SherpaSherpa Logo

Question 3: Structure Practice Questions

Question 1

8 marks

This extract is the opening of a novel, set in London in an imagined future. Winston Smith is arriving home at the block of flats where he lives.

1It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort
to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of
Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty
5dust from entering along with him.
The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a
coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the
wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the
face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and
10ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use
trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at
present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. The flat
was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a
varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times
15on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with
the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures
which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which
20had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from
an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the
surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice
sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The
instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there
25was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a
smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by
the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party.
Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down
in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper
30into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue,
there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were
plastered everywhere. The black-moustachio’d face gazed down from every
commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately
opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark
35eyes looked deep into Winston’s own. In the far distance a helicopter
skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a
bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the
police patrol, snooping into people’s windows. The patrols did not
matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.
40Behind Winston’s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling
away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan.
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that
Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up
by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which
45the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was
of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given
moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on
any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they
watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your
50wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that
became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was
overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as
he well knew, even a back can be revealing.

From Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949).

Glossary

  • varicose ulcer: a painful sore on the leg caused by swollen veins
  • pig-iron: crude iron, as it first comes out of a furnace
  • meagreness: thinness
  • eddies: small swirling currents of air
  • moustachio’d: with a large moustache
  • bluebottle: a large fly
  • overfulfilment: producing more than the target
  • transmitted: sent out (pictures and sound)
  • scrutinized: examined closely

You now need to think about the structure of the source as a whole.

This text is the opening of a novel.

How has the writer structured the text to create a feeling of threat?

You could write about:

  • how the feeling of threat has increased or decreased by the end of the source
  • how the writer uses structure to create an effect
  • the writer's use of any other structural features, such as changes in mood, tone or perspective.

Question 2

8 marks

This extract is the opening of a novel, set in London shortly before the First World War. Richard Hannay has made his fortune in southern Africa and has come to live in Britain.

1I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon
pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old
Country, and was fed up with it. The weather made me liverish, the talk
of the ordinary Englishman made me sick. I couldn’t get enough exercise,
5and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been
standing in the sun. “Richard Hannay,” I kept telling myself, “you have
got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.”
But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was
tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of
10restaurants and theatres and race-meetings. I had no real pal to go
about with, which probably explains things. Here was I, thirty-seven
years old, sound in wind and limb, with enough money to have a good
time, yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to clear out
and get back to the veld, for I was the best bored man in the United
15Kingdom.
About six o’clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Café Royal, and
turned into a music-hall. It was a silly show, all capering women and
monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear
as I walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place. The crowd
20surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the
people for having something to do. I gave half-a-crown to a beggar
because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer. At Oxford Circus I
looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I would give the Old
Country another day to fit me into something; if nothing happened, I
25would take the next boat for the Cape.
I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at my
elbow. I had not seen him approach, and the sudden appearance made me
start. He was a slim man, with a short brown beard and small, gimlety
blue eyes. I recognized him as the occupant of a flat on the top floor,
30with whom I had passed the time of day on the stairs.
“Can I speak to you?” he said. “May I come in for a minute?” He was
steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was pawing my arm.
I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner was he over the
threshold than he made a dash for my back room, where I used to smoke
35and write my letters. Then he bolted back.
“Is the door locked?” he asked feverishly, and he fastened the chain
with his own hand.
“I’m very sorry,” he said humbly. “It’s a mighty liberty, but you looked
the kind of man who would understand. I’ve had you in my mind all this
40week when things got troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?”
“I’ll listen to you,” I said. “That’s all I’ll promise.” I was getting
worried by the antics of this nervous little chap.
There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled
himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and
45cracked the glass as he set it down.
“Pardon,” he said, “I’m a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this
moment to be dead.”
I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.
“What does it feel like?” I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to
50deal with a madman.
A smile flickered over his drawn face. “I’m not mad—yet. Say, sir, I’ve
been watching you, and I reckon you’re a cool customer. I reckon, too,
you’re an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I’m going
to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and I
55want to know if I can count you in.”

