Literature in English JAMB, WAEC, NECO AND NABTEB Official Past Questions

“He considers also a little fragile,because artistic:
I need to be cared for, like a potted plant. A little
pruning, a little watering, a little weeding and
straightening up to bring out the best in me.”

Based on Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye, the “me” in the above passage is seen as

“Marjorie turns to the fish, They swim slickly
backwards and forwards in the bright heaven of
their tanks:’white gravel,silver bubbles,green weed and the iridescence of their scales.They
cheer her. How much more beautiful fish are than
people, she thinks for the thousandth time.No
ungainliness,no filth;no stupidity.”

Based on Lesley Glaister’s “Serrusalmus”, New Writing, in the passage above, the fish are better than people because they are

“In the cold hand of death…
his mouth was cotton filled, his man-pike
shrunk to a sub-soil grub
his head was hallowed and his brain
on scales-was this a trick to prove
fore-knowledge after death?”

Based on Wole Soyinka’s ” Post Mortem, one of the techniques employed by this poet is the use of

“Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are corals made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade.”

The rhyme scheme of the above stanza is

“Here lies our sovereign Lord the King,
Whose word no man relies on,
Who never said a foolish thing
Nor ever did a wise one,”

Based on John Wilmot Rochester’s Epitaph on King Charles 11, the form of the above stanza is an example of

“The poet needs to be up at night,when the world
sleeps…needs to exist in places where spiders
forge their webs in silence;near the gutters where
the underside of our dreams fester.”

Based on Ben Okri’s ‘Of Poets and their Antagonists’, the poet in the passage above is

“The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew
The furrow followed free
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.”

Based on Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, the dominant figure of speech in the above lines is

“But everything does have a beginning, and so if I
am to tell this story I must begin. Yet i do not know
the starting point of my tale.”

Based on Nawal El Saadaw’s The Circling Song,the speaker of the above statement is the

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes,you
can see more clearly than ever. It’s like the tide
going out revealing whatever has been thrown away
and sunk; broken bottles, old gloves,rusting
pop-cans, nibbled fish bodies, bones.The ruin
you’ve made.”

Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

The passage above claims that when “love recedes”, you

“Stream of consciousness” is the name for

What basically distinguishes Literature from other disciplines is its

A sub-plot is

The literary device in which there is a difference between what is stated and what is actually the case is called

An over-used expression is

A didactic piece is one in which the writer

The major source of action in any narrative is

“O Julius Caesar, thou are mighty yet
Thy spirit walks abroad.”

Based on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the statement above is

The expression “The sun kisses the earth” is a

Based on the novel “Piggy”s”, towards the end of the novel, the boys can best be described as

“You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you Close
close close! I’m the reason why its no go” Why
things are what they are?”

Based on the novel “Piggy’s” , the beast’s words represents

“…If someone threw you a rope when you were
drowning. If a doctor said take this because if you don’t take this because if you
don’t take it, you will die- you would, wouldn’t you? I
mean?”

Based on the novel “Piggy’s”,the “rope” and the doctor’s prescription refers to the