PRESCRIBED POETRY 
ANSWER ANY TWO QUESTIONS.

QUESTION 1 
‘Funeral Blues’ 

Essay question 

10 marks 

Page 5

QUESTION 2 
‘Motho Ke Motho Ka Batho Babang’ 

Contextual question 

10 marks 

Page 6

QUESTION 3 
‘Felix Randal’ 

Contextual question 

10 marks 

Page 7

QUESTION 4 
‘An African Elegy’ 

Contextual question 

10 marks 

Page 8

AND

UNSEEN POETRY 
COMPULSORY QUESTION.

QUESTION 5 
‘Some like poetry’ 

Contextual question 

10 marks 

Page 9

NOTE: 
In sections B and C, answer ONE ESSAY QUESTION and ONE CONTEXTUAL  question. If you answer an essay question from SECTION B, you must answer a  contextual question from SECTION C. If you answer a contextual question from  SECTION B, you must answer an essay question from SECTION C. 

SECTION B: NOVEL 
ANSWER ONLY ON THE NOVEL YOU HAVE STUDIED.

ANSWER ANY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING FOUR QUESTIONS.

QUESTION 6 
The picture of Dorian Gray 

Essay question 

25 marks 

Page 10

OR

QUESTION 7 
The picture of Dorian Gray 

Contextual question 

25 marks 

Page 10

OR

QUESTION 8 
Life of Pi 

Essay question 

25 marks 

Page 12

OR

QUESTION 9 
Life of Pi 

Contextual question 

25 marks 

Page 12

ANSWER ANY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING SIX QUESTIONS.

QUESTION 10
Hamlet 

Essay question 

25 marks 

Page 15

OR

QUESTION 11 
Hamlet 

Contextual question 

25 marks 

Page 15

OR

QUESTION 12 
Othello 

Essay question 

25 marks 

Page 17

OR

QUESTION 13 
Othello 

Contextual question 

25 marks 

Page 18

OR

QUESTION 14 
The Crucible 

Essay question 

25 marks 

Page 20

OR

QUESTION 15 
The Crucible 

Contextual question 

25 marks 

Page 20

SECTION 

QUESTION  
NUMBERS

NO. OF QUESTIONS  TO ANSWER

TICK

A: POETRY  
(Prescribed Poetry) 

1–4 

2

A: POETRY 
(Unseen Poem) 

5 

1

B: NOVEL 
(Essay or Contextual) 

6–9 

1

C: DRAMA 
(Essay or Contextual) 

10–15 

1

NOTE: In SECTIONS B and C, answer ONE ESSAY and ONE CONTEXTUAL question.

FUNERAL BLUES – W.H. Auden 

1. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, 
2. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, 
3. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum 
4. Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. 
   
   
5. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead 
6. Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He Is Dead’,
7. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, 
8. Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. 
   
   
9. He was my North, my South, my East and West, 
10. My working week and my Sunday rest,
11. My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; 
12. I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. 
    
    
13. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one; 
14. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; 
15. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; 
16. For nothing now can ever come to any good. 

MOTHO KE MOTHO KA BATHO BABANG – Jeremy Cronin
(A Person is a Person Because of Other People)

1. By holding my mirror out of the window I see 
2. Clear to the end of the passage. 
3. There’s a person down there.
4. A prisoner polishing a doorhandle. 
5. In the mirror I see him see 
6. My face in the mirror, 
7. I see the fingertips of his free hand 
8. Bunch together, as if to make 
9. An object the size of a badge 
10. Which travels up to his forehead
11. The place of an imaginary cap. 
12. (This means: A warder.)
13. Two fingers are extended in a vee 
14. And wiggle like two antennae. 
15.  (He’s being watched.) 
16. A finger of his free hand makes a watch-hand’s arc 
17. On the wrist of his polishing arm without 
18. Disrupting the slow-slow rhythm of his work. 
19. (Later. Maybe, later we can speak.) 
20. Hey! Wat maak jy daar? 
21. – a voice from around the corner. 
22. No, just polishing baas.
23. He turns his back to me, now watch 
24. His free hand, the talkative one,
25. Slips quietly behind 
26. – Strength brother, it says,
27. In my mirror, 
28.  A black fist. 

