Essay questions (40 minute 20 marks)
Of Mice and Men
An Inspector Calls
Silas Marner
A Christmas Carol
How to earn AO4 marks.
How the writers were influenced by
what was happening in their own
times.
Social, cultural, and historical
contexts (AO4)
• 5 – 8 marks: make simple comments on textual
background.
• 10-11 marks: show a limited awareness of
social/cultural and historical contexts.
• 12- 14 marks: begin to be aware how social/cultural
and historical context is relevant to understanding
the text ASK: what does the time/place explain
about actions/characters/events in the text ?
• 15-20 marks: begin to see how texts have been
influential – relates to people – how they think !
Context Issues You Must Address
Historical Events:
• Unemployment – caused by Wall Street Crash
• Unemployment/loss of homesteads – caused
by the Dust Bowl
• Migrant Workers – moving around, affected
them capacity to ‘settle down’, have families
• American Dream – idea from anecdotes of a
few successful individuals, gave others hope.
‘Of Mice and Men’
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yg_ddv
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUKpo7LY
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• Capital letters for the Great Depression 1930s
• Capitals letters for the American Dream
• Capital letters for the Dust Bowl
Women – all texts
Female characters – usually divided into two or
three main groups
– homely, ’nice’ wife, practical , hard-working,
chaste
– ‘tart’, unmarried, unmarriable ! Wears make-up,
revealing clothes, not a virgin, independent
– new woman, has her own dreams, is not looking
for a husband – often confused with ‘tart’ image
List female characters – group them across the
texts: what do they have in common ?
Black People, Poor People
• texts shows lives of ‘under-class’ at that time!
• Black people – Crooks – fewer legal rights, living
conditions, treatment, words:‘nigga’, segregation
• The Cratchits – workers rights, abused by
employers, poverty effects on e.g. health
• Eva Smith – woman & poor – employment rights,
viewed by police e.g. rape, prostitutes, unmarried
mothers, charity, snobbery
• Marner – outside the church, townie, weaver, his
fits – superstition; The Cass Family – moral
expectations of the upper class – assumes Eppie
better off with money than love.
Other texts on youtube
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5vLnFv
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• Youtube An Inspector Calls context
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlUbi1Mb
EF0 – summary of Silas Marner
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4hkTrA
NR1Y – Christmas Carol
Exemplar sentences
Steinbeck uses names to sum up or indicate
something important about each character.
Crooks’s name indicates/sums up not just his
physical appearance - Crooks’s back is described
as being ‘crooked’ - but also how many white
people saw black people in America in the 1930s;
‘crooked’ also mean ‘criminal’ or dishonest as if
Crooks is a law breaker. However, it is Crooks
who has few legal rights in California at that time:
notice the way Carlson just takes his gun without
asking. Steinbeck could be ironically drawing
attention to the ‘crooked deal’ Crooks
receives/suffers by the way he is treated.