2023 CCEA GCSE English Literature 5110 Practice Paper with Answers

A strong response will construct a sustained argument ranging across the novel, broadly along these lines:

Case for victimhood: Steinbeck never gives Curley's wife a name, identifying her only through her relationship to her husband, which itself dramatises her lack of independent identity and status on the ranch; she is confined to the isolating role of the only woman in an all-male environment, explicitly described by Candy and others in dismissive, misogynistic terms ('tart', 'jailbait') well before she ever appears, so that the reader's first impression of her is filtered through the men's prejudice rather than her own actions; her account to Lennie of a lost dream of becoming a film star reveals a trapped, disappointed young woman who married Curley out of spite and boredom rather than love, and her admission that she is 'awful lonely' humanises her and recontextualises her wandering around the ranch as loneliness rather than promiscuity; her death, presented with unexpected gentleness and beauty ('the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face'), invites sympathy rather than condemnation, and Steinbeck structurally denies her any voice or agency even in death, as the men immediately reframe the tragedy in terms of Lennie and George rather than her.

Case for some responsibility/danger: candidates should also weigh evidence that complicates a purely victim-centred reading — her flirtatious behaviour towards the ranch hands, her taunting of Crooks by threatening him with a lynching ('I could get you strung up on a tree so easy'), which shows her willing to use the one form of power available to her (her whiteness, her position as the boss's daughter-in-law) at another's expense, and her carelessness in encouraging Lennie to touch her hair, which directly precipitates the fatal accident.

Structural and contextual reinforcement: Steinbeck's 1930s Depression-era setting, in which itinerant workers had few prospects and women even fewer, contextualises her limited options; the recurring 'American Dream' motif links her thwarted ambition to the wider pattern of the novel's other trapped characters (George and Lennie's dream farm, Candy's fear of uselessness, Crooks's isolation through racism), suggesting Steinbeck intends her to be read as another casualty of a harsh social and economic system rather than simply a villain.

Justified conclusion: the strongest answers weigh both readings and reach a supported judgement — for example, that while her actions contribute directly to the novel's tragic ending, Steinbeck's structural and narrative choices (withholding her name, revealing her backstory, describing her death with tenderness) are designed to shift the reader's sympathy decisively towards seeing her as a victim of a restrictive, misogynistic environment rather than a genuine danger.

[40 marks, AO1 & AO2] Marked in levels via a five-band grid: Band 1 (1–10): basic, largely narrative or descriptive response with minimal reference to the question; Band 2 (11–18): emerging, some relevant comment but underdeveloped, limited use of textual evidence; Band 3 (19–26): competent, straightforward argument with relevant textual reference and some understanding of Steinbeck's craft; Band 4 (27–34): good, sustained focus on the question, reasoned argument supported by well-selected evidence, discussion of the effects of Steinbeck's methods (structure, characterisation, symbolism); Band 5 (35–40): excellent, persuasive and evaluative response, assured interpretation weighing both victimhood and responsibility, precise and fluent use of critical terminology and textual evidence, sensitive discussion of social/historical context (Depression-era attitudes to women and migrant labour). Accept any well-supported line of argument, whether the candidate ultimately agrees, disagrees or offers a qualified view.

A strong response will explore both the character's feelings/reactions and the writer's methods, using close textual reference.

Character's feelings and reactions: Pemberton's reaction is conveyed with restraint appropriate to the period and his dependent status — rather than an outburst, his distress registers physically and minutely ('his hand... had begun very slightly to tremble'), which makes the emotion more affecting for being suppressed; his internal recognition that he has 'acquired a certain skill in reading the weather of a household' reveals a habitual, watchful vulnerability built up over 'eleven years' of dependency, suggesting long practice at anticipating others' decisions about his life; his choice not to enter the parlour, because he 'could not... have trusted his face to arrange itself into the proper expression of gratitude', shows a poignant self-awareness of the performance expected of a poor relation, and his retreat into the garden displaces his grief onto the memory of his 'mother, eleven years dead', broadening a single moment of humiliation into a lifelong sense of powerlessness.

