2024 CCEA AS-Level English Literature 5110 Practice Paper with Answers

A strong response will compare both poems' treatment of distance within intimate relationships with equal, detailed attention, supported by biographical context.

'One Flesh': Jennings presents an ageing married couple who now lie in separate beds, the physical separateness of the domestic scene immediately establishing a central image of distance within what was once, as the poem's title (a biblical allusion to marital union) insists, a single 'flesh'; the poem is voiced by an observing adult child, a structural choice that creates a reflective, slightly puzzled distance of its own between speaker and subject, as she tries to interpret her parents' quiet, undemonstrative old age from the outside rather than from within their experience; Jennings juxtaposes stillness and silence in the present scene with an implied, unspoken history of earlier passion, using understated, controlled diction and a meditative tone (characteristic of Jennings's often spare, restrained style) to suggest that the couple's current distance might be read either as the sad fading of intimacy or as a hard-won, comfortable companionship beyond the need for physical closeness; the poem's closing uncertainty — the speaker unable to determine whether her parents' separateness signifies loss or quiet acceptance — leaves the nature of their distance deliberately unresolved.

'Talking in Bed': Larkin approaches distance from within the relationship itself, opening with the assertion that 'talking in bed ought to be easiest', immediately establishing an expectation of intimacy that the rest of the poem will undercut; the extended natural imagery of 'the wind's incomplete unrest' building and dispersing clouds, and the indifferent 'dark towns' that 'heap up on the horizon... none of this cares for us', externalises the couple's emotional isolation onto an indifferent natural and urban landscape, using pathetic fallacy to suggest their distance is part of a wider, almost cosmic condition of human separateness rather than a purely personal failing; the poem's central paradox — that lying physically closest ('at this unique distance from isolation') makes it 'still more difficult to find / Words at once true and kind, / Or not untrue and not unkind' — captures distance as a failure of language and honesty rather than of physical proximity, Larkin's characteristically plain, colloquial diction and the poem's quietly deflating, anti-climactic final lines reinforcing a bleak, resigned tone.

Comparison: both poets use physical closeness (a shared bed) ironically, to expose rather than confirm intimacy, and both adopt understated, controlled registers rather than dramatic emotional outburst to convey distance; however, Jennings observes an established, long-term distance from outside the relationship, with a tone of searching, filial curiosity that allows for the possibility of peaceful, even dignified acceptance in old age, whereas Larkin dramatises distance from within a single unresolved moment, using a more overtly pessimistic, almost despairing tone that offers no comparable possibility of quiet resolution; Jennings's poem is structured around retrospective wondering, while Larkin's is structured around a present, ongoing and seemingly permanent failure of communication.

Context: Jennings, associated with The Movement alongside Larkin though writing in a more restrained, often devotionally inflected personal style, frequently explores family relationships and quiet domestic scenes with controlled emotional distance of her own, reflecting a broader mid-twentieth-century poetic reticence about direct emotional statement; Larkin, closely associated with The Movement's plain-spoken, anti-Romantic register and known for his often bleak, sceptical treatment of love and relationships across his wider body of work, brings to 'Talking in Bed' a characteristic scepticism about whether genuine emotional connection between two people is achievable at all, which can be read alongside his own well-documented reluctance to commit to long-term relationships during his lifetime.

[50 marks, AO2 (driving), AO1, AO3 (biographical), AO4] Marked in levels via a five-band grid: Band 1 (1–10): basic, largely narrative response with minimal reference to poetic methods; Band 2 (11–20): emerging, some relevant comment but underdeveloped, limited comparison; Band 3a (21–25): reasonably sustained response with relevant reference to both poems though development uneven; Band 3b (26–30): clearer, more consistently developed comparison with sound understanding of methods; Band 4 (31–40): coherent, secure response with detailed analysis of poetic methods in both poems, effective comparison, relevant biographical context; Band 5 (41–50): assured, perceptive response with sophisticated, sustained comparison, precise analysis of language/form/structure in both poems, well-integrated biographical context. Mark caps: no context = maximum 40; no methods (AO2) = maximum 30; no comparison = maximum 30; limited comparison = maximum 40. Equal marks are available for treatment of each poem; a response substantially neglecting one poem cannot access the top of the range.