From The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915).

Glossary

  • the City: the business and banking district of London
  • the Old Country: Britain, as people from the colonies called it
  • liverish: irritable and slightly unwell
  • sound in wind and limb: fit and healthy
  • the veld: open grassland in southern Africa
  • Café Royal: a fashionable London restaurant
  • music-hall: a theatre showing comic songs, dancing and variety acts
  • capering: skipping and dancing about
  • half-a-crown: a silver coin, worth a fair amount at the time
  • the Cape: Cape Town, in South Africa
  • gimlety: sharp and piercing (a gimlet is a small tool for boring holes)
  • a mighty liberty: a great cheek
  • rattled: shaken and nervous
  • a cool customer: someone who stays calm under pressure
  • confide in: tell a secret to

You now need to think about the structure of the source as a whole.

This text is the opening of a novel.

How has the writer structured the text to create a sense of mystery?

You could write about:

  • how the sense of mystery has increased or decreased by the end of the source
  • how the writer uses structure to create an effect
  • the writer's use of any other structural features, such as changes in mood, tone or perspective.

Question 3

8 marks

This extract is from a short story. A young captain has just taken command of a sailing ship, anchored at night off the coast of Siam (now Thailand). He does not yet know the ship or its crew. Unable to sleep, he has sent his officers to bed and is keeping watch on deck alone, and he has just reassured himself that the voyage ahead is unlikely to hold any surprises.

1Arrived at that comforting conclusion, I bethought myself of a cigar and
went below to get it. All was still down there. Everybody at the after
end of the ship was sleeping profoundly. I came out again on the
quarter-deck, agreeably at ease in my sleeping suit on that warm
5breathless night, barefooted, a glowing cigar in my teeth, and, going
forward, I was met by the profound silence of the fore end of the ship.
Only as I passed the door of the forecastle, I heard a deep, quiet,
trustful sigh of some sleeper inside.
The riding light in the forerigging burned with a clear, untroubled, as
10if symbolic, flame, confident and bright in the mysterious shades of the
night. Passing on my way aft along the other side of the ship, I
observed that the rope side ladder, put over, no doubt, for the master
of the tug when he came to fetch away our letters, had not been hauled
in as it should have been. I became annoyed at this, for exactitude in
15some small matters is the very soul of discipline.
Now a side ladder of that sort is a light affair and comes in easily,
yet my vigorous tug, which should have brought it flying on board,
merely recoiled upon my body in a totally unexpected jerk. What the
devil!... In the end, of course, I put my head over the rail.
20The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling
glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and
pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a
faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from
the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the
25elusive, silent play of summer lightning in a night sky. With a gasp I
saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid
back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One
hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete but
for the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping
30mouth with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute
stillness of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his
face, a dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship’s side.
As he hung by the ladder, like a resting swimmer, the sea lightning
played about his limbs at every stir; and he appeared in it ghastly,
35silvery, fishlike. He remained as mute as a fish, too. He made no motion
to get out of the water, either.
“What’s the matter?” I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to the
face upturned exactly under mine.
“Cramp,” it answered, no louder. Then slightly anxious, “I say, no need
40to call anyone.”
“I was not going to,” I said.
“Are you alone on deck?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose your captain’s turned in?”
45“I am sure he isn’t,” I said.
“Look here, my man. Could you call him out quietly?”
I thought the time had come to declare myself.
“I am the captain.”
I heard a “By Jove!” whispered at the level of the water.
50“My name’s Leggatt.”
The voice was calm and resolute. A good voice.
A mysterious communication was established already between us two—in the
face of that silent, darkened tropical sea. The man in the water began
suddenly to climb up the ladder, and I hastened away from the rail to
55fetch some clothes.

From “The Secret Sharer” by Joseph Conrad (1910).

