WAEC Literature in English 2006 past questions and answers

The dragon-fly is compared to a blue thread using 'like': a simile.

A caesura is a break or pause in the middle of a line of verse.

Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter, as in much of Shakespeare.

A limerick is a five-line nonsense or comic poem meant to amuse.

An elegy mourns someone who has died, so its tone is mournful.

Time is pictured as a winged chariot rushing after the speaker, a direct comparison without 'like': a metaphor.

Lines are measured in metrical feet, e.g. pentameter has five feet.

Metre is the regular, repeated pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

A parody imitates a serious work in a comic way.

Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces, people or ideas.

A trochee is a foot of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable (e.g. 'TI-ger').

A sonnet has fourteen rhymed lines, usually in iambic pentameter.

Euphemism, oxymoron and hyperbole are figures of speech; rhythm is a sound pattern.

Novels and plays belong to different genres (prose and drama).

A heroic couplet is two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter.

Friendship is called a sheltering tree without 'like' or 'as': a metaphor.

A play tells its story mainly through dialogue.

The 'f' sound is repeated at the start of several words: alliteration.

Romance, novel and short story are prose fiction; a sonnet is a poem.

'Groaning' and 'boom' imitate the sounds of the gongs and guns: onomatopoeia.

The passage tells what happens to the old men in the station, step by step: narrative.

Homeless, hungry old men who sometimes die on the benches create a mood of despair.

The poem addresses Sleep directly and praises its power: an ode.

'Sleep, O sleep' speaks directly to sleep as if it could hear: apostrophe.

Most lines end with a punctuation mark and a pause: end-stopped lines.

Sleep has a 'Rod of Incantation' that charms the imagination: its power is magical.

In Act I Scene I Horatio challenges the Ghost to speak.

Horatio speaks to the Ghost of old King Hamlet.

The Ghost has just appeared again on the battlements, and Horatio questions it.

Horatio begs the ghost again and again to speak and say whether it warns of danger to the country. His urgent, repeated pleading shows anxiety.

As Horatio pleads, the cock crows and the Ghost leaves.

In Act II Scene II Polonius tries to question Hamlet, who calls him a fishmonger.

Hamlet's odd replies are part of his 'antic disposition', his pretended madness.

Polonius sends the King and Queen away so he can speak to Hamlet alone.

Hamlet says only one man in ten thousand is honest, implying Polonius is no better than most people.

'You are a fishmonger' calls Polonius something he is not, directly: a metaphor.

At the start of Act III Scene I Claudius asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern what they have learned about Hamlet.

Claudius wants to know why Hamlet 'puts on this confusion'.

Claudius had sent for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern could not find out the cause of Hamlet's behaviour.

Claudius praises Laertes for speaking 'like a good child' and assures him he did not kill Polonius.

Claudius, the King, calms the angry Laertes.

His innocence will be as clear to Laertes 'as day does to your eye': a comparison with 'as', a simile.

Laertes has returned to avenge his father Polonius, whom Hamlet killed.

Claudius insists he had nothing to do with Polonius's death.

Act IV Scene V takes place in a room in the castle at Elsinore.

Monologue and direct address: Styles opens with a long monologue to the audience about Ford factory and his studio.
Mime and role-play: Styles acts out Mr Baas Bradley and the workers; Buntu and Sizwe play other roles (e.g. Buntu acting as a white official to train Sizwe).
Flashback: Sizwe's visit to the studio leads back to how he met Buntu and found Robert Zwelinzima's body.
The photograph and the letter to his wife Nowetu (dictated) as devices that record and recreate experience.
Small cast playing several roles; improvised, minimal set; humour mixed with tragedy.
Symbolism of the passbook and of the photograph (a 'card' of a man's dreams).
Effect: makes the audience feel the injustice of the apartheid pass laws.

Name each technique and show its effect.

Under apartheid a black man's identity is his passbook; without the right stamp Sizwe cannot work in Port Elizabeth.
Sizwe is ordered back to King William's Town; he wants to stay and work for his family.
He and Buntu find a dead man, Robert Zwelinzima, with a valid passbook.
Buntu persuades him to take the dead man's photograph and name: Sizwe Bansi 'dies'.
Sizwe resists: 'I am a man'; losing his name is losing himself.
Styles too finds identity by leaving the factory and owning his studio; photographs preserve people's dignity.
The play shows how the system destroys personal identity and how people struggle to keep their humanity.

Use incidents from the play.

James Ofosu, the father, values careers by the money and status they bring.
He wants his son Aaron to be an engineer and his daughter Maanan to be a lawyer.
Aaron wants to be an artist and Maanan a dancer; James scorns the arts as worthless because they don't pay.
This is the central conflict between father and children, and between materialism and self-fulfilment.
Lawyer Bonu, James's friend, offers to help Maanan but tries to seduce her: wealth and status hide corruption.
Hannah supports the children; friends like Awere argue for the value of the arts.
Resolution: James learns that his children's talents have worth beyond money and accepts their choices.

