us she would toot her horn, and I would walk out to the dusty galvanised mailbox that stood on a post beside our gate.
My brother wrote letters to my mother as well as to me. Those to her were informative, descriptive, factual. He said what he was doing, what they ate, where they did their laundry. He said that the town near their camp had a main street that was held up only by the telephone wires. My mother was pleased by these letters, and read them out loud to me.
I did not read my brother's letters out loud to her. They were private, and filled with the sort of hilarious and vulgar commentary that we often indulged in when we were alone. To other people we seemed grave and attentive, but by ourselves we made fun o f things relentlessly, outdoing each other with what w e considered to be revolting details. My brother's letters were illustrated with drawings of his tent-mates, showing them with many-legged bugs jumping around on their heads, with spots on their faces, with wavy lines indicating smelliness radiating from their feet, with apple cores in the beards they were all attempting to grow. He included unsavoury details of their personal habits, such as snoring. I took these letters straight from the mailbox to the maple tree, where I read them over several times. Then I smuggled them into the cabin under my T-shirt and hid them under my bed.
I got other letters too, from m y boyfriend, whose name was Buddy. My brother used a fountain pen; Buddy's letters were in blue-point, the kind that splotched, leaving greasy blobs that came off on my fingers. They contained ponderous compliments, like those made by others people's uncles. Many words were enclosed by quotation marks; others were underlined. There were no pictures.
I liked getting these letters from Buddy, but also they embarrassed me. The trouble was that I knew what my brother would say about Buddy, partly because he had already said some of it. He spoke as if both he and I took it for granted that I would soon be getting rid of Buddy, as if Buddy were a stray dog it would be my duty to send to the Humane Society if the owner could not be found. Even Buddy's name, my brother said, was like a dog's. He said I should call Buddy 'Pal' or 'Sport' and teach him to fetch.
I found my brother's way of speaking about Buddy both funny and cruel: funny because it was in some ways accurate, cruel for the same reason. It was true that there was something dog-like about Buddy: the affability, the dumb faithfulness about the eyes, the dutiful way he plodded through the rituals of dating. He was the kind of boy (though I never knew this with certainty, because I never saw it) who would help his mother carry in the groceries without being asked, not because he felt like it but simply because it was prescribed. He said things like, 'That's the way the cookie crumbles,' and when he said this I had the feeling he would still be saying it forty years later.
Questions
1 How were the letters that Margaret's brother wrote to her mother different from the letters he wrote to herself? (paragraphs 1 and 2)
2 What is the author's brother's opinion of Buddy? (paragraph 5)
3 Write a short summary (about 3/4 sentences), in your own words, of the character of Buddy.
Text B
Hugh Leonard, 'Out After Dark'
Ambrose had put on weight and was pasty-faced. At school, he had been handsome in a sullen way, with limp blond hair and stork's legs that seemed all the longer because he wore the shortest trousers in the town. He was an only child, and his parents indulged him; he had the most pristine football boots, the pearliest-handled six gun and - what we all envied - a bushranger side-of-the-head hat with a chinstrap. He was the kind of superior boy I craved to be; now he seemed broody and dull. Holy God, in contrast, wore the confident smile a company director might be stow on a nervous stockholder. He was big, pink-faced and barrel-chested, with a full head of corrugated white hair; he walked his dog with the air of a country gentleman. I liked Cloggy best of the three, for he had never been known to say a defamatory word about another being. He was small and brown-haired; he wore spectacles, and with age his face took on the worried, wrinkled appearance of a walnut. With them in the Queen's was a girl named Jo Ann, who came over to where I was sitting and asked if it was true that I had come home for good. After we had talked for a while, she looked back at Ambrose, Holy God and Cloggy. 'Aren't they a hoot?' she said. 'They invite me out for a jar so's people will think they're terrible men for women'. Then, fondly: 'God help me, I'm in shocking danger!'
The trio had in the beginning been a quartet, and the fourth member was named Rory Cafferky. It took me some time to find out what had happened to him. It was Rory who provided me with the adventure they preferred to enjoy at second hand, if at all. As young lads, they robbed orchards and, with even greater daring, hooted after girls in the street. Very occasionally, the girls would call their bluff by hooting back at them, whereupon Ambrose, Holy God and Cloggy would go red and hurry around the nearest corner, each blaming the others for making a show of him, while Rory would bravely stroll over to the girls whose turn it now was to scurry away.