Glossary

  • after end: the back of the ship
  • quarter-deck: the raised deck at the back of the ship, where the captain and officers keep watch
  • fore end: the front of the ship
  • forecastle: the crew’s sleeping quarters at the front of the ship
  • riding light: a lamp hung on a ship at anchor so that other ships can see it
  • forerigging: the ropes that support the front mast
  • aft: towards the back of the ship
  • rope side ladder: a ladder made of rope, hung over the side of the ship
  • tug: a small, powerful boat used to tow ships
  • exactitude: doing things exactly right
  • recoiled: sprang back
  • opaque: dark, not letting light through
  • darkling: growing dark
  • phosphorescent: glowing faintly; here, the light given off by tiny sea creatures when the water moves
  • elusive: hard to catch or pin down
  • livid: a deathly, bluish-grey colour
  • cadaverous: like a dead body
  • awash: covered with water
  • rung: one of the steps of a ladder
  • sea lightning: the glowing light in the water described earlier
  • mute: silent
  • turned in: gone to bed
  • By Jove!: an old-fashioned exclamation of surprise
  • resolute: firm and determined

You now need to think about the structure of the source as a whole.

This text is from the middle of a short story.

How has the writer structured the text to create tension?

You could write about:

  • how the tension has increased or decreased by the end of the source
  • how the writer uses structure to create an effect
  • the writer's use of any other structural features, such as changes in mood, tone or perspective.

Question 4

8 marks

This extract is from a short story. Mr and Mrs White live with their grown-up son, Herbert, in a house some way out of town. The night before, a visiting soldier let them have a dried monkey’s paw which, he said, could grant three wishes, and he warned them not to use it. Half as a joke, Mr White wished for two hundred pounds, and he was frightened when the paw seemed to move in his hand.

1In the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it streamed over the
breakfast table he laughed at his fears. There was an air of prosaic
wholesomeness about the room which it had lacked on the previous night,
and the dirty, shrivelled little paw was pitched on the sideboard with a
5carelessness which betokened no great belief in its virtues.
“I suppose all old soldiers are the same,” said Mrs. White. “How could
wishes be granted in these days? And if they could, how could two hundred
pounds hurt you, father?”
“Might drop on his head from the sky,” said the frivolous Herbert.
10“Well, don’t break into the money before I come back,” said Herbert as he
rose from the table. “I’m afraid it’ll turn you into a mean, avaricious
man, and we shall have to disown you.”
His mother laughed, and following him to the door, watched him down the
road; and returning to the breakfast table, was very happy at the expense
15of her husband’s credulity.
She was watching the mysterious movements of a man outside, who, peering
in an undecided fashion at the house, appeared to be trying to make up
his mind to enter. In mental connection with the two hundred pounds, she
noticed that the stranger was well dressed, and wore a silk hat of glossy
20newness. Three times he paused at the gate, and then walked on again. The
fourth time he stood with his hand upon it, and then with sudden
resolution flung it open and walked up the path.
She brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease, into the room.
“I—was asked to call,” he said at last, and stooped and picked a piece of
25cotton from his trousers. “I come from ‘Maw and Meggins.’”
The old lady started. “Is anything the matter?” she asked, breathlessly.
“Has anything happened to Herbert? What is it? What is it?”
Her husband interposed. “There, there, mother,” he said, hastily. “Sit
down, and don’t jump to conclusions. You’ve not brought bad news, I’m
30sure, sir;” and he eyed the other wistfully.
“I’m sorry—” began the visitor.
“Is he hurt?” demanded the mother, wildly.
The visitor bowed in assent. “Badly hurt,” he said, quietly, “but he is
not in any pain.”
35“Oh, thank God!” said the old woman, clasping her hands. “Thank God for
that! Thank—”
She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the assurance dawned
upon her and she saw the awful confirmation of her fears in the other’s
averted face. She caught her breath, and turning to her slower-witted
40husband, laid her trembling old hand upon his. There was a long silence.
“He was caught in the machinery,” said the visitor at length in a low
voice.
“Caught in the machinery,” repeated Mr. White, in a dazed fashion, “yes.”
“He was the only one left to us,” he said, turning gently to the visitor.
45“It is hard.”
“I was to say that ‘Maw and Meggins’ disclaim all responsibility,”
continued the other. “They admit no liability at all, but in
consideration of your son’s services, they wish to present you with a
certain sum as compensation.”
50Mr. White dropped his wife’s hand, and rising to his feet, gazed with a
look of horror at his visitor. His dry lips shaped the words, “How much?”
“Two hundred pounds,” was the answer.
Unconscious of his wife’s shriek, the old man smiled faintly, put out his
hands like a sightless man, and dropped, a senseless heap, to the floor.