A strong response will construct a sustained, justified argument, weighing evidence on both sides.

Case that meaning is as futile as the wait: Beckett structures the play in two near-identical acts, in which Vladimir and Estragon wait beneath a tree for a figure, Godot, who never arrives and whose identity, purpose and even existence remain permanently unconfirmed, a structural circularity that denies the audience the conventional dramatic satisfaction of resolution or revelation; the boy messenger's repeated, almost identical report that Godot will not come today but will come tomorrow, delivered near-identically at the end of both acts, structurally guarantees that any meaning the audience constructs around Godot's eventual arrival will be endlessly deferred, mirroring the characters' own futile anticipation; the play's dialogue is frequently circular, repetitive and self-cancelling ('Nothing to be done'), and the famous final stage direction — 'They do not move' immediately after agreeing 'Let's go' — enacts, in miniature, the gap between stated intention and actual paralysis that structures the whole play, actively resisting any single stable interpretation of what, if anything, is being communicated; Pozzo and Lucky's own bewildering deterioration between acts (Pozzo's sudden blindness, his inability to recall their earlier meeting) further undermines any confidence in stable meaning or cause and effect within the play's world.

Case that meaning is nonetheless available: candidates should also weigh the substantial critical and dramatic tradition that reads Waiting for Godot as a coherent, if bleak, statement about the human condition under absurdity — the sustained, mutually dependent companionship between Vladimir and Estragon, who continually consider parting yet never do, can be read as an affirmation of the value of human connection and endurance even in a meaningless universe, giving the play thematic content rather than pure emptiness; Lucky's famous, chaotic monologue, though deliberately fragmented and largely incoherent, nonetheless gestures towards recognisable philosophical and theological anxieties (references to a 'personal God', to human decline, to the passage of time) that invite the audience to construct meaning even from apparent nonsense; the play's engagement with repetition and waiting itself can be read as a deliberate dramatic argument about the nature of time and hope, rather than simply an absence of argument.

Dramatic methods: Beckett's minimalist, symbolic staging (a single tree, a country road, no clear geographical or historical setting) strips away conventional dramatic context, forcing the audience to focus on existential questions rather than plot, while his use of vaudeville-style comic routines (business with boots and hats) alongside bleak philosophical content creates a distinctive tragicomic register that resists straightforward classification as either meaningful tragedy or meaningless farce, itself a deliberate dramatic strategy rather than an accidental failure of coherence.

Context: writing in French shortly after the Second World War, Beckett's play emerges from a mid-twentieth-century climate of existentialist philosophy (associated with figures such as Sartre and Camus) concerned with the absence of inherent meaning in the universe and the human need to construct value and purpose regardless, and the Theatre of the Absurd movement to which the play belongs deliberately used fragmented structure, circular plot and failed communication as dramatic techniques to represent, rather than simply enact, the perceived absurdity and uncertainty of post-war existence.

Justified conclusion: the strongest answers weigh both readings and reach a supported judgement — typically that while Beckett's structural and dialogic choices deliberately frustrate any single, confident interpretation of the play's 'meaning' in a conventional sense, the play is not therefore meaningless, since its very refusal of resolution constitutes a coherent dramatic argument about endurance, companionship and the human confrontation with an absurd, indifferent universe, so that the audience's search for meaning, though never straightforwardly satisfied, is not wholly futile either.

[50 marks, AO5 (driving), AO1, AO2, AO3] Marked in levels via a five-band grid: Band 1 (1–10): basic assertion, little dramatic method or context; Band 2 (11–20): some relevant comment, limited development of argument or evidence; Band 3a (21–25): reasonably sustained argument, some reference to dramatic methods and context though unevenly developed; Band 3b (26–30): clearer, more consistent argument with sound reference to methods and context; Band 4 (31–40): coherent, secure argument with detailed discussion of dramatic methods, sound use of context, engagement with counter-argument; Band 5 (41–50): assured, perceptive and sustained critical evaluation, sophisticated discussion of dramatic methods and context, genuine engagement with alternative interpretations. Mark caps: no discussion of dramatic methods (AO2) = maximum 30; no relevant context (AO3) = maximum 40.

A strong response will construct a sustained, justified argument, weighing evidence on both sides.