Relate the statement to the main conflict.

Hannah is James Ofosu's wife and the mother of Aaron and Maanan.
She is gentle, understanding and loving towards her children.
She supports their wish to follow the arts, against her husband's wishes.
She is tactful and patient, a peacemaker between father and children.
She shows courage in standing up to James when the children's happiness is at stake.
Role: mediator; she represents a more open view of modern values; contrasts with James's rigid materialism.

Cover both character and role.

The officials of a provincial town fear the arrival of an inspector incognito because all are corrupt.
The Mayor takes bribes from merchants and misuses public funds (e.g. money for the church).
The Judge accepts bribes (in puppies), the Charity Commissioner neglects the hospital, the Postmaster opens letters.
They mistake Khlestakov, a penniless clerk, for the inspector and bribe him with 'loans'.
The Mayor even offers his daughter in marriage to gain advantage.
Khlestakov's letter exposes them; the real inspector's arrival ends the play in stunned silence.
Gogol shows corruption running through the whole bureaucracy.

Give examples from several characters.

Satire targets the corrupt Russian bureaucracy and provincial officials.
The Mayor and officials are mocked for bribery, neglect, fear and hypocrisy.
Khlestakov's boasting and the officials' grovelling expose vanity and the worship of rank.
Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky ridicule gossip and foolishness; the Mayor's wife and daughter ridicule social climbing.
Devices: mistaken identity, irony, exaggeration, comic names, farce.
The Mayor's line 'What are you laughing at? You're laughing at yourselves!' turns the satire on the audience.
The silent final tableau shows the officials trapped.

Identify targets and methods of the satire.

Norfolk is More's old friend; he is honest, blunt and well-meaning.
He is not intellectual: he cannot understand why More will not simply sign the oath like everyone else.
He is a conformist who follows the King and the majority; he values loyalty and position.
He is loyal to More and pleads with him to give in 'for fellowship'.
He is uneasy and ashamed when he must sit in judgement on More.
More quarrels with him on purpose to free him from the dangerous friendship, showing Norfolk's limits and More's care for him.

Use incidents between the two men.

Henry VIII wants to divorce Catherine and marry Anne Boleyn and wants More's public approval.
More, as Lord Chancellor and a Catholic, will not approve; he resigns.
Cromwell, the King's agent, looks for evidence against him; Rich is used to trap him.
The Act of Supremacy and the oath: More refuses to swear but keeps silent about his reasons, relying on the law.
He is imprisoned in the Tower and loses his family's comfort.
At his trial Rich commits perjury; More is condemned and executed.
The conflict is between conscience and the power of the state.

Trace the conflict to its end.

David Rubadiri describes a storm sweeping over an African village.
The wind is compared to a madman chasing nothing, moving in every direction.
Clouds come like a plague of locusts, whirling and wild.
Trees bend, and people rush about: children, women, clothes blown, goods carried off.
Images of noise and violence (lightning, thunder, the dancing of the storm) show its power.
Similes, personification, movement in the verse and run-on lines convey the speed and destruction.
The storm may also suggest the destructive force of colonialism.

Quote images and explain their effect.

J. P. Clark admires the dancer's complete absorption in the dance and the drum rhythm.
Her graceful, skilful movements, in harmony with the drums.
Her union with the tradition and the ancestors through the dance.
The vitality and beauty of the traditional performance.
He contrasts this with his own sense of being cut off from his roots, wishing he could join in.
Language: vivid imagery and rhythm that imitate the dance.

Point to lines in the poem.

Wordsworth describes a Highland girl singing alone as she reaps.
Imagery of the lonely reaper in the field and of distant places (Arabian sands, the Hebrides).
Comparisons with the nightingale and the cuckoo to praise her voice.
Rhetorical questions ('Will no one tell me what she sings?') about the theme of the song.
Repetition and alliteration ('single', 'solitary', 'sings').
Regular rhyme and metre give a musical quality.
Effect: the song lives on in the poet's heart: 'The music in my heart I bore, / Long after it was heard no more.'

Name each device and explain its effect.

Housman contrasts the athlete's triumph with his early death.
Image of the town chairing him through the market-place after a victory, then carrying him 'shoulder-high' to the grave.
The road 'all runners come' and the 'threshold' of the dead: death as the final race.
The laurel that withers quicker than the rose: fame fades fast.
His glory kept unfaded: 'the garland briefer than a girl's' will not wither now.
Images of shade and the 'low lintel' of the underworld.
Effect: the images make the paradox clear: dying young preserves his fame.

Quote images and say why they work.