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Context questions from old exam papers
Comment briefly on any one of the following passages, explaining its significance to the work from which it is taken.
A “There were the Cutrere brothers, Wesley and Bates. Bates was one of my bright particular beaux! He got in a quarrel with that wild Wainwright boy. They shot it out on the floor of Moon Lake Casino. Bates was shot through the stomach. Died in the ambulance on his way to Memphis. His widow was also well provided for, came into eight or ten thousand acres, that’s all. She married him on the rebound – never loved her – carried my picture on him the night he died! And there was that boy every girl in the Delta had set her cap for! That brilliant, brilliant young Fitzhugh boy from Greene County!”
“What did he leave his widow?”
“He never married! Gracious, you talk as though all my old admirers had turned up their toes to the daisies!”
B I follow him to serve my turn upon him:
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly follow’d. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
Wears out his time, much like his master’s ass,
For nought but provender, and when he’s old, cashier’d:
Whip me such honest knaves! Others there are
Who, trimm’d in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, throwing but shows on service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them, and when they have lined their coats
Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul…
C It’s his place all right. Look at all the other places. You go to this address, there’s a key there, there’s a teapot, there’s never a soul in sight. (He pauses) Eh, nobody ever hears a thing, have you ever thought of that? We never get any complaints, do we, too much noise or anything like that? You never see a soul, do you? – except the bloke who comes. You ever noticed that? I wonder if the walls are sound-proof. (He touches the wall above his bed) Can’t tell. All you do is wait, eh? Half the time he doesn’t even bother to put in an appearance, Wilson.
D “But,” said she tremulously, “suppose your sin was not of your own seeking?”
He shook his head. “I cannot split hairs on that burning query,” he said. “I have walked hundreds of miles this past summer, painting these texes on every wall, gate, and stile the length and breadth of this district. I leave their application to the hearts of the people who read ‘em.”
“I think they are horrible,” said Tess. “Crushing! Killing!”
“That’s what they are meant to be!” he replied in a trade voice. “But you should read my hottest ones – them I kips for slums and seaports. They’d make ye wriggle! Not but what this is a very good tex for rural districts. Ah, there’s a nice bit of blank wall up by that barn standing to waste. I must put one there – one that it will be good for dangerous young females like yerself to heed. Will ye wait, missy?”
E Back home, the meat pieces you ate, when there was meat, were the size of half your finger. But you did not tell him that. You did not tell him either that the dawadawa cubes your mother cooked everything with, because curry and thyme were too expensive, had MSG, were MSG. He said MSG caused cancer, it was the reason he liked Chang’s; Chang didn’t cook with MSG.
F every night slept, lay with their smelly wives,
quarrelled and cuffed the children,
lied, spat, sang, were happy, or unhappy,
and every day took to the ladders again,
impeded the rights of way of another summer’s swallows,
grew greyer, shakier,
became less inclined to fix a neighbour’s roof of a fine evening,
saw naves sprout arches, clerestories soar,
cursed the loud fancy glaziers for their luck,
somehow escaped the plague,
got rheumatism,
decided it was time to give it up, …
G “And, oh! I forgot! There was a big stage show! The headliner on this stage show was Malvolio the Magician. He performed wonderful tricks, many of them, such as poouring water back and forth between pitchers. First it turned to wine nd then it turned to beer and then it turned to whisky. I knew it was whisky it finally turned into because he needed somebody to come up out of the audience to help him, and I came up – both show! It was Kentucky straight bourbon. A very generous fellow. He gave souvenirs. (He pulls from his back pocket a shimmering rainbow-coloured scarf.) He gave me this. This is his magic scarf. You can have it, Laura. You wave it over a canary cage and you get a bowl of goldfish. You wave it over the goldfish bowl and they fly away canaries. But the wonderfullest trick of all was the coffin trick. We nailed him into a coffin and he got out of the coffin without removing one nail. (He has come inside.) There is a trick that would come in handy for me … get me out of this 2 by 4 situation.”
Comment briefly on the following extracts, explaining its significance to the poem from which it is taken.
LANGUAGE CONNECTION – 472 Navalar Road, Jaffna – tel. 076 896 7574 (021) 221 9068 – languageconnection472@gmail.com
1 [context qq] 23 Aug 2024