FELIX RANDAL – Gerard Manley Hopkins 

1. Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended,
2. Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome 
3. Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it, and some 
4. Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
   
   
5. Sickness broke him. Impatient, he cursed at first, but mended 
6. Being anointed at all; though a heavenlier heart began some 
7. Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom 
8. Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!
   
   
9. This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears. 
10. My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears, 
11. Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal; 
    
    
12. How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years, 
13. When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers, 
14. Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal! 

AN AFRICAN ELEGY – Ben Okri 

1. We are the miracles that God made 
2. To taste the bitter fruit of Time. 
3. We are precious. 
4. And one day our suffering 
5. Will turn into the wonders of the earth. 
   
   
6. There are things that burn me now 
7. Which turn golden when I am happy. 
8. Do you see the mystery of our pain? 
9. That we bear poverty 
10. And are able to sing and dream sweet things 
    
    
11. And that we never curse the air when it is warm 
12. Or the fruit when it tastes so good
13. Or the lights that bounce gently on the waters? 
14. We bless things even in our pain. 
15. We bless them in silence. 
    
    
16. That is why our music is so sweet. 
17. It makes the air remember. 
18. There are secret miracles at work 
19. That only Time will bring forth.
20. I too have heard the dead singing. 
    
    
21. And they tell me that 
22. This life is good 
23. They tell me to live it gently 
24. With fire, and always with hope. 
25. There is wonder here 
    
    
26. And there is surprise 
27. In everything the unseen moves. 
28. The ocean is full of songs. 
29. The sky is not an enemy. 
30. Destiny is our friend. 

SOME LIKE POETRY – Wislawa Szymborska 

1. Some – 
2. thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the 
3. minority. 
4. Not counting schools, where one has to, 
5. and the poets themselves, 
6. there might be two people per thousand. 
   
   
7. Like – 
8. but one also likes chicken soup with noodles, 
9. one likes compliments and the colour blue, 
10. one likes an old scarf, 
11. one likes having the upper hand, 
12. one likes stroking a dog.
    
    
13. Poetry – 
14. but what is poetry. 
15. Many shaky answers 
16. have been given to this question. 
17. But I don’t know and don’t know and hold on to it 
18. like to a sustaining railing. 

For every sin that he committed a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness. But he  would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible  emblem of conscience. He would resist temptation. He would not see Lord Henry  any more – would not, at any rate, listen to those subtly poisonous theories that in  Basil Hallward’s garden had first stirred within him the passion for impossible things.  5 He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love her again.  Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have suffered more than he had. Poor child!  He had been selfish and cruel to her. The fascination that she had exercised over  him would return. They would be happy together. His life with her would be beautiful  and pure. 10 He got up from his chair, and drew a large screen right in front of the portrait,  shuddering as he glanced at it. ‘How horrible!’ he murmured to himself, and he  walked across to the window and opened it. When he stepped out on to the grass,  he drew a deep breath. The fresh morning air seemed to drive away all his sombre  passions. He thought only of Sibyl. A faint echo of his love came back to him. He  15repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her. 

 [Chapter 7] 

When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turned it in the  lock. Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his eyes. He shuddered. ‘I  don’t think I can go in, Alan,’ he murmured. 
 ‘It is nothing to me. I don’t require you,’ said Campbell, coldly. 
Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw the face of his portrait leering in  5 the sunlight. On the floor in front of it the torn curtain was lying. He remembered  that the night before he had forgotten, for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal  canvas, and was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder. 
What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the  hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? How horrible it was! – more  10 horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, that the silent thing that he knew was  stretched across the table, the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow on the  spotted carpet showed him that it had not stirred, but was still there, as he had left  it. 
He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with half-closed eyes  15 and averted head walked quickly in, determined that he would not look even once  upon the dead man. Then, stooping down, and taking up the gold and purple  hanging, he flung it right over the picture. 

 [Chapter 14] 

I love Canada. I miss the heat of India, the food, the house lizards on the walls,  the musicals on the silver screen, the cows wandering the streets, the crows  cawing, even the talk of cricket matches, but I love Canada. It is a great country  much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with  bad hairdos. Anyway, I have nothing to go home to in Pondicherry. 5 
Richard Parker has stayed with me. I’ve never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss  him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly,  but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still  cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any  sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like an axe that  10 chops at my heart. 
The doctors and nurses at the hospital in Mexico were incredibly kind to me. And  the patients, too. Victims of cancer or car accidents, once they heard my story,  they hobbled and wheeled over to see me, they and their families, though none of  them spoke English and I spoke no Spanish. They smiled at me, shook my hand,  15 patted me on the head, left gifts of food and clothing on my bed. They moved me  to uncontrollable fits of laughing and crying. 

