Read the big ideas and the method table, then try the six questions without notes. Each question combines two or more Unit 6 topics.
These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. All passages and the model essay were written by Marlbridge, except the short lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth (about 1606), which are in the public domain. The rubrics are a suggested Marlbridge rubric, not official scoring.
Big ideas of the unit
- Longer works are complex on purpose. Contrasts, inconsistencies, interrupted chronology and partial narrators all create complexity that invites interpretation (6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4).
- Characters reveal themselves in several channels. Speech, action and private thought can agree or conflict, and foils illuminate each other (6.1, 6.2).
- Sequence is a choice. Flashback, foreshadowing, in medias res and contrasts shape what the reader knows and when (6.3).
- A narrator is a filter. Diction, syntax, tone and omission reveal perspective and bias, and reliability affects how we read other characters (6.4).
- An object can become a symbol. Evidence of weight, an idea and a function make a claim about a symbol (6.5).
- A literary argument is a defended interpretation. A thesis, a line of reasoning, relevant and sufficient evidence, and commentary make the case (6.6, 6.7).
Key relationships and methods
| If the question asks you to… | Use… | Watch out for… |
|---|---|---|
| Compare two characters | Contrast frame: shared ground, difference, what it shows, function | Listing differences without function |
| Explain complexity in a character | Map speech, action and private thought; name the tension | Stopping at “hypocrite” |
| Explain a sequence | Technique, what is revealed or withheld, effect | “It builds suspense” with no cause |
| Judge a narrator | Diction, syntax, tone, omission; stake and contradiction | Treating unreliable as lying |
| Explain a symbol | Notice, associate, state, function, trace the shift | Claiming a symbol with no evidence |
| Write a thesis | A defensible, specific interpretation with a direction | Summary, fact or list of devices |
| Use evidence | Relevant, effective, sufficient; commentary that explains | Quotation without comment |
Question 1 (multiple choice · 6.1 and 6.4)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
I will say of Master Julian only that he was ever the better scholar, and of Master Roland that he was ever the better company. When the roof fell in, Master Julian wrote to his lawyer; Master Roland went to see who was hurt. I leave it to others to say which was the better man.
Which statement best explains how the contrast and the narrator’s perspective work together?
- (A) The narrator is neutral, so the contrast tells us nothing about either brother.
- (B) The passage is a flashback.
- (C) The contrast shows that Julian is a villain.
- (D) The narrator sets the brothers against each other as foils, and although she claims to leave the judgement to others, her choice of Roland’s response as the last detail steers the reader’s sympathy.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). The brothers share a crisis and respond differently, one by letter, the other by caring for the injured. The narrator’s disclaimer, “I leave it to others”, is undercut by her emphasis, which shows that perspective shapes how a foil pair is presented.
- (A) accepts the narrator’s claim of neutrality and ignores her selection of details.
- (B) is wrong: no earlier time is presented.
- (C) confuses a foil with a villain.
Topics: 6.1 (foils), 6.4 (perspective and omission).
Question 2 (multiple choice · 6.2 and 6.5)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
Mrs Penn announced that she had no sentimental attachments, and had the old sewing-box carried down to the sale. On the morning of the sale she was found in the attic, sitting on the empty place where it had stood.
Which interpretation is best supported?
- (A) The box functions as a symbol of what Mrs Penn claims not to care about, and her action contradicts her words, revealing a tension between professed detachment and private attachment.
- (B) The sewing-box is a worthless object.
- (C) Mrs Penn is cheerful about the sale.
- (D) The attic is where the sale takes place.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). The announcement is a professed value; the act of sitting “on the empty place where it had stood” is private behaviour that contradicts it. The box has gained symbolic weight through her reaction.
- (B) ignores her behaviour.
- (C) is contradicted by her sitting in the empty space.
- (D) is not supported: the sale is elsewhere.
Topics: 6.2 (private against professed values), 6.5 (symbol).
Question 3 (multiple choice · 6.3 and 6.4)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
It was the gate, I always say, that began it. Three weeks before the fire, Lewis had left it open, and the heifers got into the oats. I tell you this only to show how things stood. As to what Lewis said afterwards, I have never repeated it, and I will not.
The best description of the effect of the order of information and the narrator’s choices is that
- (A) the narrator shows that Lewis is blameless.
- (B) the narrator is a reliable witness who is simply giving background.
- (C) the passage is foreshadowing that the heifers will escape again.
- (D) the narrator moves back in time to the gate in order to assign a cause, and by withholding Lewis’s words he controls the reader’s view, which raises doubt about the account.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (D). The flashback “three weeks before the fire” begins with a small fault and presents it as the cause. The withheld words, and the phrase “I tell you this only to show how things stood”, suggest a narrator who steers blame while claiming to be neutral.
- (A) is the opposite of what the narrator implies.
- (B) overlooks the signs of bias.
- (C) misreads a flashback as foreshadowing.
Topics: 6.3 (sequence), 6.4 (reliability).
Question 4 (written response · 6.5, 6.6 and 6.7)
Passage written by Marlbridge.
After the funeral the lamp was left in the window where it had always stood, and Lucy dusted it, and trimmed it, and did not light it. “It saves oil,” she told the neighbours. At night, when the lane was dark, the house showed one black window among the lit ones, like a tooth missing from a smile. In November a stranger knocked to ask the way and, seeing the lamp, said what a pity it was not lit. Lucy said that it was not for lighting, and shut the door more gently than she needed to.
Write a thesis of one or two sentences on how the narrator uses the lamp to convey Lucy’s grief, and then one body paragraph of about 120 to 150 words with at least two short quotations and commentary.
Answer and explanation
Model response.