His daring scandalised and fascinated the three. He acquired an invisible wheelbarrow which he trundled around DOn Laoghaire, asking ladies to hold shop doors open for him as he wheeled it through. Often caught off-guard, they did so and stared at him as, halfstooped over and with fingers clasped around shafts that were not there, he would say 'Thank you' and go past them at a half run. Once, in the Carnegie Library, an assistant paid him the ultimate compliment of saying: 'you can't bring that thing in here.' When he became tired of the invisible wheelbarrow, he abandoned it for a more elaborate toy. He would get off a bus with the others and, as they were about to start down Marine Road either for a walk on the pier or to see the picture of the Pavilion, he would say, 'Excuse me a minute, lads', dip into his pocket and take out a key. With half of DOn Laoghaire looking on, he would jab it into midair and turn it. He then proceeded to open a door that only he could see. It was a heavy door, he grunted, strained and went red with the effort. By now a crowd had gathered. He raced in, took hold of a bellrope that was no more visible than the wheelbarrow had been, and gave it a single almighty tug. The great vibration of the bell caused him to reel for a moment, then he recovered, pitted his shoulder against the door, heaved it shut and used the key to lock it again. Ambrose, Holy God and Cloggy had watched the performance from the asylum of the porch of St Michael's church, with Holy God intoning over and over, lest the other two forget, which was unlikely: 'We're not with him, we're not with him.'
Questions 1 Why did the author like Cloggy the best of the three described in the first paragraph?
2 Outline how Rory differed from the others.
3 Write a short explanation (giving at least two reasons) why the friends of Rory behaved as they did at the end of the passage.
or
Write an argumentative conversation between yourself and a friend about a matter on which you disagree. First outline the topic and general content of the conversation. (There needn't be a solution to your disagreement, but both sides of the issue must be presented.)
3 Write about an activity, in the form of a magazine article or a radio talk, which you enjoy or would like to participate in which requires trust, co-operation and teamwork. Describe the activity and indicate its attractiveness for you.
or
Write a persuasive composition addressed to either your parents or guardians attempting to convince them that your plan to engage with some of your friends in a new dangerous sport (choose your own sport or activity) of which they disapprove is actually safe and worthwhile.
Leaving Certificate English
Higher Level
Proposed Format and Approach of Paper 1
Time: Two and a half hours
The general topic of this paper is how power in various forms, social, political, scientific,etc., can affect people's lives.
It is important that the texts in Section 1 are read and the appropriate questions answered before Section 2 is attempted. It is expected that your composition will reveal, directly or indirectly, some evidence of your reading, understanding and response to the texts in Section 1.
Section 1
Read the following texts and then answer the questions as directed.
You must answer two questions in this section as follows:
Answer a Q.1 on one text only
Answer a Q.2 on another text.
(A Q.1 and a Q.2 should not be answered on the same text.)
Text A
Old Tales
If one compares the female figures if contemporary children's literature with those of the traditional fairy tales, one realises that little has changed. The old fairy tales contain meek, passive, inarticulate women who are concerned only with their own beauty and are quite inept and useless. On the other hand the male figures are active, strong, courageous, loyal and intelligent. Nowadays fairy tales are hardly ever told to children. Television and stories invented for them have provided a substitute. But some of the most famous tales have survived and everybody knows them.
'Little Red Riding Hood' is the sto of a girl, bordering on mental deficiency, who is sent out by an irresponsible mother through dark-infested woods to take a little basket full to the brim with cakes, to her sick grandmother. Given these circumstances her end is hardly surprising. But such foolishness, which would never have been attributed to a male, depends on the assurance that one will always find at the right moment and in the right place a brave huntsman ready to save grandmother and granddaughter from the wolf.
Snow White is also a silly goose who accepts the apple she is offered, although she has been severely warned not to trust anybody. When the seven dwarfs accept her as a guest, the roles reappear. They go off to work while she keeps their house clean, mends their clothes, sweeps and cooks and waits for their return. She too lives with her head in the clouds. The only quality she is recognised as having is beauty. Since beauty is a natural gift, which is not affected b y the will of the individual, this does her very little credit. She always manages to get into trouble, and in order to get her out of it a man must, as usual, intervene: Prince Charming, who will marry her according to rule.