Case that the novel primarily terrifies: Stoker's epistolary structure — assembling journals, letters, telegrams, newspaper cuttings and a phonograph diary from multiple narrators — creates a fragmented, gradually accumulating sense of dread, as the reader, like the characters, must piece together an incomplete and unsettling picture of the threat; Jonathan Harker's early captivity narrative at Castle Dracula, with its slow revelation of the Count's unnatural qualities (his lack of reflection, his ability to scale sheer walls, the three vampire women), builds sustained Gothic suspense through claustrophobic setting and delayed confirmation of supernatural danger; Lucy Westenra's prolonged, physically visceral decline and transformation, and the deeply unsettling staking scene in which her former fiancé Arthur must drive a stake through her body to release her soul, generate visceral, bodily horror that operates on the reader independently of any symbolic reading; the novel's sustained suspense structure, building towards the final cross-continental pursuit of Dracula back to Transylvania, is engineered for narrative tension and dread rather than purely intellectual reflection.

Case that the novel primarily reflects anxieties: candidates should also weigh the extensive critical tradition reading Dracula as a rich allegorical response to specific late-Victorian fears — the Count's journey from Eastern Europe to invade British soil, contaminating and controlling English women, has been widely read as a 'reverse colonisation' narrative expressing anxiety about the decline of British imperial power and fear of foreign contamination; Lucy's transformation from an conventionally desirable, multiply-courted young woman into an overtly sexualised, predatory 'Bloofer Lady' dramatises Victorian anxieties about female sexuality and the 'New Woman', while Mina's intelligence, resourcefulness and use of modern technology (the typewriter, shorthand) present a more ambivalent, partially admiring engagement with changing gender roles; the recurring motif of contaminated, exchanged blood (transfusions, vampiric feeding) has been read as reflecting contemporary anxieties about disease and contagion, including venereal disease, in an era of significant public health concern; the novel's structural pairing of ancient superstition (garlic, crucifixes, folklore) with cutting-edge Victorian technology (telegraphs, blood transfusion, Dr Seward's phonograph diary) dramatises a genuine contemporary tension between scientific rationalism and older belief systems, embodied most fully in Van Helsing's hybrid role as both scientist and folklorist.

Narrative methods: Stoker's multi-narrator epistolary form is itself central to both effects — it generates suspense through withheld, partial information, but its documentary, quasi-scientific format (presented as an assembled dossier of 'evidence') also lends the novel's cultural anxieties an air of contemporary plausibility and immediacy, blurring the line between visceral horror and social commentary rather than separating the two.

Context: writing in 1897, at the height of British imperial confidence but also amid growing anxieties about imperial decline, immigration, and shifting gender roles associated with the fin-de-siècle 'New Woman' movement, Stoker draws on Gothic literary conventions established by earlier writers while embedding them within a recognisably contemporary, technologically modern England, allowing the novel to function simultaneously as visceral entertainment and as a culturally specific expression of late-Victorian unease.

Justified conclusion: the strongest answers weigh both readings and reach a supported judgement — typically that while Dracula undoubtedly sustains genuine Gothic horror through its structure, suspense and bodily threat, its enduring critical and cultural significance rests substantially on its rich, multi-layered engagement with Victorian anxieties about empire, gender, sexuality and science, so that the novel can reasonably be said to reflect those anxieties at least as powerfully as, and arguably more enduringly than, it simply terrifies.

[50 marks, AO5 (driving), AO1, AO2, AO3] Marked in levels via a five-band grid: Band 1 (1–10): basic assertion, little narrative method or context; Band 2 (11–20): some relevant comment, limited development of argument or evidence; Band 3a (21–25): reasonably sustained argument, some reference to narrative methods and context though unevenly developed; Band 3b (26–30): clearer, more consistent argument with sound reference to methods and context; Band 4 (31–40): coherent, secure argument with detailed discussion of narrative methods, sound use of context, engagement with counter-argument; Band 5 (41–50): assured, perceptive and sustained critical evaluation, sophisticated discussion of narrative methods and context, genuine engagement with alternative interpretations. Mark caps: no discussion of narrative methods (AO2) = maximum 30; no relevant context (AO3) = maximum 40.