From "The Monkey’s Paw" by W. W. Jacobs (1902).

Glossary

  • prosaic: ordinary and everyday
  • betokened: showed, was a sign of
  • avaricious: greedy for money
  • credulity: being too ready to believe things
  • ‘Maw and Meggins’: the name of a firm (a company)
  • interposed: broke in
  • wistfully: with sad, hopeful longing
  • assurance: a comforting promise
  • disclaim all responsibility: say that something was not their fault
  • liability: legal responsibility

You now need to think about the structure of the source as a whole.

This text is from the middle of a short story.

How has the writer structured the text to create tension?

You could write about:

  • how the tension has increased or decreased by the end of the source
  • how the writer uses structure to create an effect
  • the writer's use of any other structural features, such as changes in mood, tone or perspective.

Question 5

8 marks

This extract is the opening of a short story, set in a coal-mining area of the English Midlands in the early 1900s. A small engine is pulling coal trucks along the railway line late one afternoon, as the light begins to fade.

1The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down
from Selston with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with
loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the
gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon,
5outdistanced it at a canter. A woman, walking up the railway line to
Underwood, drew back into the hedge, held her basket aside, and watched
the footplate of the engine advancing. The trucks thumped heavily past,
one by one, with slow inevitable movement, as she stood insignificantly
trapped between the jolting black waggons and the hedge; then they
10curved away towards the coppice where the withered oak leaves dropped
noiselessly, while the birds, pulling at the scarlet hips beside the
track, made off into the dusk that had already crept into the spinney.
In the open, the smoke from the engine sank and cleaved to the rough
grass. The fields were dreary and forsaken, and in the marshy strip that
15led to the whimsey, a reedy pit-pond, the fowls had already abandoned
their run among the alders, to roost in the tarred fowl-house. The
pit-bank loomed up beyond the pond, flames like red sores licking its
ashy sides, in the afternoon’s stagnant light. Just beyond rose the
tapering chimneys and the clumsy black headstocks of Brinsley Colliery.
20The two wheels were spinning fast up against the sky, and the
winding-engine rapped out its little spasms. The miners were being
turned up.
Miners, single, trailing and in groups, passed like shadows diverging
home. At the edge of the ribbed level of sidings squat a low cottage,
25three steps down from the cinder track. A large bony vine clutched at
the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof. Beyond, the long garden
sloped down to a bush-covered brook course. Beside the path hung
dishevelled pink chrysanthemums, like pink cloths hung on bushes. A
woman came stooping out of the felt-covered fowl-house, half-way down
30the garden. She closed and padlocked the door, then drew herself erect,
having brushed some bits from her white apron.
She was a tall woman of imperious mien, handsome, with definite black
eyebrows. Her smooth black hair was parted exactly. For a few moments
she stood steadily watching the miners as they passed along the railway:
35then she turned towards the brook course. Her face was calm and set, her
mouth was closed with disillusionment. After a moment she called:
“John!” There was no answer. She waited, and then said distinctly:
“Where are you?”
“Here!” replied a child’s sulky voice from among the bushes. The woman
40looked piercingly through the dusk.
“Are you at that brook?” she asked sternly.
For answer the child showed himself before the raspberry-canes that rose
like whips. He was a small, sturdy boy of five. He stood quite still,
defiantly.
45“Oh!” said the mother, conciliated. “I thought you were down at that wet
brook—and you remember what I told you—”
The boy did not move or answer.
“Come, come on in,” she said more gently, “it’s getting dark. There’s
your grandfather’s engine coming down the line!”
50The lad advanced slowly, with resentful, taciturn movement.
As they went slowly towards the house he tore at the ragged wisps of
chrysanthemums and dropped the petals in handfuls along the path.
“Don’t do that—it does look nasty,” said his mother. He refrained, and
she, suddenly pitiful, broke off a twig with three or four wan flowers
55and held them against her face.

