2025 CJC Prelims H2 ELit P3 QP

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH 9539/03 Paper 3: Reading Literature featuring the Postcolonial Literature Topic 26 August 2025 3 hours Additional Materials: Set Texts Set texts may be taken into the examination room. They may bear underlining or highlighting. Pages can be flagged with paper clips or by folding the page corners. Page numbers can be highlighted, underlined or marked out with vertical lines. Any other kind of folding or flagging of papers in texts (for example use of sticky notes or tape flags) is not permitted. READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST An answer booklet will be provided with this question paper. You should follow the instructions on the front cover of the answer booklet. If you need additional answer paper ask the invigilator for a continuation booklet. 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. All questions in this paper carry equal marks. This document consists of 7 printed pages and 1 blank page. [Turn over Instruction Catholic Junior College JC2 Preliminary Examinations Higher 2

© CJC 2025 9539/03 2 Section A Unseen Prose and Drama Answer one question from this section. 1 Either (a) The following passage is an extract from a short story “Evangelist” by Joyce Cary (1888-1957). Write a critical appreciation of the passage, considering in detail ways in which your response is shaped by the writer’s use of form, style and language. John Pratt, fifty-five, on holiday at the sea, gets up one sunny morning, looks from the window, says, 'It won't last,' and picks from his seven suits the only dark one. He dresses himself with care, and eats for breakfast one piece of dry toast. "A touch of liver," he says to himself, takes his umbrella and a bow ler1, and goes for his morning walk along the Parade2. “Why the bowler?" he asks himself. "I'm not going back to town." And suddenl y it strikes him that he is bored. "Impossible,' he says; “l’ve only been here a week and my regular time is always a fortnight." He looks about him to discover some usual source of pleasure in this charming old place; and immediately he is seized, possessed, over whelmed with boredom, with the most malignant and hopeless of all bo redoms, holiday boredom. It rises from his stomach, it falls from the lukewarm air. Ever ything in sight is instantly perceived as squalid, mercenary, debased by mean use and vulgar motives. The Regency facades 3 whose delicate taste he has so much admired, which bring him year after year to a place neither smart nor quiet, seem to leer at him with the sly, false primness of old kept women on the lookout for some city lecher, willing to set off cracked plaster against lewd dexterity. He looks at the sea for freshness. But it appears thick, greasy: he murmurs with horror, “The cesspool of the whole earth." He see s the drains discharging from a million towns, the rubbish unbucketed from ten thousand years of ships, wrecks full of corpses; the splash of glitter beyond the pier is like the explosion of some hidden corruption. The ozone comes to his nose like a stench. He sees from the distance a friend, the Colonel in his light-grey suit, stepping briskly. He is whirling his stick -- it is plain that he is in his usual high spirits. Pratt crosses the road to avoid him. A taxi hoots in an angry and distracted manner, but he does not hurry, he would rather be killed than betray the dign ity of his despair. The taxi's brakes squawk like Donald Duck -- it comes to a stop at his elbow -- a furious young man with upstanding black hair and red -rimmed eyes thrusts out his neck and bawls insults. Bystanders laugh and stare. Pratt does not turn his head or quicken his walk. He accepts these humiliations as appropriate to such a morning in such a world. The shopping housewives with their predatory eyes and anxious wrinkled foreheads fill him with a lofty and scornful pity, as for insects generated by a conspiracy of gases and instinct to toil in blind necessity for the production of more insects. Yes, he thinks humanity is like the maggots on a perishing carcass. Its history is the history of maggots; the fly, the buzz, the coupling o f flies, the dropping of their poison on every clean thing, the hunt for some ordur e, some corpse, the laying of eggs, and another generation of maggots. Foulness upon foulness. Tides of dis gust and scorn rise in his soul; he stalks more grandly; he has become a giant for whom all history is meaner than the dust on his boot soles. Suddenly he is accosted by a red -faced man, a hotel acquaintance, who starts out of a shop and seizes him by the hand -- impossible to avoid this person. The red-faced man is in a fluster. Has Mr. Pratt seen the news? Is there going to be a war, is this it? Should he sell out his investments and pay his debts; should he fetch back his family from abroad? 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1 Bowler: hat 2 Parade: Public promenade, in this instance at a seaside resort 3 Regency facades: Early 19th-century house fronts

© CJC 2025 9539/03 3 Pratt draws himself up and out of mere wrath at this intrusion, utters in severe tones such banalities as amaze his own ears. If war comes, he says, it will come, and if not, t hen not. There are good arguments on both sides of the question. If we believe our freedom is worth defending, then we should be ready to defend it at all costs. For faith is not faith , not what we truly believe, unless we are prepared to die for it. And in a conflict of fa ith those alone who are prepared to die for what they believe deserve to win. As for bombs, one can die but once. One will die anyhow and possibly much worse than by a bomb. The red -faced man is taken aback by this rigmarole of eloquence. He listens with surprised attention in his green eyes -- then with respect. Pratt's unmoved solemnity, his severe tone born of scornful indifference, impress him. He ejaculates murmurs of approval. He says that this is just what he himself has always thought. And this is probably true. He could scarcely have escaped such reflections. He departs exalted. Pratt walks on alone, his step is still majestic but full of spring. He is exhilarated; he looks at the sea and it appears to him noble in its vastness, transcendent in its unconcern, venerable in its intimation of glorious deeds. The houses are like veteran soldiers in line, meeting with stoic pride the injuries of time. The housewives, striving, saving for their families, wear the brows of angels; the battered angels roughly carved on some primitive church. He salutes with heroic elation a world made for heroes. He perceives with joy that it is going to be a fine day, that he is hungry. He whirls his umbrella. 45 50 55 60

© CJC 2025 9539/03 4 Or (b) The following is an extract from Harold Pinter’s play, The Trial (1993), (adapted from Franz Kafka’s novel of the same name (1925). 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. INTERIOR. THE COURTROOM. DAY There is still a great deal of noise. Nobody looks at K. He stands. Someone touches his hand. He looks down. It is a small BOY. K takes the boy's hand. The BOY leads him through the crowd to the dais. The fat man (the EXAMINING MAGISTRATE) is still laughing and whispering with another man. The BOY stands on tiptoe, touches MAGISTRATE's arm. The MAGISTRATE looks down.