MSS Lit P1

This document consists of 5 printed pages, including the cover page. Setter: Mdm Salwati Salim Marsiling Secondary School GCE O-Level Preliminary Examination 2020 Subject: English Literature (2274/02) [Question Booklet] Level: 4 Course: EXP Date: 26 August 2020 Duration: 1 hr 40 mins Name: Index No: Class: Additional materials provided: Writing Paper x4 String x1 READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST This paper contains Sections A and B. Write your answers on the writing paper provided. Write your name, index number and class on the Question Booklet and writing paper. Write in dark blue or black ink. Fasten your answers securely together with the string provided. Do not use paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid. Answer one question from Section A. Answer one question from Section B. Begin each question on a fresh sheet of paper. Write the question number clearly. You are reminded of the need for good English and clear presentation in your answer. At the end of the examination, submit the Question Booklet and your answers separately. For Examiner’s Use Section A 25 Section B 25 Total 50

2 SECTION A RAY BRADBURY: Fahrenheit 451 Remember to support your ideas with relevant details from the text. 1 Either (a) How does Bradbury strongly criticise censorship in the novel? Or (b) Discuss the role of nature in the novel. Or (c) Read this passage carefully, and then answer the questions that follow it: Montag walked but did not feel his feet touch the cement and then the night grasses. Beatty flicked his igniter nearby and the small orange flame drew his fascinated gaze. "What is there about fire that's so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it?" Beatty blew out t he flame and lit it again. "It's perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Or almost perpetual motion. If you let it go on, it'd burn our lifetimes out. What is fire? It's a mystery. Scientists give us gobbledegook about friction and molecules. But they don't really know. Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it. Now, Montag, you're a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, s ure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical." Montag stood looking in now at this queer house, made strange by the hour of the night, by murmuring neighbour voices, by littered glass, and there on the floor, their covers torn off and spille d out like swan -feathers, the incredible books that looked so silly and really not worth bothering with, for these were nothing but black type and yellowed paper, and raveled binding. Mildred, of course. She must have watched him hide the books in the garden and brought them back in. Mildred. Mildred. "I want you to do this job all by your lonesome, Montag. Not with kerosene and a match, but piecework, with a flamethrower. Your house, your clean-up." "Montag, can't you run, get away!" "No!" cried Montag helplessly. "The Hound! Because of the Hound!" Faber heard, and Beatty, thinking it was meant for him, heard. "Yes, the Hound's somewhere about the neighbourhood, so don't try anything. Ready?" "Ready." Montag snapped the safety-catch on the flamethrower. "Fire!" A great nuzzling gout of flame leapt out to lap at the books and knock them against the wall. He stepped into the bedroom and fired twice and the twin beds went up in a great simmering whisper, with more heat and passion and light than he would have supposed them to contain. He burnt the bedroom walls and the cosmetics chest because he wanted to change everything, the chairs, the tables, and in the dining -room the silverware and plastic dishes, 5 10 15 20 25 30

3 everything that showed that he had lived here in this e mpty house with a strange woman who would forget him tomorrow, who had gone and quite forgotten him already, listening to her Seashell radio pour in on her and in on her as she rode across town, alone. And as before, it was good to burn, he felt himself gu sh out in the fire, snatch, rend, rip in half with flame, and put away the senseless problem. If there was no solution, well then now there was no problem, either. Fire was best for everything! "The books, Montag!" The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers. And then he came to the parlor where the great idiot monsters lay asleep with their white thoughts and their snowy dreams. And he shot a bolt at each of the three blank walls and the vacuum hissed out at him. The emptiness made an even emptier whistle, a senseless scream. He tried to think about the vacuum upon which the nothingness had performed, but he could not. He held his breath so the vacuum could not get into his lungs. He cut off its terrible emptiness, drew back, and gave the entire room a gift of one huge bright yellow flower of burning. The fireproof plastic sheath on everything was cut wide and the house began to shudder with flame. 35 40 45 50 i) How does Bradbury vividly portray fire in this passage? ii) In what ways does Bradbury explore the symbol of fire elsewhere in the novel?

4 SECTION B Answer Question 2 or Question 3 Remember to support your ideas with relevant details from the poem. 2 Read this poem carefully, and then answer the questions that follow it. What it Means to be Landless When I look out the window I can only see cloud and the top of other people’s roofs. Gardens are out of reach, even the smallest blade of grass. In stormy weather rain dashes right past me on the way to somewhere thirsty. It means shade. It means the herbs and spices I try to cultivate wilt under flourescent lighting and air conditioning. It means safety. It means clean hands. It means I taste old tin, sodium benzoate1, vacuum sealed meats when the market is closed. I can have whatever I want as long as it’s something on offer. I can give you an address that in fifty years will not even be memories of a lost childhood. When I travel, I look for floodplains and unscalable mountains, for the small scruffed kittens scratching at litter and soil and fresh greens we eat later not knowing where they came from. It means I will be burned, not buried. It means I am the son of no soil. It means I have no fear of droughts and bandits, of hard work, and children at play have earth brushed away from their knees in case it makes them sick. It means enough, and nothing and smiling, every morning as I rise, the puzzled smile of the long sleep. (by Alvin Pang) 5 10 15 20 25 i) What impressions do you form of the country mentioned in the poem? ii) How does the poet convey the speaker’s dissatisfaction with the country in the poem? 1 a widely used food preservative.

5 3 Read this poem carefully, and then answer the questions that follow it. Pioneers, First Women in Construction Her sister was shot, and hers found bludgeoned1 dead in her car trunk; her mother was alcoholic, and hers a suicide; her daughter killed by an uncle, and hers stayed alive thanks to prison. Before the term, date-raped, she was. Before domestic violence, love punched her face. We wanted the career. Not just skills and money, but structure, focus, printed plans, the rowdy order of raising buildings that years