2025 VJC Prelims H2 ELit P2 QP

VICTORIA JUNIOR COLLEGE JC2 PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION 2025 HIGHER 2 LITERATURE IN ENGLISH 9539/02 Paper 2 3 hours Additional Materials: Answer Paper Set texts may be taken into the examination room. They may bear underlining, highlighting or vertical lines. Pages can be flagged with paper clips or by folding the page corners. Any other kind of folding or flagging of pages in texts (for example, use of sticky notes or tape flags) is not permitted. READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST Begin each answer on a FRESH 4-PAGE BOOKLET. If you need additional answer paper ask the invigilator for a continuation booklet and label appropriately. Answer three questions: one question from Section A, one question from Section B, and one question from Section C. You are reminded of the need for good English and clear presentation in your answers. At the end of the examination, ensure your name and class is written at the beginning of each answer. All questions in this paper carry equal marks. This document consists of 7 printed pages [Turn over

2 Section A 1 Either (a) In the play Cost of Living by Martyna Majok (2018), Ani and Eddie are a couple in the midst of a divorce. She has recently been discharged from hospital after a devastating accident that has left her a paraplegic and partial use of one hand. As the divorce has yet to be finalised, Ani is still covered by Eddie's insurance plan for now. Write a critical appreciation of this extract from the play, considering in detail ways in which your response is shaped by the writer’s use of form, style and language. EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: You need to get some color in here. ( The worst.) This beige?: No. Feel like I'm walkin into a paper bag. You could get some kinda yellow in here. Some baby blue, some yellow. Good for emotions. I read that. It's therapy. Colors work on yer feelings. Blue's for stress, like—relief. Red’s for passion. And yellow I dunno but it's yellow. Ask yer nurses. Watch. They'll tell you. Shit's science. (Bone dry.) I thought I'd try yoga. Fer my emotions. ...Can you //1 do–? NO. Okay. (He looks around for something helpful to do.) What're you doin // here—? (Looking for tasks.) OkayOkayOkay. Pillow! Got yer pillow here. (He tries to put it somewhere behind her head or back. Sees she’s strapped in all over...) I'ma just fluff THAT. (...fluffs and sets the pillow aside.) Okay. Blanket. Just blanket you with THAT. (He tucks a blanket around her chair.) You lose weight? … I will punch myself later for that. On yer behalf. Or—Y’know what: (He takes her paralyzed arm. She's confused at what's going on at first but has no control over it. Oh no. Is he really doing this? He is. He's really doing this. She can't believe he’s doing this. He punches himself with her paralyzed hand. She doesn't look happy. He sees her face, not looking happy. And he awkwardly puts her hand back down by her side.) The fuck is wrong // with you? I don't know. Strap it back in! Sorry sorry. (He straps her wrist back on the arm of the chair.) Flatten it out. What? 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 1 A note on the playscript: Slash // indicates overlapping dialogue.

3 ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: EDDIE: ANI: My fingers, you gotta—Flatten // out my—Or I’ll lose those too. Right. (He returns her hand to pre-fist position, flattening her fingers on the palm pad of her chair.) There you go. You good? Don't I look it? What the fuck are you // doin here—? The bed's the wrong way. What? Yer bed’s faced away from the window. Leave it. Lemme move the bed Leave it. Lemme just do this real // quick. (Finality) NO. EDDIE. Just — // leave it. Sorry. I do that. Okay? Okay. Okay? Okay. damn. But thank you. (Sass.) You would be welcome. Why were you just standin outside my place // in the rain like some—? I'm just sayin you could get yerself some light. Ani. By the window. Light's good. Keeps you happy. Serotonin. Vitamins. There is vitamins in the sun that's only in the sun that—and we need it. So listen, it gets cloudy or rainy or some shit like this again ’n see if they'll get you a box. One a those boxes with the light comin from it. Get one ’n put it by yer face. It's for serotonin. It's supposed to shoot like, serotonin at yer face. When there's none outside. It's prob’ly covered in yer plan. ’N if not, you lemme know. I'm still on yer plan. Right. So you'll know. You'll know if I need a box. To keep me happy. True. We can figure all that out, the insurance, soon's the papers— We don't gotta // talk about that right now. I'm just sayin that for now I'm on yer plan. ’Til the papers. We can hold off on the papers. I'm sayin if you need. Fer the insurance. They're just papers. They're a lot more than that. … Why are you here. 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90

4 Or (b) The following passage is taken from The Ghost Road (1995), a novel by Pat Barker. In this extract, Harrington is a patient of Doctor Rivers at Craiglockhart, a psychiatric hospital for World War I soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Rivers uses speech therapy to treat his patients. Write a critical appreciation of the passage , considering in detail ways in which your response is shaped by the writer’s uses of form, style and language. Also, another of his patients at Craiglockhart, Harrington, who'd had dreadful nightmares, even by Craiglockhart standards, and the nightmares had continued into the semi -waking state, so that they acquired the character of hypnagogic 2 hallucinations. He saw the severed head, torso and limbs of a dismembered body hurtling towards him out of the darkness. A variant of this was a face bending over him, the lips, nose and eyelids eaten away as if by leprosy. The face, in so far as it was identifiable at all, was the face of a close friend whom Harrington had seen blown to pieces. From these dreams he woke either vomiting or with a wet bed, or both. At the time he witnessed his friend's death Harrington had already been suffering from headaches, split vision, nausea, vomiting, disorder of micturition 3, spells of forgetfulness and a persistent gross tremor of the hands, dating from an explosion two months before in which he'd been buried alive. Despite these symptoms he had remained on duty (shoot the MO4, thought Rivers) until his friend's death precipitated a total collapse. What was interesting about Harrington was that instead of treatment bringing about an elaboration of the nightmares, so that the horrors began to assume a more symbolic, less directly representational form —the normal path to recovery —something rather more remarkable had happened. His friend's body had begun to reassemble itself. Night after night the eaten -away features had fleshed out again. And Harrington talked to him. Long conversations, apparently, or they seemed long to him on waking, telling his friend about Rivers, about life at Craiglockhart, about the treatment he was receiving ... After several weeks of this, he awoke one day with his memory of the first hour after the explosion restored. He had, even in his traumatized state and under heavy fire, crawled round the pieces of his friend's body collecting items of equipment —belt, revolver, cap and lapel bad