Interpretations of Poetry and
Prose revision session
Section A
• You will select either one piece of unseen prose or one
piece of poetry to respond to.
• Your answer will need to refer to how the writer uses
language, structure and form to shape meaning.
• There are 40 marks available for this question.
• You should spend 50 minutes in total on this section of
the exam.
Section B
• This section is worth 60 marks.
• You will select a question to answer based on the texts that you
have studied: ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’, ‘The Great Gatsby’ and
either ‘Rapture’ or The Metaphysical poets.
• The question will be a comment made by a reader. You will have to
respond to that comment referencing at least two of the three
books that you have studied.
• You MUST refer to one post 1900 text
• The question will be based on relationships.
Section B
• AO1: 10 marks
• AO2: 10 marks
• AO3: 20 marks
• AO4: 20 marks
How do you access all
20 marks?
A04
• Can refer to the factors affecting the way that the
text was produced.
• Can refer to the factors affecting the way that the
text was received
• Can refer to response as a modern reader
• Can refer to how opinions towards the text have
changed through time.
Focusing on the context of Gatsby
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozkOhXmijtk
What factors
affected the way that
the text was
produced?
“Scott Fitzgerald was a legend in his own lifetime and has
become even more so ever since. He seems to epitomize
an American Era – the jazz age – and to symbolize its
delights, dangers and defeats…While his fiction is never
simply autobiographical, his life and work are intricately
interwoven.” Nicholas Tredell 2007
• Family background: Money Vs Breeding
• Theme of social insecurity: “That morning he had gone
out a comparatively young man, a man full of strength,
full of confidence. He came home that evening, an old
man, a completely broken man.”
• Desire to be one of the greatest writers that ever lived: ‘I
want to write something new – something extraordinary
and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.’ letter
July 1922
• Relationship with Ginevra King and Zelda Sayre.
“ The man with the jingle of money in his pockets who married [her]
would always cherish an abiding distrust, an animosity, towards the
leisure class- not the conviction of a revolutionary but the
smouldering hatred of a peasant. In the years since then I have
never been able to stop wondering where my friends’ money came
from, nor to stop thinking that at one time a sort of droit de
seigneur might have been exercised to give them my girl.” Fitzgerald
‘The Crack-up’
After the birth of their first (and only) child Zelda said: ‘I hope its
beautiful and a fool – a beautiful fool.’
• The after effects of World War One
• ‘Writers were geniuses on the strength of one respectable
book or play; just as during the War officers of four months'
experience commanded hundreds of men, so there were
now many little fish lording it over great big bowls.’
Fitzgerald Echoes of the Jazz Age
• ‘The Lost Generation’
• Emancipation of women
• Immigration
• ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness.’ Declaration of independence
1776
• America as a world power: ‘We were the most powerful
nation. Who could tell us any longer what was fashionable
and what was fun?’ Echoes of the Jazz Age.
• Prohibition 1919
• The growth of organised crime
• 1920: American women first given the right to vote. ‘Flapper’
• Acceleration of technology and consumerism
• Social class
•
•
America: the 'land of the free', the 'American Dream'
However, in The Great Gatsby strong social divisions were already in place, with
"indiscernible barbed wire" in between them. Eg: West Egg is "the less fashionable of the
two".
• America , and the characters in the novel, are divided by class - partly between new
money and old money, but also social provenance.
• In the USA, Protestants of English, Scottish, French, Dutch or German origin formed the
social elite. They were the descendants of immigrants who had come to the USA in search
of religious freedom (Pilgrim Fathers) or to develop business interests. They were well
educated, often already wealthy, who formed an ‘aristocracy ‘
• Poor migrants from Eastern Europe, Poland and Ireland were looked down on. Jewish
immigrants, although they might be wealthy, were also excluded socially. Nick clarifies this
in the guests to Gatsby's parties:
"From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen,
whom I knew at Yale and Doctor Webster Civet…“
The listed names of the East Eggers are clearly all of Western European origin, like the
characters Buchanan and Carraway.
• By contrast, those from West Egg sound East European, Irish or Jewish: "the Poles and the
Mulreadys, Cecil Roebuck and Cecil Schoen and Gulick…Eckhaus…Clyde Cohen and Don S
Schwartz and Arthur McCarty."