Writer's use of language: formal, elevated nineteenth-century diction and syntax ('pronounce, in the particular flat tone she reserved for pronouncements she wished to be mistaken for kindness') characterises the aunt through irony before she is directly quoted, exposing the gap between her self-image and her actual coldness; the extended, subordinate-clause-heavy sentences mimic the slow, oppressive weight of the boy's realisation, while the final sentence's triple structure ('spoken of, arranged for, and disposed of') builds to a climactic, almost legalistic list that reduces Pemberton to an object rather than a person, reinforcing the extract's central concern with powerlessness.

Structure and form: the extract is structured around the motif of the ill-fitting door, a literal threshold that becomes symbolic of Pemberton's exclusion from decisions about his own life; the writer withholds action (he 'did not go in') at the structural mid-point, redirecting the narrative outward into the garden and inward into memory, which slows the pace and allows the emotional weight to accumulate rather than resolve; the closing image of fading daylight 'draining from the sky' provides a pathetic-fallacy backdrop that mirrors his diminishing sense of agency, and the extract ends on the abstract, generalised idea of being 'perfectly silent', widening the scene from a single overheard conversation into a broader comment on dependency and voicelessness that invites the reader's continued sympathy and curiosity about what Pemberton will do next.

[20 marks, AO1 & AO2] Marked in levels: Band 1 (1–5): basic, narrative/descriptive response with minimal reference to language or structure; Band 2 (6–9): emerging, simple identification of feelings or language features, little development; Band 3 (10–13): competent response addressing both bullet points with relevant textual reference and some understanding of effect; Band 4 (14–17): good, sustained focus on both feelings/reactions and writer's methods, well-selected evidence, clear discussion of effects; Band 5 (18–20): excellent, perceptive and assured response exploring the character's feelings with sensitivity and analysing language, structure and form with precision and critical terminology, sustained engagement with how the writer builds sympathy. Credit any valid, well-supported observation on the extract's methods and effects.

A strong response will construct a sustained argument ranging across the play, broadly along these lines:

Case that Birling learns nothing: Priestley uses dramatic irony from Birling's very first substantial speech, in which his confident predictions (dismissing the possibility of war, calling the Titanic 'unsinkable', foreseeing continued prosperity) are immediately recognisable to a post-war 1945 audience as catastrophically wrong, establishing him from the outset as an unreliable, self-satisfied judge of the world; his response to the Inspector's revelations is consistently defensive rather than reflective — he repeatedly asserts his own innocence ('I don't understand you, Inspector') and reduces Eva Smith's death to a matter of his business reputation and his standing for a knighthood rather than a lost human life; once the Inspector leaves and the family begins to suspect he may not have been a real police inspector, Birling's overriding emotion is relief and self-congratulation rather than continued reflection, and by the end of the play he treats the entire episode as something to be managed and covered up rather than learned from, dismissing his children's continuing unease as 'hysterical' and immature; the final telephone call announcing that a real inspector is on his way to ask questions restores the tension precisely because Birling's lack of change means the cycle of denial is set to repeat.

Complicating evidence: candidates might note brief moments of apparent discomfort — his irritation and unease under sustained questioning, and his evident anxiety about scandal — but a strong answer will argue that this anxiety is self-interested (fear of exposure and lost status) rather than moral concern for Eva Smith, distinguishing Birling's response sharply from Sheila's or Eric's growing sense of guilt.

Structural and contextual reinforcement: Priestley constructs Birling as a deliberate representative of pre-war capitalist, socially conservative attitudes, contrasted structurally with the younger generation (Sheila and Eric) who do change; writing in 1945 for a post-war audience aware of both world wars and the beginnings of the welfare state, Priestley uses Birling's unteachable complacency as a didactic warning about the dangers of ignoring collective social responsibility, reinforced by the Inspector's final speech about 'fire and blood and anguish' if such lessons are not learned.

Justified conclusion: the strongest answers reach a supported judgement — typically that Birling is deliberately and consistently presented as incapable of genuine change, functioning as a foil to the more hopeful transformation of Sheila and Eric, in service of Priestley's broader socialist message.