[Chapter 1] 

 ‘I told you two stories that account for the 227 days in between.’ 
 ‘Yes, you did.’ 
 ‘Neither explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum.’ 
 ‘That’s right.’ 
 ‘Neither makes a factual difference to you.’ 5 
 ‘That’s true.' 
 ‘You can’t prove which story is true and which is not. You must take my word   for it’. 
 ‘I guess so.’ 
 ‘In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer.’ 10 
 ‘Yes, that’s true.’ 
 ‘So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the  question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story  with animals or the story without animals?’ 
 Mr. Okamoto: ‘That’s an interesting question …’ 15 
 Mr. Chiba: ‘The story with animals.’ 
 Mr. Okamoto: ‘Yes. The story with animals is the better story.’ 
 Pi Patel: ‘Thank you. And so it goes with God.’ 
 [Silence] 20 
 Mr. Okamoto: ‘You’re welcome.’ 
 Mr Chiba: ‘What did he just say?’ 
 Mr. Okamoto: ‘I don’t know.’ 
 Mr. Chiba: ‘Oh look – he’s crying.’ 
 [Long silence] 
 Mr. Okamoto: ‘We’ll be careful when we drive away. We don’t want to run into  25 Richard Parker.’ 
 Pi Patel: ‘Don’t worry, you won’t. He’s hiding somewhere you’ll never find him.’

[Chapter 99] 

 Flourish of trumpets. Enter CLAUDIUS, King of Denmark,  GERTRUDE the queen, POLONIUS, his son LAERTES   
and his daughter OPHELIA, PRINCE HAMLET dressed in black,  with other courtiers and attendants. 

CLAUDIUS 
 Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death 
The memory be green, and that it us befitted 
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom 
To be contracted in one brow of woe, 
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature 5 
That we with wisest sorrow think on him 
Together with remembrance of ourselves. 
Therefore our sometimes sister, now our queen, 
Th’imperial jointress of this warlike state, 
Have we as ‘twere with a defeated joy, 10 
With one auspicious and one dropping eye, 
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, 
In equal scale weighing delight and dole, 
Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred 
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone 15 
With this affair along. For all, our thanks. 
Now follows that you know young Fortinbras, 
Holding a weak supposal of our worth, 
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death 
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, 20 

[Act 1, Scene 2] 

LAERTES    I will do’t, 
And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword. 
I bought an unction of a mountebank 
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, 
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, 5 
Collected from all simples that have virtue 
Under the moon, can save the thing from death 
That is but scratched withal. I’ll touch my point 
With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly, 
It may be death. 10 

CLAUDIUS  Let’s further think of this; 
Weigh what convenience both of time and means 
May fit us to our shape. If this should fail, 
And that our drift look through our bad performance, 
‘Twere better not essayed. Therefore this project, 15 
Should have a back or second that might hold 
If this should blast in proof. Soft, let me see. 
We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings … 
I ha’t! When in motion you are hot and dry – 20 
As make your bouts more violent to that end – 
And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared him 
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping, 
If he by chance escape your venomed stuck, 
Our purpose may hold here. – 

Enter GERTRUDE 

 How now, sweet Queen?  25
GERTRUDE One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
So fast they follow. Your sister’s drowned, Laertes. 
LAERTESDrowned? O, where? 

[Act 4, Scene 7] 

OTHELLO  Why, why is this? 
Think’st thou I’d make a life of jealousy, 
To follow still the changes of the moon 
With fresh suspicions? No, to be once in doubt 
Is once to be resolved. Exchange me for a goat 5 
When I shall turn the business of my soul 
To such exsufflicate and blown surmises 
Matching thy inference. ’Tis not to make me jealous 
To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, 
Is free of speech, sings, plays and dances well. 10 
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous, 
Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw 
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt, 
For she had eyes and chose me. No, Iago, 
I’ll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove; 15 
And on the proof, there is no more but this: 
Away at once with love or jealousy! 
IAGO: I am glad of this, for now I shall have reason 
To show the love and duty that I bear you 
With franker spirit. Therefore, as I am bound, 20 
Receive it from me. I speak not yet of proof. 
Look to your wife. Observe her well with Cassio. 
Wear your eyes thus: not jealous, nor secure. 
I would not have your free and noble nature 
Out of self-bounty be abused. Look to’t. 25 
I know our country disposition well. 
In Venice, they do let God see the pranks 
They dare not show their husbands, their best conscience
Is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown. 
OTHELLO: Dost thou say so? 30 
IAGO: She did deceive her father, marrying you, 
And when she seem’d to shake and fear your looks 
She loved them most. 