• In the novel, Gatsby's real name is 'Gatz'. He has anglicised this to 'Gatsby' in order to be
more socially acceptable.
• The Midwest of America is associated with an upright, conservative
lifestyle and strong family values.
• Gatsby comes from the Midwest, specifically North Dakota, a relatively
poor, agricultural area on the northern edge of the Midwest. He abandons
it in favour of the glamorous East.
• By the 1920s, Midwestern society had remained unchanged for
generations. Nick describes his city as one where "dwellings are still called
through decades by a family's name".
• While this creates a secure environment, it can also appear stifling and
old-fashioned, e.g. he describes "all my aunts and uncles" talking over his
change of career.
• After the war the Midwest seemed to him "like the ragged edge of the
universe".
• However, Nick comes to appreciate his home after becoming disgusted
with the soulless immorality of the East.
Literary Modernism : a conscious break with traditional
styles of poetry and verse. ( movement from Victorianism
and ‘The Grand Narrative’ ) Modernists experimented with
literary form and expression, adhering to the modernist
maxim to "Make it new.“ The modernist literary movement
was driven by a desire to overturn traditional modes of
representation and express the new sensibilities of their
time
• Romanticism – influence of Keats – emphasis
on imagination over intellect.
• Modernism
• T.S Eliot The wasteland – exploration of the
darker side of human nature.
• Henry James
How is this information relevant?
• Taking one of the aspects that we have
explored so far this morning, in pairs create a
paragraph that links the historical context to
the way in which relationships are presented
within ‘ The Great Gatsby’.
• Swap your paragraph with another pair –
identify WWW and EBI
A04
• Can refer to the factors affecting the way that the
text was produced.
• Can refer to the factors affecting the way that the
text was received
• Can refer to response as a modern reader
• Can refer to how opinions towards the text have
changed through time.
‘Great’
Gangster
What evidence is there in the text to
support each view of Gatsby?
Dreamer
Gatsby
Soldier
Which view of Gatsby is the most accurate?
Lover
Self made man
What is the significance that one
character can be interpreted in these
different ways?
AO4 – The factors affecting the way
that the ‘The Great Gatsby’ was
received
AO4 – Responses to Fitzgerald through
time. Review when the story was first
published
The story is obviously unimportant…What ails it, fundamentally,
is the plain fact that it is simply a story – that Fitzgerald seems
far more interested in maintaining its suspense than in getting
under the skins of its people. It is not they are false; it is that
they are taken too much for granted. Only Gatsby himself
genuinely lives and breathes. The rest are mere marionettes –
often astonishingly lifelike, but nevertheless not quite alive.
What gives the story distinction is something quite different
from the management of the action or the handling of the
characters; it is the charm and beauty of the writing.
H.L. Mencken Baltimore Evening Sun May 2nd 1925
Responses to Fitzgerald after death:
“ My generation thought of F. Scott Fitzgerald as
an age rather than as a writer, and when the
economic strike of 1929 began to change the
sheiks and flappers into unemployed boys or
underpaid girls, we consciously and a little
belligerently turned our backs on Fitzgerald.”
(Kazin, The man and his work.)
John W. Bicknell: The Waste Land of F.
Scott Fitzgerald(1954)
In 1925 it was perhaps difficult to take seriously a writer who
portrayed the beautiful and the rich as essentially damned
and who implied that the American Dream was, after all, little
more than a thinly veiled nightmare, in the 1950s we are less
likely to misunderstand his intentions. Increasingly, modern
critics are recognizing that The Great Gatsbyis a searching
critique of American society. In fact, some of our pundits are
elevating Fitzgerald into the first order of American writers
almost entirely on the strength of his gloomy cadences. Those
who take Fitzgerald closest to their bosoms seem to be the
ones who are always lecturing us on the necessity of having a
tragic sense of life. But is the tendency of Fitzgerald’s art
essentially tragic, or is it merely pessimistic?
