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

3865
From the novel; The Trials of Brother Jero

What literary mode best described Soyinka’s The Trial Of Brother Jero, the most central deals with the

  • A. Tragedy
  • B. Satire
  • C. Tragi-comedy
  • D. Epic
  • E. Baroque.
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3866
From the novel; Julius Ceasar

Brutus joined the conspiracy against Caesar because he

  • A. knew that Caesar was ambitious
  • B. was a great lover of freedom
  • C. was made to believe that Caesar was ambitious
  • D. respected Casca and had a high opinion on Cassius
  • E. was greatly loved by the Romans.
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3867
From the novel; Julius Ceasar

The combined reactions of the plebeians after the separate speeches of Brutus and Antony show that the common man as portrayed in Julius Caesar

  • A. is knowledgeable, has a mind of his own, and is reable
  • B. is fickle-minded, changeable and not dependable
  • C. consider Caesar a tyrant and wants him killed
  • D. does not consider Caesar an over- ambitious man deserving death
  • E. is actually unconcerned whether Caesar dies or lives
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3868
From the novel; Julius Ceasar

‘Hence! Wilt thou lift up Olympus?’is a memorable lines from Julius Caesar by

  • A. Brutus
  • B. Mark Antony
  • C. Octavius Caesar
  • D. Cassius
  • E. Julius Caesar
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3869
From the novel; Julius Ceasar

In Julius Caesar, we learn that political success depends largely on

  • A. virture, honesty and patrotism
  • B. cunning and a readiness to make uses others
  • C. a strong body and good career as a soldier
  • D. a sound training in political science and public
  • E. having a generous, sympathetic and God-fearing spiritn
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3870

‘He was tall and huge, and his bushy eyebrows and wide nose gave him a very severe look. He breathed heavily, and it was said that, when he slept, his wives and children in their houses could hear him breath’. This passage achieves vividness through the use of

  • A. details
  • B. simple words
  • C. short sentences
  • D. the past tense
  • E. puntuation.
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3871

‘A clear, frosty night. Unusual brilliance and perfection of everything visible. Earth, sky, moon, and stars, all seem cemented, riveted together by the first. Shadows of trees be across the paths, so sharp that they seemed carved in relief. You keep thinking you see dark figures endlessly cross the road at various places’.
This passage achieves its beautiful effect partly because of its repeated appeal to the sense of

  • A. taste
  • B. touch
  • C. sight
  • D. smell
  • E. hearing
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3872

‘I have wandered on the wilderness
The great wilderness men call life
The rain has beaten me,
And the sharp stumps cut as keen as knives’

For the writer of these lines, living in an experience to be described as

  • A. pleasant
  • B. difficult
  • C. rewarding
  • D. exicting
  • E. bracing.
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3873

‘All was quiet in this park
Until the wind, like a gasping messenger, announced
The tyrant’s coming
Then did the branches talk in agony’.
There is in line 2 (‘like a gasping messenger…’) an example of

  • A. oxymoron
  • B. metonymy
  • C. alliteration
  • D. simile
  • E. personification.
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3874

‘I breathed a sigh of relief when i was twenty-six, determined that from then on my life will take a turn for the better. To make sure this happened I did two things which made sure it never could: i got a job, and I got married’.

The quality which this passage displays is

  • A. inaccessibility
  • B. seriousness
  • C. humour
  • D. gloom
  • E. nervousness.
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3875

‘Then suddenly her heart was whipped up, she now rode on strange waves: alone defying the wind and the rain; alone, fighting hunger and thirst in the desert; alone, struggling with strange demons in the forest, bringing glad tidings to her people’.

The mood of the lady in this passage is one of

  • A. defeat
  • B. depression
  • C. triumphant defiance
  • D. simple elation
  • E. sorrow.
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3876

The ‘Settings’ in a novel refers to

  • A. the point in the story where we first encounter the main character
  • B. the overall social and physical background of the main events in the novel
  • C. the home country of the hero or heroine
  • D. the location where the main event in the novel takes place
  • E. all the various places mentioned in the novel.
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3877

The expression ‘All the world is a stage’ is a good example of the figure of speech known as

  • A. personification
  • B. paradox
  • C. onomatopoeia
  • D. simile
  • E. metaphor.
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3878

The tendency in words to echo the meaning by the actual sound is called

  • A. onomatopoeia
  • B. assonance
  • C. alliteration
  • D. rhyme
  • E. phonetics.
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3879

‘Even children knew of Simi! Wives knelt and prayed that their men might sin a hundred times with a hundred women, but may their erring feet never lead them to Simi of the slow eyelids. For then men lost hope of salvation, their homes and children became ghost of a past illusion, learning from Simi to a new view of life, and love immersed in a cannibal’s reality. Simi broke men, and friendship’.

It is obvious from this passage that Simi is

  • A. famous for her love of children
  • B. a goddess worshipped by children, women and men
  • C. a woman other women like to befriend
  • D. an alluring, irresistible man-snatcher
  • E. disliked for teaching sex-education.
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3880

‘We return to our places, these kingdoms. But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad to another death’.

Which of the following authors chose the title of one of his novels from the above lines?

  • A. Eddie Iroh
  • B. Onuora Nzukwu
  • C. Cyprian Ekwensi
  • D. Elechi Amadi
  • E. Chinua Achebe
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3881

Identify the odd item in the following list

  • A. Prose
  • B. Poetry
  • C. Melodrama
  • D. Catastrophe
  • E. Drama.
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3882

A novel is

  • A. a long prose narrative fiction
  • B. an interesting story about a hero
  • C. a prose writings that deals with various people
  • D. a long story in which homan characters represents abstract qualities
  • E. a prose writing about the lives of great and interesting people.
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3883

Dialogue is important in drama because it

  • A. helps the audience to improve their English
  • B. is usually funny and lively
  • C. helps the audience to relax
  • D. prolongs the action of the play
  • E. reveals the minds of the characters.
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3884

A statement that appears to say something opposite to common sense or the truth, but which may contain a truth is

  • A. an oxymoron
  • B. a parable
  • C. an irony
  • D. an inversion
  • E. a paradox.
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3885

In ‘In Memoriam’ Senghor writes ‘That from the dangerous safety of the tower, i may go down into the street…’
‘Dangerous safety’ used in this poem is an example of

  • A. oxymoron
  • B. metaphor
  • C. simile
  • D. personification
  • E. apostophe.
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