[Act 3, Scene 3] 

DESDEMONA: (offers a handkerchief) Here, my lord. 
OTHELLO: That which I gave you. 
DESDEMONA:  I have it not about me. 
OTHELLO: Not? 
DESDEMONA :  No, faith, my lord. 
OTHELLO:  That’s a fault. That handkerchief 
Did an Egyptian to my mother give. 
She was a charmer, and could almost read 5 
The thoughts of people. She told her, while she kept it
‘Twould make her amiable, and subdue my father 
Entirely to her love; but if she lost it, 
Or made a gift of it, my father’s eye 
Should hold her loathèd, and his spirits should hunt 10 
After new fancies. She, dying, gave it to me, 
And bid me, when my fate would have me wived, 
To give it to her. I did so, and take heed on’t. 
Make it a darling, like your precious eye, 
To lose’t or give’t away were such perdition 15 
As nothing else could match. 
DESDEMONA :  Is’t possible? 
OTHELLO:  ’Tis true. There’s magic in the web of it. 
A sibyl that had numbered in the world 
The sun to course two hundred compasses 
In her prophetic fury sewed the work. 20 
The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk, 
And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful 
Conserved of maidens’ hearts. 
DESDEMONA:  I’faith, is’t true? 
OTHELLO: Most veritable. Therefore look to’t well. 
DESDEMONA: Then would to God that I had never seen it! 25 

[Act 3, Scene 4] 

REBECCA: Pray, John, be calm. (Pause. He defers to her.) Mr Parris, I think  you’d best send Reverend Hale back as soon as he come. This  will set us all to arguin’ again in the society, and we thought to  have peace this year. I think we ought rely on the doctor now, and  good prayer. 5 
MRS PUT’M: Rebecca, the doctor’s baffled! 
REBECCA: If so he is, then let us go to God for the cause of it. There is  prodigious danger in the seeking of loose spirits. I fear it, I fear it.  Let us rather blame ourselves and – 
PUTNAM: How may we blame ourselves? I am one of nine sons; the Putnam  10 seed have peopled this province. And yet I have but one child left  of eight – and now she shrivels! 
REBECCA: I cannot fathom that. 
MRS PUT’M: (with a growing edge of sarcasm): But I must! You think it God’s  work you should never lose a child, nor grandchild either, and I  15  bury all but one? There are wheels within wheels in this village,  and fires within fires! 
PUTNAM: (to Parris): When Reverend Hale comes, you will proceed to look  for signs of witchcraft here. 
PROCTOR: (to Putnam): You cannot command Mr Parris. We vote by name  20 in this society and not by acreage. 

[Act 1] 

HALE The sun will rise in a few minutes. Excellency, I must have more  time. 
DANFORTH Now hear me, and beguile yourselves no more. I will not receive a  single plea for pardon or postponement. Them that will not confess  will hang. Twelve are already executed; the names of these seven  5 are given out, and the village expects to see them die this morning.  Postponement now speaks a floundering on my part; reprieve or  pardon must cast doubt upon the guilt of them that died till now.  While I speak God’s law, I will not crack its voice with whimpering. If  retaliation is your fear, know this – I should hang ten thousand that  10 dared to rise against the law, and an ocean of salt tears could not  melt the resolution of the statutes. Now draw yourselves up like  men and help me, as you are bound by Heaven to do. Have you  spoken with them all, Mr Hale? 
HALE All but Proctor. He is in the dungeon. 15 
DANFORTH (to Herrick): What’s Proctor’s way now? 
HERRICK He sits like some great bird; you’d not know he lived except he will  take food from time to time. 
DANFORTH  (after thinking a moment): His wife – his wife must be well on with  child now. 20
HERRICK She is, sir. 
DANFORTH What think you, Mr Parris? You have closer knowledge of this man;  might her presence soften him?

 [Act 4]