Interpreting Gatsby and Daisy’s
relationship
Tom’s wife, Daisy, suggests the callous boredom of the beautiful
society matron. She is ready to play with Gatsby, partially out of
nostalgia for their youthful romance, partially to spite the
philandering Tom, but more, one feels, as a relief from
boredom. “What do people plan?” she asks, and the sentence is
symbolic of her emptiness; she is like Eliot’s lady in “The Waste
Land” who cries out, “What shall we do tomorrow? What shall
we ever do?” Ironically enough, it is Gatsby who finally isolates
the quality of her voice. “Her voice is full of money,” he suddenly
remarks; she is the “king’s daughter … the golden girl.” The
suspenseful play of irony around the ambiguous connotations of
“golden” finally resolves when we discover that the golden girl is
really made of bronze. If she does not love Tom, she shares his
callous selfishness. With him she conspires to sacrifice Jay
Gatsby to her own safety, and is in a real sense an accomplice in
the final crime.
What affects our response to Gatsby
as a reader?
• Do we have the same views towards Gatsby as
Fitzgerald’s contemporaries? What affected their
POV?
• Do we find our opinion is more similar to Bicknell
in the 1950s? What again affected their POV?
• What factors affect our view of Gatsby as a
modern reader?
Reflecting on your learning
What have you learned this morning about ‘ The
Great Gatsby’ that you can apply within an essay
response?
What have you learned about the exam in
general that is of importance?
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
What factors
affected the way that
the text was
produced?
• “History ought to consist of the anecdotes of the little people who
are caught up in it”
• De Bernieres describes the novel as “what happens to the little
people when megalomaniacs get busy”
• ‘Looking back on the things that I have published, it seems that
I’m rather obsessed with the question of power, I seem to be very
interested in the abuse of it.’
• ‘You can’t really write an honest book in which people are
unmotivated by love.’
• Louis De Berniéres is a passionate player of the mandolin and
hoped the novel would lead to a revival of it – it has.
• The novel is concerned with World War Two – and the occupation of
Greece under the Italians and then the Germans. Despite being written in
1993- the plot is based around the events from 1939 - 1993
• The novel accurately depicts the attitude of the Greeks to the arrival of
the Italian forces.
• The book has received some criticism for its unhistorical representation of
Italians – some claiming they could be just as cruel as the Germans.
• However, there is evidence that shows Italian occupiers as being friendly
to the local people and are still welcomed fondly by elderly locals.
• Conscription for military service preceded the war, although there were
some, such as Mandras, who volunteered first.
• There are accurate historical events in the novel, although the thoughts
and actions of historical figures must be treated with caution.
• De Bernières spent a fortnight in Cephallonia, where after learning about the
history of the island he decided to make this the setting of his novel.
• He wrote the novel in Britain, relying on accounts of Greeks living in London.
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The island has been occupied since at least 4000 BC
19th Century History of Cephallonia
1807-9 – French occupation of island
1815-1864 – Congress of Vienna gave Ionian islands to Britain
1821 – Greek War of Independence 1832 - Kingdom of Greece established.
1864 – Ionian islands left British control to form union with Greece
20th Century History of Cephalonia
1941-44 – Italian and German occupations.
1947-9 – Civil War.
1953 – earthquake.
1980s onwards – increasing prosperity due to tourism; this has increased
further due to the book and then the film.
• The novel also explores ideas of community that are specific to Greece – eg:
Daughters and dowries, Mothers and Sons, Saints and Supersitions etc
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin shares some of the
characteristics of a postmodern text ( Eg: does not have
one narrative viewpoint – instead incorporates many,
comical treatment of serious and sentimental events)
• The novel explores the way in which story and history can
be conveyed in other modes rather than the omniscient
narrator in the past tense – instead the text operates as a
collage that reminds the reader there are many ways of
seeing and understanding the characters and events.
• ‘Faction’ – a combination of forms of fiction and nonfiction (fact)
• Intertextuality and implicit and explicit references to
Greek mythology.
How is this information relevant?
• Taking one of the aspects that we have
explored so far, in pairs create a paragraph
that links the historical context to the way in
which relationships are presented within
• ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’.
• Swap your paragraph with another pair –
identify WWW and EBI
Soldier
What evidence is there in the text to
support each view of Corelli?
