NYGH 2017-S3EOY-ALIT HP

1 ALIT (HP) EOY 2017 VH Class Register Number Name End-of-Year Examination 2017 Secondary Three Advanced Literature (HP) Friday 6th October 2017 2 hours 0845 - 1045 hrs 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 one question from Section A and one question from Section B. 2. Begin your answer to Section B on a fresh sheet of paper. 3. Number your answers clearly. 4. You are reminded of the need for good English and legible handwriting. Setters: V Heng This document consists of 10 printed pages, including this cover page. [Turn over]

2 ALIT (HP) EOY 2017 VH SECTION A: SET TEXT Answer ONE question from this section A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams 1. Blanche believes that the opposite of death is desire. Based on your understanding of the play, in particular Blanche’s behaviour and choices, how far do you think she is right in this belief? [30] OR The Turn of the Screw – Henry James 2. Read the extract below and answer the question that follows. I gaped at her coolness even though my certitude of her thoroughly seeing was never greater than that instant, and then, in the immediate need to defend myself, I called her passionately to witness. ‘She’s there, you little unhappy thing – there, there, there, and you know it as well as you know me!’ I had said shortly before to Mrs Grose that she was not at these times a child, but an old, old woman, and my description of her couldn’t have been more strikingly confirmed than in the way in which, for all notice of this, she simply showed me, without an expressional concession or admission, a countenance of deeper and deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed reprobation. I was by this time – if I can put the whole thing at all together – more appalled at what I may properly call her manner than at anything else, though it was quite simultaneously that I became aware of having Mrs Grose also, and very formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion, the next moment, at any rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and her loud shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. ‘What a dreadful turn, to be sure, Miss! Where on earth do you see anything?’ 10

3 ALIT (HP) EOY 2017 VH I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke her hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, quite thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, insisting with my point hand. ‘You don’t see her exactly as we see? – you mean to say you don’t now – now? She’s as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest woman, look—!’ She looked, just as I did, and gave me, with her deep groan of negation, repulsion, compassion – the mixture with her pity of her relief at her exemption – a sense, touching to me even then, that she would have backed me up if she had been able. I might well have needed that, for with this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble, I felt – I saw – my livid predecessor press, from her position, on my defeat, and I took the measure, more than all, of what I should have from this instant to deal with in the astounding little attitude of Flora. Into this attitude Mrs Grose immediately and violently entered, breaking, even while there pierced through my sense of ruin a prodigious private triumph, into breathless reassurance. ‘She isn’t there, little lady, and nobody’s there – and you never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel – when poor Miss Jessel’s dead and buried? We know, don’t we love?’ – and she appealed, blundering in, to the child. ‘It’s all a mere mistake and a worry and a joke – and we’ll go home as fast as we can!’ Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange quick primness of propriety, and they were again, with Mrs Grose on her feet, united, as it were, in shocked opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with her small mask of disaffection, and even at that minute I prayed God to forgive me for seeming to see that, as she stood there holding tight to our friend’s dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed, had quite vanished. I’ve said it already – she was literally, she was hideously hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. ‘I don’t know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never have. I think you’re cruel. I don’t like you!’ Then, after this deliverance, which might have been that of a vulgarly pert little girl in the street, she hugged Mrs Grose more closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. In this position she launched an almost furious wail. ‘Take me away, take me away – oh take me away from her!’ ‘From me?’ I panted. ‘From you – from you!’ she cried. Even Mrs Grose looked across at me dismayed; while I had nothing to do but communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite bank, without a movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the interval, our voices, was as vividly there for my disaster as it was not there for my service. The wretched child had spoken exactly as if she had got from some outside source each of her stabbing little words, and I could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, but sadly shake my head at her. ‘If I had ever doubted all my doubt would at present have gone. I’ve been living with the miserable truth, and now it was only too much closed round me. Of course 20 30 40 50 60

4 ALIT (HP) EOY 2017 VH I’ve lost you: I’ve interfered, and you’ve seen, under her dictation’ – with which I faced, over the pool again, our infernal witness – ‘the easy and perfect way to meet it. I’ve done my best, but I’ve lost you. Goodbye.’ For Mrs Grose I had an imperative, an almost frantic ‘Go, go!’ before which, in infinite distress, but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly convinced, in spite of her blindness, that something awful had occurred and some collapse engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had come, as fast as she could move. Extract from Chapter XX of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James 70 a. How does Henry James use dialogue in this extract to show the development of tension? b. With reference to character and plot development, explain how this scene (and what takes place just before this) furthers your understanding of the play as a gothic story. [30]

5 ALIT (HP) EOY 2017 VH SECTION B: LITERARY RESPONSE Answer either question 3 or 4 Question 3 Read the texts below and answer the question that follows. (i) WATCHING MY PARENTS SLEEPING BESIDE AN OPEN WINDOW NEAR THE SEA by Rebecca McClanahan (2007) Needing them still, I come when I can, this time to the sea where we share a room: their double bed, my single. Morning fog paints the pale scene even paler. Lace curtains breathing, the chenille spread folded back, my father’s feet white sails furled at the edge of blue pajamas. Every child’s dream, a parent in each hand, though this child is fifty. Thei