NYGH 2011-S3EOY-Adv Lit (HP)

Class Register Number Name 南洋女子中学校南洋女子中学校南洋女子中学校南洋女子中学校 NANYANG GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL SECONDARY THREE END OF YEAR EXAMINATION 7 OCTOBER 2011 1045 -1245 (2 hours) Friday Advanced Literature (HP) READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST 1. Write your name on your answer script. 2. Use dark blue or black ink . 3. Do not use correction fluid / tape. INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES 1. Answer two questions: one from Section A and one from Section B . 2. You are reminded of the need for good English an d legible handwriting. Setter: SW This paper consists of 6 printed pages. NANYANG GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL [ Turn over]

2 SECTION A: SET TEXTS [30marks] Choose EITHER 1 or 2 . 1. Novel: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw It is not possible for readers to truly enjoy the story in TOTS because the novella is incomplete. Discuss this statement with reference to your reading of the text. OR 2. Play: Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman In Death of a Salesman , Miller has formulated a statement about the nature of human crises in the twentieth century…’ (from Ap proaches to Miller). Discuss this statement with reference to your reading of the text.

3 SECTION B: UNSEEN TEXTS [30marks] Choose EITHER 3 or 4 3. Read and analyse Texts 3A and 3B, and then answe r the question that follows: Text 3A An Old Man’s Winter Night All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. What kept him from remembering what it was That brought him to that creaking room was age. He stood with barrels round him – at a loss. And having scared the cellar under him In clomping there, he scared it once again In clomping off;-- and scared the outer night, Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar Of trees and cracks of branches, common things, But nothing so like beating on a box. A light he was to no one but himself Where he now sat, concerned with he knew what, A quiet light, and then not even that. He consigned to the moon, such as she was, So late-arising, to the broken moon As better than the sun in any case For such a charge, his snow upon the roof, His icicles along the wall to keep; And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted, And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept. One aged man –one man –can’t keep a house, A farm, a countryside, or if he can, It’s thus he does it of a winter night. Robert Frost

4 Text 3B R.J. Bowman, who for fourteen years had traveled for a shoe company through Mississippi, drove his Ford along a rutted dirt path. It was a long day! The time did not seem to clear the noon hurdle and settle into soft afternoon. The sun, keeping its strength here even in winter, stayed at the top of the sky, and every time Bowman stuck his head out of the dusty car to stare up the road, it seemed to reach a long arm do wn and push against the top of his head, right through his hat – like the p ractical joke of an old drummer, long on the road. It made him feel all the more angry and helpless. He was feverish, and he was not quite sure of the way. This was his first day back on the road after a lon g siege of influenza. He had had very high fever, and dreams, and had become weakened and pale, enough to tell the difference in the mirror, and he could not think clearly. …All afternoon, in the midst of his anger, and for no reason, he had thought of his dead grandmother. She had been a com fortable soul. Once more Bowman wished he could fall into the big feath er bed that had been in her room….Then he forgot her again. This desolate hill country! And he seemed to be goi ng the wrong way – it was as if he were going back, far back. There was n ot a house in sight…..There was no use wishing he were back in be d, though. By paying the hotel doctor his bill he had proved his recover y. He had not even been sorry when the pretty trained nurse said goodbye. H e did not like illness, he distrusted it, as he distrusted the road without si gnposts. It angered him. He had given the nurse a really expensive bracelet, ju st because she was packing her bag and leaving. But now – what if in fourteen years on the road he had never been ill before and never had an accident? His record was broken, a nd he had even begun almost to question it….He had gradually put up at b etter hotels, in the bigger towns, but weren’t they all, eternally, stuffy in s ummer and drafty in winter? Women? He could only remember little rooms within l ittle rooms, like a nest of Chinese paper boxes, and if he thought of one wo man he saw the worn loneliness that the furniture of that room seemed b uilt of. And he himself – he was a man who always wore rather wide-brimmed bl ack hats, and in the wavy hotel mirrors he looked something like a bullf ighter., as he paused for that inevitable instant on the landing, walking dow nstairs to supper. …He leaned out of the car again, and once more the sun pushed at his head. Bowman had wanted to reach Beulah by dark, to go to bed and sleep off his fatigue, As he remembered, Beulah was fifty miles a way from the last town, on a graveled road. This was only a cow trail. How had he ever come to such a place? One hand wiped the sweat from his face, and he drove on. He had made the Beulah trip before. But he had neve r seen this hill or this petering out path before – or that cloud he thought shyly, looking up and

5 then down quickly – anymore than he had seen this d ay before. Why did he not admit he was simply lost and had been for miles ?...He was not in the habit of asking the way of strangers, and these peo ple never knew where the very roads they lived on went to; but then he had not even been close enough to anyone to call out. People standing in th e fields now and then, or on top of the haystacks, had been too far away, loo king like leaning sticks or weeds, turning a little at the solitary rattle of h is car across their countryside, watching the pale sobered winter dust where it chun ked out behind like big squashes down the road. The stares of these distant people had followed him solidly like a wall, impenetrable, behind which they turned back after he had passed. Excerpt from Death of a Traveling Salesman by Theodora Welty 3. In what ways do the writers draw attention to the issues faced by the speakers in each case? Remember to examine structure, language and tone. OR 4. Read and analyse texts 4A and 4B and then answer the question that follows. Text 4A Where is it written That husbands get twenty-five dollar lunches and invitations to South America for think conferences while Wives get Campbell’s black bean soup and a trip to the firehouse with the first grade and Where is it written That husbands get to meet beautiful lady lawyers and beautiful lady professors of Ancient History and beautiful sculptresses and heiresses and poetesses while Wives get to meet the checker with the acne at the Safeway 1 and Where is it written That husbands get a nap and the Super Bowl 2 on Sundays while Wives get to help color in the coloring book and Where is it written Husbands get ego gratification, emotional support, and hot tea in bed for ten days when they have the sniffles while Wives get to give it to them? And if a wife should finally decide Let him take the shoes to the shoemaker and the children to the paediatrician and the dog to the vet while she tak