Practice passages for the Synoptic Unit and advice
for improving grades
Unit 6 Advice and Practice Passages
All students need
to be familiar with the Assessment Objectives. These
AO’s address the skills you acquire on this course.
Basically, they test that you:
have understood what you have read (AO1, AO2 and AO5)
understand how language structure and form shape meaning (AO3)
are able to form independent opinions and judgements, form an argument, and be informed by other readers through looking at alternative interpretations. (In your answers these will be introduced by such phrases such as 'alternatively' and 'on the other hand'. (AO4 in Unit 4 in the pre-20th century literature and in question 1 of the synoptic paper Unit 6)
It is the last two of these bullet points that need to be addressed to improve grades.
Advice for tackling the synoptic paper | Checklist for comparing texts
Extracts
Antony and Cleopatra | Macbeth | Henry the IV
Testament of Youth | All Quiet on the Western Front | Her Privates We | Peace
Advice for tackling the synoptic paper
Your teacher will be working through various exemplar papers for the Synoptic paper and you will see exemplar answers too. All Synoptic papers cover poetry, plays and prose. There will always be one pre- twentieth century text. You need to read widely as advised by your teacher and this wider reading has to be used in question 2 of the Synoptic paper. When faced with a new set of comparative passages you should:
1
Read the question carefully and
underline the key words.
2
Take the time to read the passages. Don’t rush to start writing. Think and annotate thoroughly before beginning
your answer.
3
Highlight words and phrases in the
passages.
4
Don’t have pre-conceived ideas and
points. You must be led by the texts you have
been given and your commentary must be relevant.
5
You cannot cover everything so be
selective.
6
There must be structure to your answer. There are areas you should have addressed and
there is a list of suggestions for these below. You
must have a conclusion. Don’t just stop dead.
7 The examiner is expecting all answers to be different. Students will have read widely but differently. They will reward independent judgements and opinions.
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Checklist for comparing texts across
genres
Whatever texts you are comparing you must focus first on major aspects
such as
Situations
Themes
Characters
if this is
appropriate. You also need to take into
consideration the genre in which it is written and the gender of
the writer. Next, consider more detailed areas of similarity – again, where appropriate. For example:
Settings Think
about whether this is at home or in action.
Attitude of the writers to the same
subject/theme.
Narrative point of view used by the writers.
Structuring
Tone (comic, serious, ironic etc)
Use of imagery (simile, metaphor, personification)
Diction (choice
of words, vocabulary)
Other features of style in general
Then think about
CONTRASTS between texts. Look for ways in
which the texts are different in the ways noted above.
You cannot cover everything but use
this list as a guide.
Remember always
that:
AO2ii requires you to explore and comment on relationships and comparisons between literary
texts.
AO3 requires you to show a detailed understanding
of the ways in which writers’ choices of
form, structure and language shape meaning.
These two Assessment Objectives will be tested in any question that requires you to make a comparison between texts. Never write about first one text and then another.
Below are some passages for you to practice on and in particular for becoming more familiar with language, structure and form and how they shape meaning.
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An extract from
'Antony and Cleopatra' Act III Scenes X and IX
Antony
and his forces represented here by Canidius, Scarus and Enorbarbus, have just lost a sea
battle - despite being advised to fight by land – against Octavius Caesar. Cleopatra’s flight from the battle scene has
provoked Antony’s flight after her.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Naught, naught all,
naught! I can behold no longer:
The Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,
With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder:
To see't mine eyes are blasted.
Enter SCARUS
SCARUS
Gods and goddesses,
All the whole synod of them!
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
What's thy passion!
SCARUS
The greater cantle
of the world is lost
With very ignorance; we have kiss'd away
Kingdoms and provinces.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
How appears the fight?
SCARUS
On our side like
the token'd pestilence,
Where death is sure. Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt,--
Whom leprosy o'ertake!--i' the midst o' the fight,
When vantage like a pair of twins appear'd,
Both as the same, or rather ours the elder,
The breeze upon her, like a cow in June,
Hoists sails and flies.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
That I beheld:
Mine eyes did sicken at the sight, and could not
Endure a further view.
SCARUS
She once being
loof'd,
The noble ruin of her magic, Antony,
Claps on his sea-wing, and, like a doting mallard,
Leaving the fight in height, flies after her:
I never saw an action of such shame;
Experience, manhood, honour, ne'er before
Did violate so itself.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Alack, alack!
Enter CANIDIUS
CANIDIUS
Our fortune on the
sea is out of breath,
And sinks most lamentably. Had our general
Been what he knew himself, it had gone well:
O, he has given example for our flight,
Most grossly, by his own!
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Ay, are you
thereabouts?
Why, then, good night indeed.
CANIDIUS
Toward Peloponnesus are they fled.
SCARUS
'Tis easy to't; and
there I will attend
What further comes.