From "Odour of Chrysanthemums" by D. H. Lawrence (1914).

Glossary

  • waggons: coal trucks (an old spelling of wagons)
  • gorse: a prickly wild bush
  • footplate: the platform where the driver stands on a steam engine
  • coppice, spinney: small woods
  • hips: the red berries of the wild rose
  • cleaved: clung
  • whimsey: an old mine shaft (here, one flooded to make a pond)
  • pit-bank: a heap of waste from the coal mine
  • headstocks: the frame above a mine shaft that holds the winding wheels
  • colliery: a coal mine
  • winding-engine: the engine that raises and lowers the lift in the mine shaft
  • turned up: brought up to the surface at the end of their shift
  • sidings: side tracks where railway trucks are parked
  • of imperious mien: with a proud, commanding look
  • disillusionment: the disappointment of someone whose hopes have gone
  • conciliated: calmed down, won over
  • taciturn: silent, saying nothing
  • wan: pale and faded

You now need to think about the structure of the source as a whole.

This text is the opening of a short story.

How has the writer structured the text to create a sense of gloom?

You could write about:

  • how the sense of gloom has increased or decreased by the end of the source
  • how the writer uses structure to create an effect
  • the writer's use of any other structural features, such as changes in mood, tone or perspective.

Question 6

8 marks

This extract is from a short story written in the early twentieth century. It is the morning of a garden party at the Sheridan family’s large house. Laura, one of the daughters of the family, has just finished a telephone call. Jose is her sister; Sadie, Hans and the cook are servants.

1Laura put back the receiver, flung her arms over her head, took a deep
breath, stretched and let them fall. “Huh,” she sighed, and the moment
after the sigh she sat up quickly. She was still, listening. All the
doors in the house seemed to be open. The house was alive with soft,
5quick steps and running voices. The green baize door that led to the
kitchen regions swung open and shut with a muffled thud. And now there
came a long, chuckling absurd sound. It was the heavy piano being moved
on its stiff castors. But the air! If you stopped to notice, was the air
always like this? Little faint winds were playing chase, in at the tops
10of the windows, out at the doors. And there were two tiny spots of sun,
one on the inkpot, one on a silver photograph frame, playing too. It was
quite warm. A warm little silver star. She could have kissed it.
The front door bell pealed, and there sounded the rustle of Sadie’s
print skirt on the stairs.
15There, just inside the door, stood a wide, shallow tray full of pots of
pink lilies. No other kind. Nothing but lilies—canna lilies, big pink
flowers, wide open, radiant, almost frighteningly alive on bright
crimson stems.
“O-oh, Sadie!” said Laura, and the sound was like a little moan. She
20crouched down as if to warm herself at that blaze of lilies; she felt
they were in her fingers, on her lips, growing in her breast.
“Godber’s has come,” announced Sadie, issuing out of the pantry.
That meant the cream puffs had come. Godber’s were famous for their
cream puffs.
25Of course Laura and Jose were far too grown-up to really care about such
things. All the same, they couldn’t help agreeing that the puffs looked
very attractive. Very.
Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea
made one shudder. All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura were
30licking their fingers with that absorbed inward look that only comes
from whipped cream.
“Let’s go into the garden, out by the back way,” suggested Laura. “I
want to see how the men are getting on with the marquee. They’re such
awfully nice men.”
35But the back door was blocked by cook, Sadie, Godber’s man and Hans.
Something had happened.
“Tuk-tuk-tuk,” clucked cook like an agitated hen. Sadie had her hand
clapped to her cheek as though she had toothache. Hans’s face was
screwed up in the effort to understand. Only Godber’s man seemed to be
40enjoying himself; it was his story.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
“There’s been a horrible accident,” said Cook. “A man killed.”
But Godber’s man wasn’t going to have his story snatched from under his
very nose.
45“Know those little cottages just below here, miss?” Know them? Of
course, she knew them. “Well, there’s a young chap living there, name of
Scott, a carter. His horse shied at a traction-engine, corner of Hawke
Street this morning, and he was thrown out on the back of his head.
Killed.”
50“Dead!” Laura stared at Godber’s man.
“Dead when they picked him up,” said Godber’s man with relish. “They
were taking the body home as I come up here.” And he said to the cook,
“He’s left a wife and five little ones.”

