MSHS Lit P1

Class/Index Number / Centre Number/ ‘O’ Level Index Number /Name MARIS STELLA HIGH SCHOOLPRELIMINARY EXAMINATION SECONDARY FOURLITERATURE IN ENGLISH2065/01Paper 1 Prose and Unseen Poetry 26 August 2020 1 hour 40 minutesAdditional Materials: Writing paper (5 sheets)READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRSTWrite your class, index number, Centre number, O level index number and name in the spaces at the top of this page.Write in dark blue or black pen.Do not use staples, paper clips, glue or correction fluid.Write your answers on the writing paper provided.Answer one question from Section A and one question from Section B. You are reminded of the need for good English and clear presentation in your answers.At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.The total number of marks for this paper is 50.For Examiner’s Use50This document consists of 5 printed pages, including the cover page.

2SECTION AAnswer one question from this section. RAY BRADBURY: Fahrenheit 451 Remember to support your ideas with relevant details from the text.1Either(a)What, for you, are the most disturbing aspects of Fahrenheit 451? Or(b)What does Bradbury make you feel about Faber and the part he plays in the novel? Do not use the passage printed below in answering questions (a) or (b). Or(c)Read this passage carefully, and then answer the questions that follow it:Montag held his breath, like a doubled fist, in his chest. The Mechanical Hound turned and plunged away from Faber’s house down the alley again. Montag snapped his gaze to the sky. The helicopters were closer, a great blowing of insects to a single light source. With an effort, Montag reminded himself again that this was no fictional episode to be watched on his run to the river; it was in actuality his own chess game he was witnessing, move by move. He shouted to give himself the necessary push away from this last house window, and the fascinating séance1 going on in there! Hell! and he was away and gone! The alley, a street, the alley, a street, and the smell of the river. Leg out, leg down, leg out and down. Twenty million Montags running, soon, if the cameras caught him. Twenty million Montags running, running like an ancient flickery Keystone Comedy2, cops, robbers, chasers and the chased, hunters and hunted, he had seen it a thousand times. Behind him now twenty million silently baying Hounds, ricocheted across parlors, three-cushion shooting from right war to center wall to left wall, gone, right wall, center wall, left wall, gone!Montag jammed the Seashell in his ear: “Police suggest entire population in the Elm Terrace area do as follows: Everyone in every house in every street open a front or rear door or look from the windows. The fugitive cannot escape if everyone in the next minute looks from his house. Ready!” Of course! Why hadn’t they done it before! Why, in all the years, hadn’t this game been tried! Everyone up, everyone out! He couldn’t be missed! The only man running alone in the night city, the only man proving his legs!“At the count of ten now! One! Two!” He felt the city rise. “Three!” He felt the city turn to its thousands of doors. “Four!” The people sleepwalking in their hallways. “Five!” He felt their hands on the doorknobs!The smell of the river was cool and like a solid rain. His throat was burnt rust and his eye were wept dry with running. He yelled as if this yell would jet him on, fling him the last hundred yards. “Six, seven, eight!” The doorknobs turned on five thousand doors. “Nine!” He ran out away from the last row of houses, on a slope leading down a 510152025303540

3solid moving blackness. “Ten!” The doors opened. He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards, into alleys, and into the sky, faces hid by curtains, pale, night-frightened faces, like gray animals peering from electric caves, faces with gray colorless eyes, gray tongues and gray thoughts looking out through the numb flesh of the face. 1séance: a meeting at which people attempt to make contact with the dead, especially through a medium.2Keystone Comedy: a silent slapstick comedy film from the 1900s featuring incompetent policemen. 45 (i)In what ways does Bradbury’s writing make this passage so striking? (ii)How does Bradbury strikingly portray the atmosphere of Montag’s society in the rest of the novel?

4SECTION BAnswer either Question 2 or Question 3.Either 2Read this poem carefully, and then answer the questions that follow it:Remember to support your ideas with relevant details from the poem. My Rival’s House is peopled with many surfaces. Ormolu1 and gilt2, slipper satin, lush velvet couches, cushions so stiff you can’t sink in. Tables polished clear enough you can see distortions in. We take our shoes off at her door, shuffle stocking-soled, tip-toe – the parquet3 floor is beautiful and its surface must be protected. Dust- cover, drawn shade, won’t let the surface colour fade. Silver sugar-tongs and silver salver4, My rival serves us tea. She glosses over him and me. I am all edges, a surface, a shell and yet my rival thinks she means me well. But what squirms beneath her surface I can tell. Soon, my rivalcapped tooth, polished nail will fight, fight foul for her survival. Deferential, daughterly, I sip and thank her nicely for each bitter cup. And I have much to thank her for. This son she bore – First blood to her – Never, never can escape scot free The sour potluck of family. And oh how close This family that furnishes my rival’s house. Lady of the house. Queen Bee. She is far more unconscious, Far more dangerous than me. Listen, I was always my worst enemy.She has taken even this from me. She dishes up her dreams for breakfast. Dinner, and her salt tears pepper our soup. She won’t give up. (by Liz Lochhead)1Ormolu: a gold-coloured alloy of copper, zinc and tin used for ornamental decoration. 2gilt: gold leaf or gold paint applied in a thin layer to a surface. 3parquet: flooring composed of wooden blocks in a geometric pattern. 4salver: a tray made of silver that is used in formal occasions. 5101520253035(i)What vivid impressions do you form of the speaker’s rival in lines 1-13 of this poem? (ii)How does the poet vividly convey a tense atmosphere in the rest of the poem?

5Or 3Read this poem carefully, and then answer the questions that follow it. Remember to support your ideas with relevant details from the poem. The Last Headman of Ubin His mansion is a zinc roof kampong house barelykeeping the weather out. The last headman of Ubin ponders over his orchard of wilting orchids, remnants of a farmof battered coops and last remaining chickens loyal to the feed that keeps them clucking for a month more. Amidst the birdlime1 and excrement littered by the brood of his amnesiac brotherhood,The headman’s house hovers like the spectre of an old ghost refusing to believe its death had done its glory in. No harems of chicklings, no troops of fowl, No sycophantic2 pigs trail after The mud leavings of the man who used to Wield the power of the chop over their heads. On his front porch, the headman sits static, battling flies off with his eyelids – years of ruleimprinted on every crease of his craggy mien3. A solitary bee buzzes around him. A geriatric4 dog dawdles towards him. A mango tree squeezes out a final, premature stillborn fruit. Natalie snorts in the backdrop. The headman struggles a lazy eye at her; they signal assent5. These are the last days of a glorified past. Age has crept up on beast and beauty. The headman looks down. The first drops of a fresh shower smashes the arid ground. Natalie shuffles her rump away, looking for refuge. The sow knows when to go into hiding. (by Grace Chia) 1birdlime: sticky substance spread on trees to catch birds. 2sycophantic: excessively eager to