CANIDIUS
To Caesar will I
render
My legions and my horse: six kings already
Show me the way of yielding.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
I'll yet follow
The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason
Sits in the wind against me.
Exeunt
SCENE XI. Alexandria. Cleopatra's
palace.
Enter MARK
ANTONY with Attendants
MARK ANTONY
Hark! the land bids
me tread no more upon't;
It is ashamed to bear me! Friends, come hither:
I am so lated in the world, that I
Have lost my way for ever: I have a ship
Laden with gold; take that, divide it; fly,
And make your peace with Caesar.
All
Fly! not we.
MARK ANTONY
I have fled myself;
and have instructed cowards
To run and show their shoulders. Friends, be gone;
I have myself resolved upon a course
Which has no need of you; be gone:
My treasure's in the harbour, take it. O,
I follow'd that I blush to look upon:
My very hairs do mutiny; for the white
Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them
For fear and doting. Friends, be gone: you shall
Have letters from me to some friends that will
Sweep your way for you. Pray you, look not sad,
Nor make replies of loathness: take the hint
Which my despair proclaims; let that be left
Which leaves itself: to the sea-side straightway:
I will possess you of that ship and treasure.
Leave me, I pray, a little: pray you now:
Nay, do so; for, indeed, I have lost command,
Therefore I pray you: I'll see you by and by.
Sits down
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Extract from'Macbeth' Act I Scene 2
Early in the text
a badly wounded soldier in King Duncan’s forces describes the manly prowess of
Macbeth, one of Duncan’s generals, in an offstage battle against rebels and invaders. This is the first part of his account of how
Macbeth acquitted himself on the fired of war
(Note: Kernes and
Gallowglasses are types of footsoldier)
Malcolm
Say to the king the
knowledge of the broil
As thou didst leave it.
Sergeant
Doubtful it stood;
As two spent swimmers,
that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald--
Worthy to be a rebel,
for to that
The multiplying
villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him -
from the western isles
Of kerns and
gallowglasses is supplied;
And fortune, on his
damned quarrel smiling,
Show'd like a rebel's
whore: but all's too weak:
For brave Macbeth -
well he deserves that name--
Disdaining fortune,
with his brandish'd steel,
Which smoked with
bloody execution,
Like valour's minion
carved out his passage
Till he faced the
slave;
Which ne'er shook
hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him
from the nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon
our battlements.
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Two extracts from 'Henry the IV'
Lady Percy:
O, my good lord, why are you thus
alone?
For what offence have I this fortnight been
A banish'd woman from my Harry's bed?
Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sit'st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks;
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy?
In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch'd,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars;
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed;
Cry 'Courage! to the field!' And thou hast talk'd
Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,
Of prisoners' ransom and of soldiers slain,
And all the currents of a heady fight.
Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war
And thus hath so bestirr'd thee in thy sleep,
That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow
Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream;
And in thy face strange motions have appear'd,
Such as we see when men restrain their breath
On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?
Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,
And I must know it, else he loves me not.
The end of Act V
Scene 1
Falstaff: I
would 't were bedtime, Hal, and all well.
Prince : Why
thou owest God a death.
(Exit)
Falstaff: ‘Tis not due yet, I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well ‘tis no matter, honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on, how then? Can honour set to a leg? No: or an arm? No: or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour; what is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday.
Falstaff: Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'T is insensible, then? yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon and so end my catechism.
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'Testament of Youth' by Vera Brittain
(1933)
Let us begin by
looking at some work by Vera Brittain (1893-1970). She
wrote 29 books in all: novels, poetry, biography, autobiography and other non-fiction. It is her work on the First World War which is
generally considered to be her greatest. The
following extract is from Brittain’s autobiography, Testament of Youth (1933). Having left Oxford University to go to France as a
VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse in 1916, Brittain describes her arrival at a camp in
Etaples:
A heavy
shower had only just ceased as I arrived at Etaples with three other V.A.D’s ordered
to the same hospital, and the roads were liquid with such mud as only wartime France could
produce after a few days rain. Leaving our
camp-kit to be picked up by an ambulance, we squelched through the littered, grimy square
and along a narrow, straggling street where the sole repositories for household rubbish
appeared to be the pavement and the gutter. We
finally emerged into open country and the huge area of camps, in which, at one time or
another, practically every soldier in the British Army was dumped to await further orders
for a still less agreeable destination. The
main railway line from Boulogne to Paris ran between the hospitals and the distant sea,
and amongst the camps, and along the sides of the road to Camiers, the humped sandhills
bristled with tufts of spiky grass.
