3 exam-style questions with full mark schemes and model answers. Write your own answer and the AI examiner marks it against the mark scheme.
Read the following extract from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and then answer the question that follows.
In this extract, near the end of his journey with the Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge is shown two starving children hidden beneath the Spirit's robe.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom."
Explore how Dickens presents poverty and social responsibility in this extract and in the novel as a whole. (Total for question = 40 marks.)
Read the following extract from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson and then answer the question that follows.
In this extract, from his final confession, Dr Jekyll reflects on what his experiments have taught him about human nature.
That man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens. I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man.
Explore how Stevenson presents the idea of the divided self in this extract and in the novel as a whole. (Total for question = 40 marks.)
Read the following extract from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson and then answer the question that follows.
In this extract the lawyer Mr Utterson, having finally met Hyde, tries to account for the strange horror the man inspires in him.
Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him. "There must be something else," said the perplexed gentleman. "There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend."
Explore how Stevenson presents Hyde as a frightening and unnatural figure in this extract and in the novel as a whole. (Total for question = 40 marks.)