English Advanced

I have still in my possession a painting by the Tortoise – a self-portrait he painted not long after the Takeda days. It shows a thin young man with spectacles, sitting in his shirt-sleeves in a cramped, shadowy room, surrounded by easels and rickety furniture, his face caught on one side by the light coming from the window. The earnestness and timidity written on the face are certainly true to the man I remember, and in this respect, the Tortoise has been remarkably honest; looking at the portrait, you would probably take him to be the sort you could confidently elbow aside for an empty tram seat. But then each of us, it seems, has his own special conceits. If the Tortoise’s modesty forbade him to disguise his timid nature, it did not prevent him attributing to himself a kind of lofty intellectual air – which I for one have no recollection of. But then to be fair, I cannot recall any colleague who could paint a self-portrait with absolute honesty; however accurately one may fill in the surface details of one’s mirror reflection, the personality represented rarely comes near the truth as others would see it.
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd

In what ways does this excerpt reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of Ishiguro’s novel?
In your response, make close reference to the excerpt and to your prescribed text.

“I had no notion that he liked me so very much,” said Harriet, contemplating the letter. For a little while Emma persevered in her silence; but beginning to apprehend the bewitching flattery of that letter might be too powerful, she thought it best to say, “I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to ‘Yes,’ she ought to say ‘No’ directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart. I thought it my duty as a friend, and older than yourself, to say thus much to you. But do not imagine that I want to influence you.” “Oh! no, I am sure you are a great deal too kind to—but if you would just advise me what I had best do—No, no, I do not mean that—As you say, one’s mind ought to be quite made up—One should not be hesitating—It is a very serious thing—It will be safer to say ‘No,’ perhaps.—Do you think I had better say ‘No?’” “Not for the world,” said Emma, smiling graciously, “would I advise you either way. You must be the best judge of your own happiness. If you prefer Mr. Martin to every other person; if you think him the most agreeable man you have ever been in company with, why should you hesitate?”
In what ways does this excerpt reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of Austen’s novel?
In your response, make close reference to the excerpt and to your prescribed text.

Aquarius II (extract) . . . Elsewhere the world kindles and quakes, women bear on their heads a hodful of it from one side to the other of the globe, children cram their belly with its mud, in a lakeside wood anemones feel their way out of the dark and the first four downward notes of K.581 take a second breath and swing companionably upward — sheer miracle or happy accident, one, like us, of many. With a quiet thankyou to the planet for snow, hoop pines, Mozart, and you of course, and you, I leave the room to its play, sacred perhaps, with salt and sun-motes. Extract from the poem ‘Aquarius II’ by David Malouf from Earth Hour published by UQP (St Lucia: 2014)

In what ways does this excerpt reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of Malouf’s poetry?
In your response, make close reference to the excerpt and to your prescribed text.
The prescribed poems are:

• Aquarius
• Radiance
• Ladybird
• A Recollection of Starlings: Rome ’84
• Eternal Moment at Poggia Madonna
• Towards Midnight
• Earth Hour
• Aquarius II

The Hollow Men (extract)
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot. Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd

In what ways does this excerpt reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of Eliot’s poetry?
In your response, make close reference to the excerpt and to your prescribed text.
The prescribed poems are:

• The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
• Preludes
• Rhapsody on a Windy Night
• The Hollow Men
• Journey of the Magi

Come closer now.
Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams. From where you are, you can hear their dreams.

In what ways does this excerpt reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of Thomas’s play?
In your response, make close reference to the excerpt and to your prescribed text.

HELMER (at the open door). Yes. Good. Be calm, be calm, my frightened little bird. Nothing will hurt you; I’ll spread my wings, I’ll shelter you. (pacing by the door.) It’s warm and cosy, our nest, our home. Nothing will hurt you. Poor frightened dove, I’ll save you from the hawk, I’ll keep you safe. Still, little fluttering heart, be still. It’ll be all right. Darling, you’ll see. Tomorrow . . . it’ll all be like it was before. You’ll soon understand, I won’t need to remind you I’ve forgiven you. I’ll never abandon you, never blame you – how can you think so? A husband’s love, darling – a true husband’s heart, how can you understand it? How sweet, how satisfying, to feel that he’s forgiven his wife, from the depths of his being, forgiven her? Made her twice his own: given her life, identity, his wife, his child. That’s what you are to me now, poor, helpless little darling. Don’t ever be frightened, Nora. Tell me the truth, and your will, your conscience – leave both to me. But what – ? Not going to bed? You’ve changed.

In what ways does this excerpt reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of Ibsen’s play?
In your response, make close reference to the excerpt and to your prescribed text.

