NYGH 2013-S3EOY-ALit HP

Class Register Number Name 南洋女子中学校 NANYANG GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL SECONDARY THREE END-OF-YEAR EXAMINATION 9 October 2013 Wednesday Advanced Literature (HP) 2 hours 1200-1400 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 and legible handwriting. Setter: SW/CL This document consists of 5 printed pages. NANYANG GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL [ Turn over]

2 SECTION A: SET TEXT Answer either question 1 or 2 Question 1: Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller In Death of A Salesman, Willy may be seen as a symbol of failure. Why, in the play, may Willy be seen as a symbol of failure? Remember to make close reference to the text to support your answer. [30] Or Question 2: The Turn of The Screw by Henry James I got hold of Mrs Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: ‘They know – it’s too monstrous: they know they know!’ ‘And what on earth -?’ I felt incredulity as she held me. ‘Why all that we know – and heaven knows more besides!’ Then as she released me I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only now with full coherency even to myself. ‘Two hours ago, in the garden’ – I could scarce articulate – ‘Flora saw!’ Mrs Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. ‘She has told you?’ she panted. ‘Not a word – that’s the horror. She kept it to herself! The child of eight, that child!’Unutterable still was the stupefaction of it. Mrs Grose of course could only gape the wider. ‘Then how do you know?’ ‘I was there – I saw with my eyes: saw she was perfectly aware.’ ‘Do you mean aware of him?’ ‘No- of her.’ I was conscious as I spoke that I looked prodigious thingsa, for I got the slow reflexion of them in my companion’s face. ‘Another person – this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakeable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful – with such an air also, and such a face! – on the other side of the lake. I was there with the child – quiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came.’ ‘Came how – from where?’ ‘From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there – but not so near.’

3 ‘And without coming nearer?’ Oh for the effect and the feeling she might have been as close as you!’ My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. “Was she someone you’ve never seen?’ ‘Never. But someone the child has. Someone you have.’ Then to show how I had thought it all out: ‘My predecessor – the one who died.’ ‘Miss Jessel?’ ‘Miss Jessel. You don’t believe me? I pressed. She turned right and left in her distress. ‘How can you be sure?’ This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. ‘Then ask Flora – she’s sure!” But I had no sooner spoken than I caught myself up. ‘No, for God’s sake don’t! She’ll say she isn’t – she’ll lie!’ Mrs Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. ‘Ah how can you?’ ‘Because I’m clear. Flora doesn’t want me to know.’ ‘It’s only then to spare you.’ ‘No, no – there are depths, depths! The more I go over it the more I see in it, and the more I see in it the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see, what I don’t fear!’ Mrs Grose tried to keep up with me. ‘You mean you’re afraid of seeing her agagin?’ ‘Oh no; that’s nothing – now!’ Then I explained. ‘It’s of not seeing her.’ But my companion only looked wan. ‘I don’t understand.’ ‘Why, it’s that the child may keep it up – and that the child assuredly will – without my knowing it.’ Extract from Chapter 7, Turn of the Screw (a) How does the extract above show the narrator’s state of mind? (b) The appeal of the novel lies not in its Gothic mood alone but in the hidden menace that is foreshadowed, then sustained.’With close reference to the statement, say how this is true for you, the reader. [30]

4 SECTION B: LITERARY RESPONSE Answer either question 3 or 4 Question 3 Read the works below and answer the question that follows. (a) The Soul's Expression With stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right That music of my nature, day and night With dream and thought and feeling interwound And inly answering all the senses round With octaves of a mystic depth and height Which step out grandly to the infinite From the dark edges of the sensual ground. This song of soul I struggle to outbear Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole, And utter all myself into the air: But if I did it,--as the thunder-roll Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there, Before that dread apocalypse of soul. 5 10 By Elizabeth Barrett Browning (b) When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of dis grace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else – the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver – would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul. 5 10 Extract from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde How do the writers explore the personal struggle for self expression? Pay close attention to diction and tone. [30m]

5 Question 4 Read the texts below and answer the question that follows. (a) Metaphor indeed I do not like to drink instant coffee pour it into another cup I want to add honey to the breakfast table so we’ll be protected from diseases and distrust at dawn, the ustaz on the radio teaches the sufi’s most efficacious prayer: sufficient is Allah unto me I check my jugular vein, feeling His nearness the distance of a strain of hair, a century is never enough for me to understand the poetry of Ibn Arabi on the way to red brimstone why did you sip the blackness of this morning’s coffee from that transparent cup as coffee in a cup, there is a hole impenetrable. this country is silent, you said come let us kneel under the breeze or at the edge of the coast catching the fishes’ noisy supplications. 5 10 15 By Johar Buang (translated from Malay by Rasiah Halil) Line 5 - Ustaz: Islamic religious teacher Line 6 – Sufi: a Muslim ascetic and mystic Line 7- Jugular vein: from a Quranic verse (paraphrased); ‘He (Allah) is nearer to you than your jugular vein’. Line 9 – Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi: Sufi master, philosopher and poet from Andalusia