From “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield (1922).

Glossary

  • receiver: the part of a telephone you hold to your ear
  • baize: a thick woollen cloth; a door covered in green baize separated the family’s rooms from the servants’ kitchen
  • castors: small wheels fixed to the legs of furniture
  • print skirt: a skirt made of cheap patterned cotton, worn by a maid
  • canna lilies: tall plants with large, brightly coloured flowers
  • radiant: glowing, shining brightly
  • Godber’s: a shop that made and delivered cakes for parties
  • marquee: a large tent put up for an outdoor party
  • carter: a man who drives a horse and cart to carry goods
  • shied: jumped sideways in fright
  • traction-engine: a large steam-powered vehicle used for pulling heavy loads
  • with relish: with obvious enjoyment

You now need to think about the structure of the source as a whole.

This text is from the middle of a short story.

How has the writer structured the text to create a sense of shock?

You could write about:

  • how the sense of shock has increased or decreased by the end of the source
  • how the writer uses structure to create an effect
  • the writer's use of any other structural features, such as changes in mood, tone or perspective.

Question 7

8 marks

This extract is the ending of a short story. Framton Nuttel, a nervous man who has come to the countryside for a rest cure, is visiting Mrs Sappleton, whom he has never met. While he waits for her to come downstairs, her fifteen-year-old niece points to a large French window, left wide open on an October afternoon, and begins to tell him about a tragedy in her aunt’s life.

1“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her
two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came
back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they
were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. Their bodies were
5never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.” Here the child’s
voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. “Poor
aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the
little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window
just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every
10evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how
they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm,
and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing ‘Bertie, why do you bound?’ as
he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do
you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a
15creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window—”
She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the
aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in
making her appearance.
“I hope you don’t mind the open window,” said Mrs. Sappleton briskly;
20“my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they
always come in this way.”
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds,
and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely
horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to
25turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious that his
hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes
were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn
beyond.
“Here they are at last!” she cried.
30Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look
intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out
through the open window with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock
of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same
direction.
35In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn
towards the window; they all carried guns under their arms, and one of
them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his
shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly
they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the
40dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you bound?”
Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall-door, the
gravel-drive, and the front gate were dimly-noted stages in his headlong
retreat.
“Here we are, my dear,” said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming
45in through the window; “fairly muddy, but most of it’s dry. Who was that
who bolted out as we came up?”
“A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton; “could
only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of good-bye
or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.”
50“I expect it was the spaniel,” said the niece calmly; “he told me he had
a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the
banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night
in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and
foaming just above him.”
55Romance at short notice was her speciality.

From “The Open Window” by Saki (1914).

Glossary

  • snipe: a small wading bird, shot for sport
  • engulfed: swallowed up
  • treacherous: dangerous in a hidden way
  • bog: soft, wet ground that a person can sink into
  • falteringly: unsteadily, as if close to tears
  • spaniel: a breed of dog often used in shooting
  • ‘Bertie, why do you bound?’: a teasing line he liked to sing (to bound is to leap about)
  • bustled: moved in a busy, hurried way
  • scarcity: shortage
  • comprehension: understanding
  • burdened: weighed down
  • mackintosh: a raincoat
  • bolted: ran off suddenly
  • Ganges: a great river in India
  • pariah dogs: wild stray dogs
  • Romance: here, making up exciting stories

You now need to think about the structure of the source as a whole.

This text is the ending of a short story.

How has the writer structured the text to create tension?

You could write about:

  • how the tension has increased or decreased by the end of the source
  • how the writer uses structure to create an effect
  • the writer’s use of any other structural features, such as changes in mood, tone or perspective.

