MONTHLY TEST ­ OCTOBER 2019

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
PAPER ­ I (LW)
PROSE AND POETRY
9 (Cambridge)..........
Duration : 1 hour & 30 minutes
Instructions to Candidates :
Answer TWO questions only. Your answers should be from the two text.
All questions carry equal marks.
Total marks for this paper is 50.
Write in dark blue or black pen.

Candidate's name : ........................................................... Admission no : ..........................

Section 1 ­ Poetry
Remember to support your answer with details from the poem.
Either
1. Read the poem and answer the question that follows it.
The Sea Eats the Land at Home
Kofi Awoonor
At home the sea is in the town,
Running in and out of the cooking places,
Collecting the firewood from hearths
And sending it back at night;
The sea eats the land at home.
It came one day at the dead of night,
Destroying the cement walls,
And carried away the fowls,
The cooking­pots and the ladles,
The sea eats the land at home;
It is a sad thing to hear the wails,
And the mourning shouts of the women,
Calling on all the gods they worship,
To protect them from the angry sea.
Aku stood outside where her cooking­pot stood,
With her two children shivering from the cold,
Her hands on her breast,
Weeping mournfully.
Her ancestors have neglected her,
Her gods have deserted her,
It was a cold Sunday morning,
The storm was raging,
Goats and fowls were struggling in the water,
The angry water of the cruel sea;
The lap­lapping of the bark water at the shore,
And above the sobs and the deep and low moans,
Was the eternal hum of the living sea.
It has taken away their belongings
Adena has lost the trinkets which
Were her dowry and her joy,
In the sea that eats the land at home,
Eats the whole land at home.
Explore the ways in which Kofi Awoonor vividly presents the destructive nature of the sea in
his poem. “Sea Eats the Land at Home”

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Grade 9 Literature In English (Ptose & Poetry ­ I ) LW contd.....from page 1
OR
London Snow
Robert Bridges
When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town:
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled­marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white­mossed wonder,
'O look at the trees!' they cried, 'O look at the trees!'
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have
broken.
2. How does Robert Bridges strikingly illustrate the poem 'London Show” as a celebration of the
snow fall in Londonn.
[Total = 25 marks]
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Grade 9 Literature In English (Prose & Poetry) LW ­ I contd.....from page 2

Section 2 – Prose
Henry James - Washington Square

1. Read the extract and then answer the question that follows it.

Her deepest desire was to please him, and her conception of happiness was to know that she
had succeeded in pleasing him. She had never succeeded beyond a certain point. Though, on
the whole, he was very kind to her, she was perfectly aware of this, and to go beyond the point
in question seemed to her really something to live for. What she could not know, of course,
was that she disappointed him, though on three or four occasions the Doctor had been almost
frank about it. She grew up peacefully and prosperously, but at the age of eighteen Mrs.
Penniman had not made a clever woman of her. Dr. Sloper would have liked to be proud of
his daughter; but there was nothing to be proud of in poor Catherine. There was nothing, of
course, to be ashamed of; but this was not enough for the Doctor, who was a proud man and
would have enjoyed being able to think of his daughter as an unusual girl. There would have
been a fitness in her being pretty and graceful, intelligent and distinguished; for her mother
had been the most charming woman of her little day, and as regards her father, of course he
knew his own value. He had moments of irritation at having produced a commonplace child,
and he even went so far at times as to take a certain satisfaction in the thought that his wife
had not lived to find her out. He was naturally slow in making this discovery himself, and it
was not till Catherine had become a young lady grown that he regarded the matter as settled.
He gave her the benefit of a great many doubts; he was in no haste to conclude. Mrs.
Penniman frequently assured him that his daughter had a delightful nature; but he knew how
to interpret this assurance. It meant, to his sense, that Catherine was not wise enough to
discover that her aunt was a goose­­a limitation of mind that could not fail to be agreeable to
Mrs. Penniman. Both she and her brother, however, exaggerated the young girl's limitations;
for Catherine, though she was very fond of her aunt, and conscious of the gratitude she owed
her, regarded her without a particle of that gentle dread which gave its stamp to her
admiration of her father. To her mind there was nothing of the infinite about Mrs. Penniman;
Catherine saw her all at once, as it were, and was not dazzled by the apparition; whereas her
father's great faculties seemed, as they stretched away, to lose themselves in a sort of
luminous vagueness, which indicated, not that they stopped, but that Catherine's own mind
ceased to follow them.

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Grade 9 Literature In English (Prose & Poetry) LW ­ I contd.....from page 3
It must not be supposed that Dr. Sloper visited his disappointment upon the poor girl, or ever
let her suspect that she had played him a trick. On the contrary, for fear of being unjust to her,
he did his duty with exemplary zeal, and recognised that she was a faithful and affectionate
child. Besides, he was a philosopher; he smoked a good many cigars over his disappointment,
and in the fulness of time he got used to it.

Explore the ways in which Henry James presents Catherine Sloper as a disappointment to her
father.
[Total = 25 marks]

2. From what you have read so far how does Henry James present Mrs. Penniman and her
influence on Catherine in the novel Washington Square.
[Total = 25 marks]

END

Ref : CP