Touch is not only through the fingers, but through the whole body, too.
Each one of these netsuke for Anna is a resistance to the sapping of memory. Each one carried out is a resistance against the news, a story recalled, a future held on to. Here that Viennese cult of Gemütlichkeit – the easy tears over sentimental stories, the wrapping of everything in pastry and cream, those candied pictures of servant girls and their beaux – meets a place of adamantine hardness. I think of Herr Brockhaus and his imprecations against the carelessness of servants, and I think of how wrong he was.
There is no sentimentality, no nostalgia. It is something much harder, literally harder. It is a kind of trust.
From The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal published by Chatto & Windus Copyright © Edmund de Waal 2010. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd

In what ways does this excerpt reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of de Waal’s nonfiction?
In your response, make close reference to the excerpt and to your prescribed text.

It is one thing to conceive the main play of a composition and another to construct it. The strain on the mind is formidable; the element of time drops out of one’s consciousness altogether: the building hand gropes for a pawn in the box, holds it, while the mind still ponders the need for a foil or a stopgap, and when the fist opens, a whole hour, perhaps, has gone by, has burned to ashes in the incandescent cerebration of the schemer. The chessboard before him is a magnetic field, a system of stresses and abysses, a starry firmament. The bishops move over it like searchlights. This or that knight is a lever adjusted and tried, and readjusted and tried again, till the problem is tuned up to the necessary level of beauty and surprise. How often I have struggled to bind the terrible force of White’s queen so as to avoid a dual solution! It should be understood that competition in chess problems is not really between White and Black but between the composer and the hypothetical solver (just as in a first-rate work of fiction the real clash is not between the characters but between the author and the world), so that a great part of a problem’s value is due to the number of ‘tries’ – delusive opening moves, false scents, specious lines of play, astutely and lovingly prepared to lead the would-be solver astray.
Speak, Memory by Nabokov. Copyright © Vladimir Nabokov, 1967 Used by permission of the Wylie Agency (UK) Limited

In what ways does this excerpt reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of Nabokov’s nonfiction?
In your response, make close reference to the excerpt and to your prescribed text.

In what ways do these screenshots reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of Clooney’s film?
In your response, make close reference to the screenshots and to your prescribed text.

Reproduced by permission of Icon Film Distribution

In what ways do these screenshots reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of Armstrong’s documentary?
In your response, make close reference to the screenshots and to your prescribed text.

Reproduced with permission by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

PRINCE: Do not think it so, you shall not find it so;
And God forgive them that so much have swayed
Your majesty’s good thoughts away from me!
I will redeem all this on Percy’s head,
And in the closing of some glorious day
Be bold to tell you that I am your son,
When I will wear a garment all of blood,
And stain my favours in a bloody mask,
Which, washed away, shall scour my shame with it.
And that shall be the day, whene’er it lights,
That this same child of honour and renown,
This gallant Hotspur, this all-praisèd knight,
And your unthought-of Harry chance to meet.
For every honour sitting on his helm,
Would they were multitudes, and on my head
My shames redoubled. For the time will come
That I shall make this northern youth exchange
His glorious deeds for my indignities.
Percy is but my factor, good my lord,
To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf,
And I will call him to so strict account
That he shall render every glory up,
Yea, even the slightest worship of his time,
Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart.

In what ways does this excerpt reflect the concerns and aesthetic qualities of Shakespeare’s play?
In your response, make close reference to the excerpt and to your prescribed text.

Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World
An exploration of unreliability, ambiguity and contradiction.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of An Artist of the Floating World? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.

Jane Austen, Emma
A world of triviality, awkwardness and miseducation.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of Emma? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Almost anybody can be reformed, but not everybody can be redeemed.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of Great Expectations? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.

David Malouf, Earth Hour
An innovative alignment of landscape, mind and memory.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of Malouf’s poetry? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.
The prescribed poems are:

• Aquarius
• Radiance
• Ladybird
• A Recollection of Starlings: Rome ’84
• Eternal Moment at Poggia Madonna
• Towards Midnight
• Earth Hour
• Aquarius II

T S Eliot, T S Eliot: Selected Poems
People are half-alive, hungry for any form of spiritual experience.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of Eliot’s poetry? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.
The prescribed poems are:

• The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
• Preludes * Rhapsody on a Windy Night
• The Hollow Men
• Journey of the Magi

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
Adults in children’s clothing, self-indulgent monsters.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of A Doll’s House? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.

Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood
Infantile, idiotically comic yet strangely moving.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of Under Milk Wood? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.

Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
Moments of idealised remembrance create a different notion of time.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of Speak, Memory? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.

Edmund de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes
History provides the momentum, memoir the emotion.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of The Hare with Amber Eyes? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.

Film - George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck
No one changes; no one grows. A disturbing paralysis prevails.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of Good Night, and Good Luck? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.

Media - Gillian Armstrong, Unfolding Florence
A portrait of a conservative and futile rebellion.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of Unfolding Florence? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.

Shakespearean Drama - William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1
Comdey steps into the path of hisotry and is crushed.
To what extent does this view align with your understanding of King Henry IV, Part 1? In your response, make close reference to your prescribed text.