Question 8

8 marks

This extract is from the middle of a short story, set high in the Andes mountains of South America. Nunez, a mountain guide, has fallen a great distance down a mountainside during the night but has survived. In the morning he looks for a way out of the gorge where he has landed.

1He took his bearings and turned his face up the gorge, for he saw it
opened out above upon green meadows, among which he now glimpsed quite
distinctly a cluster of stone huts of unfamiliar fashion.
They were very strange to his eyes, and indeed the whole aspect of that
5valley became, as he regarded it, queerer and more unfamiliar. The houses
of the central village were quite unlike the casual and higgledy-piggledy
agglomeration of the mountain villages he knew; they stood in a
continuous row on either side of a central street of astonishing
cleanness; here and there their particoloured facade was pierced by a
10door, and not a solitary window broke their even frontage. They were
particoloured with extraordinary irregularity, smeared with a sort of
plaster that was sometimes grey, sometimes drab, sometimes slate-coloured
or dark brown; and it was the sight of this wild plastering first brought
the word “blind” into the thoughts of the explorer. “The good man who did
15that,” he thought, “must have been as blind as a bat.”
He could now see a number of men and women resting on piled heaps of
grass, as if taking a siesta, in the remoter part of the meadow, and
nearer the village a number of recumbent children, and then nearer at
hand three men carrying pails on yokes along a little path that ran from
20the encircling wall towards the houses. There was something so
reassuringly prosperous and respectable in their bearing that after a
moment’s hesitation Nunez stood forward as conspicuously as possible upon
his rock, and gave vent to a mighty shout that echoed round the valley.
The three men stopped, and moved their heads as though they were looking
25about them. They turned their faces this way and that, and Nunez
gesticulated with freedom. But they did not appear to see him for all his
gestures, and after a time, directing themselves towards the mountains
far away to the right, they shouted as if in answer.
When at last, after much shouting and wrath, Nunez crossed the stream by
30a little bridge, came through a gate in the wall, and approached them, he
was sure that they were blind. The three stood side by side, not looking
at him, but with their ears directed towards him, judging him by his
unfamiliar steps. They stood close together like men a little afraid, and
he could see their eyelids closed and sunken, as though the very balls
35beneath had shrunk away.
But Nunez advanced with the confident steps of a youth who enters upon
life. All the old stories of the lost valley and the Country of the Blind
had come back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb,
as if it were a refrain—
40“In the Country of the Blind the One-eyed Man is King.”
And they held Nunez and felt him over, saying no word further until they
had done so.
“A strange creature, Correa,” said the one called Pedro. “Feel the
coarseness of his hair. Like a llama’s hair.”
45Nunez struggled a little under their examination, but they gripped him
firm.
“I can see,” he said.
“See?” said Correa.
“Yes, see,” said Nunez, turning towards him, and stumbled against Pedro’s
50pail.
“His senses are still imperfect,” said the third blind man. “He stumbles,
and talks unmeaning words. Lead him by the hand.”
“As you will,” said Nunez, and was led along, laughing.
It seemed they knew nothing of sight.
55Well, all in good time he would teach them.

From The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells (1904).

Glossary

  • gorge: a narrow valley with steep rocky sides
  • higgledy-piggledy: jumbled and untidy
  • agglomeration: a mass of things heaped together
  • particoloured: in several different colours
  • facade / frontage: the front of a building or a row of buildings
  • drab: dull, light brownish-grey
  • siesta: a short sleep in the middle of the day
  • recumbent: lying down
  • yokes: wooden bars carried across the shoulders, with a pail hanging from each end
  • gesticulated: waved his arms and hands about
  • refrain: a line that is repeated, like the chorus of a song

You now need to think about the structure of the source as a whole.

This text is from the middle of a short story.

How has the writer structured the text to create a sense of mystery?

You could write about:

  • how the sense of mystery has increased or decreased by the end of the source
  • how the writer uses structure to create an effect
  • the writer's use of any other structural features, such as changes in mood, tone or perspective.