Cambridge IGCSE First Language English
Comprehension and Writers’ Effects
Text 8A
The island
Here, on the other side of the island, the view was utterly different. The filmy enchantments of mirage
could not endure the cold ocean water, and the horizon was hard, clipped blue. Ralph wandered down
to the rocks. Down here, almost on a level with the sea, you could follow with your eye the ceaseless,
bulging passage of the deep sea waves. They were miles wide, apparently not breakers or the banked
ridges of shallow water. They travelled the length of the island with an air of disregarding it and being
set on other business; they were less a progress than a momentous rise and fall of the whole ocean.
Now the sea would suck down, making cascades and waterfalls of retreating water, would sink past
the rocks and plaster down the seaweed like shining hair: then pausing, gather and rise with a roar,
irresistibly swelling over point and outcrop, climbing the little cliff, sending at last an arm of surf up a
gully to end a yard or so from him in fingers of spray.
Wave after wave, Ralph followed the rise and fall until something of the remoteness of the sea numbed
his brain. Then gradually the almost infinite size of this water forced itself on his attention. This was
the divider, the barrier. On the other side of the island, swathed at midday with mirage, defended by
the shield of the quiet lagoon, one might dream of rescue; but here, faced by the brute obtuseness of
the ocean, the miles of division, one was clamped down, one was helpless, one was condemned, one
was …
From Lord of the Flies, by William Golding.
© Cambridge University Press 2018
Unit 8 Dislocation
Cambridge IGCSE First Language English
Comprehension and Writers’ Effects
Text 8B
The causeway
On the causeway path it was still quite dry underfoot but to my left I saw that the water had begun to
seep nearer, quite silent now, quite slow. I wondered how deeply the path went under water when the
tide was at its height. But on a still night such as this, there was plenty of time to cross in safety, though
the distance was greater, now I was traversing it on foot, than it had seemed when we trotted over in
Keckwick’s pony cart, and the end of the causeway path seemed to be receding into the greyness
ahead. I had never been quite so alone, nor felt quite so small and insignificant in a vast landscape
before, and I fell into a brooding, philosophical frame of mind, struck by the absolute indifference of
water and sky to my presence.
Some minutes later, I could not tell how many, I came out of my reverie, to realize that I could no longer
see very far in front of me, and when I turned around I was startled to find that Eel Marsh House, too, was
invisible, not because the darkness of evening had fallen, but because of a thick, damp sea-mist that had
come rolling over the marshes and enveloped everything, myself, the house behind me, the end of the
causeway path and the countryside ahead. It was a mist like a damp, clinging cobwebby thing, fine and yet
impenetrable … I felt confused, teased by it, as though it were made up of millions of live fingers that crept
over me, hung onto me and then shifted away again. Above all, it was the suddenness of it that had so
unnerved and disorientated me.
From The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill.
Unit 8 Dislocation
© Cambridge University Press 2018