Cinderella is the prototype of domestic virtues: humility, patience, servility and 'underdeveloped consciousness', and she is not very different from the female types described in everyday textbooks for primary schools and in children's literature. She too does not move a finger to get out of an intolerable situation, swallows humiliation and oppression and has neither dignity nor courage. She also accepts being rescued by a man as her only resource, though who can say whether this latter will treat her any better than she has been treated up till then.
Female figures in fairy tales belong to two fundamentally different categories: the good, but useless, and the wicked. It has been calculated that in Grimm's fairy tales 80% of the negative characters are female.
However diligently one searches, it is impossible to find a female character who is intelligent, courageous, active and loyal. Even the good fairies do not use their own resources, but a magic power which has been conferred on them and which does good with no more logic than does evil in witches. A female character with humane, altruistic motivations, who chooses lucidly and courageously how she will act, is totally non-existent.
The emotional force with which children identify with these characters gives them great powers of suggestion, which are reinforced by innumerable concurring social messages. If it were a case of isolated myths which had survived in a culture which no longer accepted them, their influence could be ignored, but in fact our culture is saturated with the same values that these stories propagate, even if they are somewhat diluted and obscured. (580 words)
Q. 1 What is the major point being made by the author in this text. Outline the evidence she uses to support her point of view and comment on the coherence of the argument.
Q.2 List in two summary paragraphs the attributes of the male and female stereotypes which the text highlights.
Text B
The Milgram Experiment
Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist, carried out an experiment in the United States in 1961, since repeated in many other countries with similar results.
Milgram's collaborators approached twenty-to-fifty-year-old passers-by in the street completely at random and asked for their help with a series of scientific experiments supposedly designed to test the relationship between learning and punishment. When one of these volunteers arrived at the agreed time at the research department of Yale University he would always run into a young man who had supposedly come for the purpose but who was in reality one of Milgram's assistants. Dressed in a white coat as a symbol of authority, the research director then got the two to toss a coin for which role they were to play. One of them was supposed to be the 'teacher', the other the 'pupil'. The toss was rigged so the Milgram's assistant always won the part of the 'pupil'. In the presence of the 'teacher' the assistant was then tied to a kind of electric chair and left wi[h one hand free for working a push-button, his means of responding to questions. The pupit would give a creditable performance of anxious unease and consternation when the director explained that each wrong answer would be followed by an electric shock. The teacher had previously been given a sufficiently unpleasant trial shock of 45 volts for his own information.
Then director and teacher went into the room next door. The doors were shut; the only contact with the pupil was through a microphone and loudspeaker. The teacher was then presented with a list o f words which he was to read out for the pupils to memorise and repeat b y means o f certain sequences o f push-button signals. Then the teacher t o o k u p his position at a switchboard with thirty levers for different current strengths, ranging from 15 to 400 volts, and descriptions ranging from 'slight shock' to 'danger, severe shock'. His instructions were that the current was to be increased with every wrong answer.
Of course the carefully tutored pupil did not really get any electric shocks but made his mistakes according to plan and worked a pre-recorded tape of his own voice. From 75 volts upwards he could be heard drawing in his breath with a hiss and stifling his groans; at 180 volts he screamed loudly, 'Stop'. After this he started to weep and to beg for mercy and eventually he howled wordlessly like an animal. From 300 volts upwards he no longer reacted at all, and the remaining questions were unanswered. But as no answer counted as a wrong answer, the teacher had to go on asking more questions and administering further shocks.
The quite appalling result was: in the United States 65 per cent of the volunteers continued to play their part of teacher right to the 450-volt limit in spite of the victim's earlier cries and his eventual silence. When this experiment was repeated at the Maxwell Planck Institute in Munich the result was 85 per cent. Since then the experiment has been repeated with a number of variations by critics and sceptics, and the statistics proved to be correct.
Discussion afterwards revealed that nearly all the volunteers had thought that the victim was unconscious or perhaps even dead. Most of them were profoundly disturbed by their own behaviour and could not understand it. Trying to find reasons for it they would say things like: 'I did not want to get anything wrong, to disturb the experiment.' They told themselves that the scientists must know what they are doing.
This compulsion 'to get it right' and the inability to criticise a nameless authority is not aggression but its biologically necessary counterpart, group loyalty and subordination. These traits, too, have become pathologically overdeveloped in humane society - as this experiment shows - to the point where established anonymous authorities like 'the state', 'science' or even 'the revolution' can make everything legitimate by way of a rubber stamp, white coat, or armband.