Thesis. “By having Lucy tend a lamp she will not light, and by leaving the lit lane around the dark window, the narrator turns the lamp into a figure for a grief that is cared for but never released, and so presents mourning as an act of keeping rather than of letting go.”
Body paragraph. The narrator makes the lamp a symbol of Lucy’s grief through ritual and refusal. Lucy “dusted it, and trimmed it, and did not light it”, a sequence that moves through acts of care and ends in a refusal, so that the unlit lamp is tended like a memorial. Her excuse, “It saves oil”, is a practical lie that hides the real reason, and the simile of the “tooth missing from a smile” shows how the house looks from outside: gap and absence in the midst of ordinary light. When she tells the stranger that the lamp “was not for lighting”, the closing of the door “more gently than she needed to” reveals the feeling beneath. Together these details show grief that is preserved, not resolved, and support the thesis that mourning is an act of keeping.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (6 points).
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | A defensible thesis that interprets the symbol, not a summary |
| 2 | Identifies signals of symbolic weight (ritual, refusal, others’ reaction) |
| 3 | Selects relevant quotations (at least two) and embeds them |
| 4 | Commentary explains how each detail shows grief (care, refusal, concealment) |
| 5 | Connects the commentary to the thesis (keeping rather than letting go) |
| 6 | Clear, controlled sentences with precise verbs |
Question 5 (multiple choice · 6.3 and 6.5)
Passages written by Marlbridge.
Early in a novel: On the night she arrived, Ada was given a candle in a brass holder, and told it was the last of the old stock.
Late in the novel: On the night she left, Ada took the brass holder from the shelf, and found it empty.
The repetition of the candle holder at the beginning and end most likely functions to
- (A) frame the story and suggest through a symbol how Ada’s situation has changed, from being given a limited light to leaving with nothing left to carry.
- (B) show that the novel has no plot.
- (C) prove that Ada steals the holder.
- (D) introduce a new narrator.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). The recurring object at beginning and end is both a structural echo and a symbol, and the change from “last of the old stock” to “empty” marks a shift.
- (B) is unrelated to the effect of a repeated object.
- (C) is unsupported: she takes the holder, but nothing suggests theft.
- (D) has no textual basis.
Topics: 6.3 (structure and contrast), 6.5 (symbol and shift).
Question 6 (written response · whole unit)
Prompt written by Marlbridge. “In many works of literature, an object or place that seems minor comes to carry a character’s deepest conflict. Choose a novel or play in which a symbol shapes our understanding of a character’s inner conflict, and write an essay that analyses how the symbol contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarise the plot.”
Plan your essay, or write it in about 40 minutes, before you read the model.
Answer and explanation
Sample high-quality response written by Marlbridge (Macbeth, Shakespeare, about 1606).
In Macbeth, Shakespeare makes blood the visible form of a conscience that the hero and his wife believe they can master, and by following how that blood moves from something to be washed away to something that cannot be, he shows that guilt is not a consequence of the crime but a condition of the self it creates.
At first blood is a thing that can be cleaned. Immediately after Duncan’s murder, Macbeth is horrified by his hands, asking, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” The hyperbole of a whole ocean shows that he already feels the stain as more than physical. Lady Macbeth, by contrast, is confident: “A little water clears us of this deed.” The difference between them is a foil, and it matters because it sets up the symbol’s later development: she believes the stain is only on the surface.
As the play proceeds, blood stops being an object and becomes a presence. Macbeth later admits, “I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er”, and the symbol grows from a stain to a medium in which he moves. The shift marks his moral change: the man who once felt his hands as unbearable now accepts the condition as irreversible.
The decisive reversal comes in the sleepwalking scene. Lady Macbeth, who thought that a little water would suffice, now rubs her hands and cries, “Out, damned spot!” and says that “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” The line reverses her earlier confidence, and the setting of sleep, a state in which the private mind speaks, shows that the conscience she thought she had controlled was only suppressed. Blood has become a symbol of what lies beneath the self.
A reader might object that the blood is simply stage business, an effect of horror for its own sake. But the way the characters speak about it, with exaggeration and with reversals of their earlier claims, shows that it works as a figure for the mind. The symbol therefore ties the play’s action to its argument: violence is not a way of ending a problem but of beginning a different one, in which the doer can never be clean.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (6 points, for self-assessment only).
| Row | What to look for | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Thesis | A defensible interpretation that answers the prompt and previews a line of reasoning | 0 to 1 |
| Evidence and commentary | Specific, relevant evidence (quotations, details) with commentary that explains how it supports each claim, across at least three points | 0 to 4 (1 for general reference only; 2 for some evidence with mostly summary; 3 for relevant evidence with some explanation; 4 for consistently specific evidence and explanation that supports a line of reasoning) |
| Sophistication and control | Integrates an alternative interpretation, broader significance or analogy, and writes with clear, controlled sentences | 0 to 1 |
How the model meets the rubric. The thesis states a specific interpretation (guilt as a condition of the self) and a direction (washing to impossibility). The evidence runs through early, middle and late moments of the play, and each is explained. The paragraph that answers the objection that blood is “stage business” is a sophistication move, and the final sentence states a broader significance.
Note. This sample is original and illustrative, not an official sample or scoring guideline. A strong essay on another work, with a different symbol, would earn the same credit if it met the same features.
How did you do?
- Questions 1 to 3 and 5 right and a good attempt at Questions 4 and 6: You are ready to move on to Unit 7 with the Topic 7.1 study guide.
- Missed two or more multiple-choice questions: Return to the study guide for each topic named under the answer.
- Weak written answers: Re-read Topic 6.6 and Topic 6.7, then rewrite your thesis and paragraph.