[40 marks, AO1 & AO2] Marked in levels via a five-band grid: Band 1 (1–10): basic, largely narrative response with minimal reference to the question; Band 2 (11–18): emerging, some relevant comment but underdeveloped, limited textual evidence; Band 3 (19–26): competent, straightforward argument with relevant reference and some understanding of dramatic craft; Band 4 (27–34): good, sustained focus on the question, reasoned argument supported by well-selected evidence, discussion of dramatic irony and structure; Band 5 (35–40): excellent, persuasive and evaluative response, assured interpretation of Birling's function in the play, precise and fluent use of critical terminology, sensitive discussion of social/historical context (1912 setting versus 1945 composition). Accept any well-supported line of argument.

A strong comparative response will explore both poems' treatment of the true cost of war, using close reference to language and relevant context.

'Anthem for Doomed Youth': Owen structures the poem as a bitter reworking of the traditional elegy/sonnet form, asking what 'passing-bells' can be offered for men who 'die as cattle', a dehumanising simile that immediately establishes the industrial scale and anonymity of death in the First World War; the poem substitutes the expected rituals of mourning (bells, choirs, candles, flowers) with the sounds and sights of the battlefield itself — the 'monstrous anger of the guns', the 'stuttering rifles' rapid rattle' (onomatopoeia and harsh consonants mimicking gunfire), 'the shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells' (personification transforming weaponry into a grotesque substitute for a funeral choir); the sestet turns to the private, domestic grief left at home, where 'the pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall' and 'the drawing-down of blinds' becomes the only remaining funeral rite, suggesting that the true cost of war is measured not only in the dehumanised deaths abroad but in the muted, quietly devastating grief of those left behind, with no proper ceremony available to match the scale of loss.

'Bayonet Charge': Hughes conveys cost through the disorientating, almost cinematic collapse of a single soldier's patriotic motivation under the extremity of battle; the poem opens mid-action ('Suddenly he awoke and was running') without preamble, plunging the reader into confusion that mirrors the soldier's own; abstract patriotic ideals are literally itemised and discarded — 'King, honour, human dignity, etcetera / Dropped like luxuries' — the dismissive 'etcetera' and the simile of discarded 'luxuries' powerfully suggesting how quickly grand causes become meaningless under mortal threat; the natural imagery of a hare 'stumbling' and 'crying' among the soldiers' feet, torn between the human violence around it, offers a symbol of innocent, indifferent nature caught up in and damaged by human conflict, broadening the poem's sense of cost beyond the soldier himself.

Comparison: both poets use dehumanising or destabilising imagery (Owen's cattle, Hughes's discarded 'luxuries' and the wounded hare) to strip war of any residual glory, and both structurally undercut traditional expectations — Owen subverts the elegy/sonnet form's usual consolation, while Hughes denies the reader any steady, controlled narrative viewpoint, using fragmented syntax to convey disorientation; however, Owen's focus widens outward to the collective, ritual cost of mass death and the grief of those at home, while Hughes narrows sharply inward to a single body's confused, immediate physical and psychological experience of combat.

Context: both poems emerge from direct or informed engagement with the First World War — Owen wrote from his own frontline experience and was killed in action a week before the Armistice, giving his critique of official commemoration particular authority and irony; Hughes, writing later and drawing on his father's war experiences and wider research, reflects a mid-twentieth-century poetic tradition (following Owen's own influence) of exposing the visceral reality beneath patriotic rhetoric, illustrating how conflict poetry continued, across the century, to challenge glorified or sanitised versions of war.

[40 marks, AO1, AO2, AO3, AO4] Marked in levels via a five-band grid: Band 1 (1–10): basic, narrative/descriptive response with minimal comparison; Band 2 (11–18): emerging, some relevant comment on one or both poems, limited comparison or context; Band 3 (19–26): competent, straightforward comparison with relevant reference to language and some awareness of context; Band 4 (27–34): good, sustained comparison with well-selected evidence, discussion of poetic methods and relevant, integrated context; Band 5 (35–40): excellent, sophisticated and sustained comparison, precise analysis of language/form/structure in both poems, well-integrated and apt contextual material, assured critical terminology throughout. Bulleted indicative content: what each named poem is about; candidates' response to each poet's use of language; similarities and differences in what the poems say about the cost of war; candidates' awareness of First World War and mid-twentieth-century contexts. Accept any well-supported comparison with a different valid second poem from the Conflict anthology.