The picture we generally have of the human being and human society is wrong. Something inside us refuses to replace this idealised view of mankind with a more realistic one. Anything that upsets our idealised picture we describe as 'inhumane'. Auschwitz, the Congo, Bangladesh, Vietnam - it is always 'the others' or. 'the exceptions' who would do such things, never the majority. But 75 per cent of Milgram's experiment is down in black and white. And 75 per cent cannot represent exceptions; on the contrary it represents normality. (736 words)
Q.1. In your view what did the Milgram Experiment prove? Is there any way in which you think its approach and conclusions could be challenged or do you find it convincing in its prooP.
Q.2. Imagine you have been one of the 'volunteer teachers' and you actually turned up the power to 400 volts. Write a formal letter to your 'victim' attempting to justify and explain your action.
Text C
How to Deal with Rebels
George Orwell in his Nineteen Eight-Four suggests that the reason the Russians used confessions was to prevent their victims from becoming martyrs. O'Brien, the inquisitor, says to his victim, Winston:
'The first thing for you to understand is that in this place there are no martyrdoms. You have read of the religious persecutions of the past. In the Middle Ages there was the Inquisition. It was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at the stake, thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open, and killed them while they were unrepentant. Men were dying because they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally all the gloW belonged to the victim and all the shame to the Inquisitor who burned him. Later, in the twentieth century, there were totalitarians, as they were called. There were the German Nazis and the Russian Communists. The Russians persecuted heresy more cruelly than the Inquisition had done. And they imagined that they had learned from the mistakes of the past; they knew, at any rate, that one must not make martyrs. Before they exposed their victims to public trial, they deliberately set themselves to destroy their dignity. They wore them down by torture and solitude until they were despicable, cringing themselves with abuse, accusing and sheltering behind one another, whimpering for mercy. And yet after a few years the same thing happened over again. The dead men have become martyrs and their degradation was forgotten. Once again, why was it? In the first place, because the confessions that they had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not make mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them true. And, above all, we do not allow the dead to rise up against us. You must stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. W e shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you: not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You will never have existed.'
Winston wonders to himself why the regime has then bothered to torture him. O'Brien guesses his thought and answers:
'You are a flaw in the pattern, Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I not tell you just now that we are different from the persecutors of the past? We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of you own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out. The command of the old despotisms was "Thou shalt not." The command of the totalitarians was "Thou shalt." Our command is "Thou art." ' (640 words)
Q.1 How does O'Brien's treatment of a rebel like Winston differ from the manner in which other powerful regimes treated rebels?
Q.2 List some principles of practice and procedure which O'Brien might issue in the form of instructions to a person who is to shortly take over his position.
Section 2
Write a composition on one o f the following topics.
1 Write a discursive essay for a serious magazine for young people in which you describe and reflect on the most powerful influences operating on young people today.
2 Write a narrative to explore an issue or situation found in one or more of the texts above. You must specify the particular issue or situation about which you are writing.
3 Compose an argument for a popular weekly journal on the need to eradicate gender bias in specific areas of society.
4 Compose a persuasive composition which seeks to establish the need for greater control of scientific experimentation.
5 Give an account of an event in your life in the form of an autobiographical sketch which reflects some central experiences on which the reading texts have focused. Explain clearly your choice of event.
Select Bibliography
Language and Literature
The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language David Crystal
Pathways to Literacy Trevor H. Cairney: 1995, Cassell
Critical Literacy in the Classroom the art of the possible Wendy Morgan: 1997, Routledge
Investigating English Discourse (Language, Literacy and Literature) Ronald Carter: 1997, Routledge
Knowledge about Language Ronald Carter: 1992 Hodder and Stoughton
Critical Literacy and the English Teacher Nick Peim: 1993, Routledge
Teaching and Learning Argument Richard Andrews: 1995, Cassell
Learning to Teach English in the Secondary School Jon Davison and Jane Dowson: 1998, Routledge
English for Tomorrow Sally Tweedle, Anthony Adams, et al., Open University: 1997
FUm
The Cinema Book Pam Cook, The British Film Institute: 1985
Anatomy of Film B. Dick, St. Martin's Press: 1990
How to read Film J.Monaco, Oxford University Press: 1990