The noise of the
distant guns was a sense rather than a sound; sometimes a quiver shook the earth, a
vibration trembled upon the wind, when I could actually hear nothing. But that sense made any feeling of complete peace
impossible; in the atmosphere was always the tenseness, the restlessness, the slight
rustling that comes before an earthquake or with imminent thunder. The glamour of the place was even more compelling,
though less delirious, than the enchantment of Malta’s beauty; it could not be
banished though one feared and resisted it, knowing that it had to be bought at the cost
of loss and frustration. France was the scene
of titanic, illimitable death, and for this very reason it had become the heart of the
fiercest living ever known to any generation. Nothing
was permanent; everyone and everything was always on the move; friendships were temporary,
appointments were temporary, life itself was the most temporary of all. Never, in any time or place, had been so
appropriate the lament of ‘James Lee’s wife’;
To draw one beauty
into our heart’s
core, And keep it
changeless! such
our claim; So
answered, - Never
more!
Whenever I think of the War today, it is not as summer but always as winter; always cold and darkness and discomfort, and an intermittent warmth of exhilarating excitement which made us irrationally exult in all three. Its permanent symbol, for me, is a candle stuck in the neck of the bottle, the tiny flame flickering in an ice-cold draught, yet creating a miniature illusion of light against an opaque infinity of blackness.
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We will look at two
extracts from Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) and
Manning’s Her Privates We (1929).
'All Quiet on the Western Front' by Erich
Maria Remarque (1929)
In
the preface to this novel Remarque writes: “This book is neither an accusation nor a
confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who
stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even
though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.” Try to
keep this in mind whilst considering the following extract:
I
sit by Kemmerich’s bed. He is sinking
steadily, around us is a great commotion. A
hospital train has arrived and the wounded fit to be removed are being selected. The doctor passes Kemmerich’s bed without
once looking at him.
‘Next time, Franz’ I say.
He
raises himself on the pillow with his elbows. ‘They have amputated my leg.’
He
knows it too then. I nod and answer: ‘You must be thankful you’ve come off
with that.’
He
is silent.
I
resume: ‘It might have been both legs, Franz. Wegeler
has lost his right arm. That’s much
worse. Besides, you will be going
home.’
He
looks at me. ‘Do you think so?’
‘Of
course.’
Do
you think so?’ he repeats.
Sure,
Franz. Once you’ve got over the operation.’
He beckons me to bend down. I
stoop over him and he whispers: ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Don’t
talk rubbish; Franz, in a couple of days you’ll see for yourself. What is it anyway – an amputated leg? Here they patch up far worse things than
that.’
He
lifts one hand. ‘Look here though, these fingers.’
‘That’s
the result of the operation. Just eat
decently and you’ll soon be well again. Do
they look after you properly?’
He
points to a dish that is still half full. I get excited. ‘Franz, you must eat. Eating is the main thing. That looks good too.’
He
turns away. After a pause he says slowly:
‘I wanted to become a head–forester once.
‘So
you may still,’ I assure him. ‘There splendid artificial limbs now, you’d
hardly know there was anything missing. They
are fixed on to the muscles. You can move the
fingers and work and even write with an artificial hand.
And besides, they will always be making new improvements.’
For
a while he lies still. Then he says:
‘You can take my lace-up boots with you for Muller.’
I
nod and wonder what to say to encourage him. His
lips have fallen away, his mouth has become larger, his teeth stick out and look as though
they were made of chalk. The flesh melts, the
forehead bulges more prominently, the cheekbones protrude.
The skeleton is working itself through.
The eyes are already sunken in. In
a couple of hours it will be over.
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'Her Privates We' by Frederic Manning
(1929)
In a
prefatory note to his novel, Frederic Manning wrote: “While the following pages are a
record of experience on the Somme and Ancre fronts (…) and the events in it actually
happened, the characters are fictitious. It is true that in recording the conversations of
the men I seemed at times to hear the voices of ghosts (…) I have drawn no portraits;
and my concern has been mainly with the anonymous ranks, whose opinion, often mere surmise
and ill-informed, but real and true for them, I have tried to represent faithfully.”
Now look at an extract from the
novel; Bourne is in shock.
‘You
don’t want to think o’ things.’ He said, with brutal kindness.
‘It’s all past an’ done wi’ now.’
Bourne
looked at him in a dull acquiescence. Then he
emptied the tin, replaced it on the bench, and getting up, went to sit by the door again. He sat with his head flung back against the
hearth, his eyes closed, his arms relaxed, and his hands idle in his lap, and he felt as
though he were lifting a body in his arms, and looking at a small impish face, the brows
puckered with a shadow of perplexity, bloody from a wound in the temple, the back of the
head almost blown away; and yet the face was quiet, and unmoved by trouble. He sat there for hours, immobile and indifferent,
unaware that Sergeant Tozer glanced at him occasionally.
The shelling gradually died away, and he did not know it.
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'Peace' by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)
Now, God
be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us
from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness
leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour
could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we,
who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but
sleep has mending,
Naught broken save
this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend
and enemy is but Death.
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