Musician
Dreamer
Lover
Which view of Corelli is the most accurate?
Self made man
What is the significance that one
character can be interpreted in these
different ways?
Reflecting on your learning
What have you learned about ‘ Captain Corelli’s
Mandolin ’ that you can apply within an essay
response?
Focusing on AO2 in ‘The Great Gatsby’
p46
The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from
the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail
music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher.
Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with
prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups
change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and
form in the same breath; already there are wanderers,
confident girls who weave here and there among the
stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous
moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with
triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and
voices and colour under the constantly changing light.
How is this scene relevant to the topic of
‘relationships’?
Focusing on AO2 in ‘Captain Corelli’s
Mandolin’. p105
As though answering her thoughts, a movement
a caught the corner of her eye. Below, to the
left, a body was diving about in the waves like a
human dolphin. She watched the brown
fisherman with a pleasure that was purely
aesthetic, until she realised with a small shock
that he was completely naked…Pelagia crept
closer in order to admire this man who was so
sleek, so at one with the sea, so much like a fish,
a man naked and wild, a man like Adam
The Unseen question
Section A
• You will select either one piece of unseen prose or one
piece of poetry to respond to.
• Your answer will need to refer to how the writer uses
language, structure and form to shape meaning.
• There are 40 marks available for this question.
• You should spend 50 minutes in total on this section of
the exam.
On My First Sonne
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy ;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
Oh, could I lose all father now ! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age !
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.
Since you must go, and I must bid farewell,
Hear, mistress, your departing servant tell
What it is like : and do not think they can
Be idle words, though of a parting man.
It is as if a night should shade noon-day,
Or that the sun was here, but forced away ;
And we were left under that hemisphere,
Where we must feel it dark for half a year.
What fate is this, to change men's days and hours,
To shift their seasons, and destroy their powers !
Alas ! I have lost my heat, my blood, my prime,
Winter is come a quarter ere his time.
My health will leave me ; and when you depart,
How shall I do, sweet mistress, for my heart ?
You would restore it ! no ; that's worth a fear,
As if it were not worthy to be there :
O keep it still ; for it had rather be
Your sacrifice, than here remain with me.
And so I spare it : come what can become
Of me, I'll softly tread unto my tomb ;
Or, like a ghost, walk silent amongst men,
Till I may see both it and you agen.
An Elegy
Creating meaning and interpreting the
poem
• Look at the significance of the title or the
connotations within key words of the
question.
• Look for semantic fields – does this reveal any
emerging themes/ ideas /information?
• Compare beginnings and endings does
anything seem to have been achieved by the
ending? What ideas have been developed?
Since you must go, and I must bid farewell,
Hear, mistress, your departing servant tell
What it is like : and do not think they can
Be idle words, though of a parting man.
It is as if a night should shade noon-day,
Or that the sun was here, but forced away ;
And we were left under that hemisphere,
Where we must feel it dark for half a year.
What fate is this, to change men's days and hours,
To shift their seasons, and destroy their powers !
Alas ! I have lost my heat, my blood, my prime,
Winter is come a quarter ere his time.
My health will leave me ; and when you depart,
How shall I do, sweet mistress, for my heart ?
You would restore it ! no ; that's worth a fear,
As if it were not worthy to be there :
O keep it still ; for it had rather be
Your sacrifice, than here remain with me.
And so I spare it : come what can become
Of me, I'll softly tread unto my tomb ;
Or, like a ghost, walk silent amongst men,
Till I may see both it and you agen.
An Elegy
Once you have gained an understanding of
the meaning…
You need to consider how to write your response:
• Your introduction should outline the meaning of the poem/ your
interpretation of what the poem means
• Throughout the rest of your response you should explore how the poet has
used the language and structure to help create this meaning.
You can use FLIRTS to structure your response:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Form
Language
Imagery
Rhythm and Rhyme
Tone
Structure
Remember: You need to refer in each
paragraph to how the writer has used this
technique to create the meaning that you
established within your introduction
What will make a good answer?
Establish success criteria for an introduction –
what should it include in order to fulfil the
examiner’s expectations?
Now write your introduction to this answer – in
light of the success criteria.