Use this review after the Unit 9 diagnostic and the topic practice sets. It shows how the skills of Unit 9 work together on a short passage, and ends with a full model literary-argument essay and a suggested rubric.
These are original Marlbridge practice questions, not past exam questions. The passage and questions were written by Marlbridge; short quotations from public-domain works are credited. The rubrics are a suggested Marlbridge rubric, not an official scoring guideline. No calculator is needed. Allow about 75 minutes.
The big ideas of Unit 9
- Relationships among elements. Character, conflict, events, narration and structure shape one another; a strong interpretation explains how the parts add up to the whole.
- Character as evidence of values. Change, stasis, choices, actions and speech reveal what characters value, and inconsistency is evidence, not error.
- Events and conflict as the argument of a plot. Significant events collide competing value systems; conflict creates tension, and the way it ends, or stays open, is part of the meaning.
- Perspective controls what we see. Details, diction and syntax reveal a narrator’s or character’s view, and contrasts or changes in perspective produce irony and complexity.
- Argument about a whole work. The thesis is a defensible interpretation of the work as a whole; evidence comes from several parts; commentary links evidence to claims and claims to the thesis; sophistication is sustained.
One-table method summary
| If you notice… | Ask… | Then explain… | Study guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| A character’s early traits and a later difference | Baseline, pressure, response: change or stasis? | What it reveals about values and how it affects the work | 9.1 |
| A character pulled two ways; speech against action | What is the tension, and what do choices cost? | What it reveals and what the complexity does | 9.2 |
| A turning point | What changes, and which values collide? | The event’s function for the whole work | 9.3 |
| Opposing forces, or a cause not shown | What does each side stand for? What is at stake? How does it end? | How conflict drives the plot and develops meaning | 9.4 |
| A voice or a point of view | What do details, diction and syntax reveal? Is there contrast or change? | What the perspective lets the reader see or hides | 9.5 |
| A literary argument prompt | What defensible claim about the whole work answers it? | A line of reasoning, with commentary linking evidence to thesis | 9.6 |
| Evidence to choose from memory | Is it relevant, specific, accurate, spread across the work? | Quotation, paraphrase or precise reference, each with a job | 9.7 |
The passage
Read this passage, “The Clockmaker’s Apprentice”, written by Marlbridge. Questions 1 to 5 refer to it.
When Ferrand’s master died, the shop passed to him by a will nobody had expected, and the first thing he did was open every case and stop every clock. The street thought it grief. The widow, who had come to collect her husband’s tools, thought it theft. “You’ve no right to silence them,” she said. “I’ve no right to keep them running either,” said Ferrand, “not until I know which of them are telling the truth.” He worked through the night with the shutters closed, and in the morning the shop was full of clocks that all said different hours. The widow looked at them for some time. “My husband,” she said at last, “never let two of them agree.” It was the first thing she had said that Ferrand could not answer.
Question 1 (multiple choice · complexity and character)
What does Ferrand’s reply, “I’ve no right to keep them running either… not until I know which of them are telling the truth”, most clearly reveal?
- (A) That his choice to stop the clocks is driven by a need for accuracy that outweighs the street’s expectation of mourning, so his action is more principled and more strange than grief.
- (B) That he knows nothing about clocks.
- (C) That he is angry at the widow.
- (D) That he is stealing from the widow.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). His stated reason shows a value (truth) that explains the action and sets him against both the street’s reading (grief) and the widow’s (theft).
- (B) is contradicted by his deliberate working through the night.
- (C) is unsupported; his reply is calm.
- (D) takes the widow’s view as fact.
Question 2 (multiple choice · events and conflict)
Which statement best explains the significance of stopping the clocks and the discovery in the morning?
- (A) It shows that clockmakers work at night.
- (B) It changes the situation by turning a question of ownership into a question of the dead man’s character, collides Ferrand’s desire for truth with the widow’s loyalty, and creates anticipation about what the clocks reveal.
- (C) It is a long scene, so it must be important.
- (D) It tells the reader what time it is.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (B). The event alters what is at stake (the master’s character, not just the shop), puts two values in collision and builds anticipation.
- (A) and (D) are trivial and ignore function.
- (C) confuses length with significance.
Question 3 (multiple choice · perspective)
“The street thought it grief. The widow … thought it theft.” What does this sentence do?
- (A) It shows that the narrator agrees with the street.
- (B) It describes the weather.
- (C) It sets two contrasting perspectives on the same act side by side, which exposes the limits of each view and creates irony, since neither understands Ferrand’s reason.
- (D) It shows that the narrator is the widow.
Answer and explanation
Answer: (C). The narrator reports two views, and the later explanation shows both to be wrong, which gives the passage its irony.
- (A) is contradicted by the reveal of Ferrand’s actual reason.
- (B) is irrelevant.
- (D) misidentifies a third-person narrator.
Question 4 (multiple choice · thesis and evidence)
A student plans an essay on a novel in which a character’s pursuit of truth causes conflict with others. Which thesis is best?
- (A) “By making the hero’s insistence on truth cost him his closest relationship, the novel argues that truth pursued without regard for loyalty destroys what it means to protect.”
- (B) “The hero tells the truth and people are upset.”
- (C) “The novel is about truth.”
- (D) “Truth is important in the novel.”
Answer and explanation
Answer: (A). It names the cost, makes a defensible claim about the whole work and implies a line of reasoning.
- (B) is a summary.
- (C) and (D) are topics.
Question 5 (written response · combined skills)
In about 90 to 110 words, explain how the passage uses the widow’s last line to complicate our view of Ferrand and of the master, and what it suggests about the conflict.
Answer and explanation
Sample response (written by Marlbridge). The widow’s last line, “My husband […] never let two of them agree”, reverses the passage’s direction. Until then, Ferrand’s search for the “truth” has seemed to be a quest to correct the shop’s disorder. Her line suggests that the disagreement was deliberate and was the master’s own habit, so what Ferrand hoped to cure is a feature of the man he is mourning. It is “the first thing she had said that Ferrand could not answer”, which shows his certainty yielding to hers. The conflict therefore moves from a quarrel over ownership to a disagreement about what the dead man valued: accuracy or something harder to name.
Suggested Marlbridge rubric (4 points)
| Point | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Identifies the reversal the line produces. |
| 2 | Uses accurate quotation. |
| 3 | Explains what it reveals about the master and Ferrand. |
| 4 | Links to the conflict and its development. |
Question 6 (written response · full essay)
Prompt (written by Marlbridge). Conflicts between characters often turn on competing ideas of responsibility. Choose a novel or play in which a conflict between two characters develops the work’s ideas about responsibility. Write an essay analysing how the conflict does so. Allow about 40 minutes.
Model response, annotation and suggested rubric
Model response (written by Marlbridge), on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). A model written in 40 minutes would be shorter; this one is longer so that every move can be seen.
In Frankenstein, Shelley stages the conflict between Victor and his creature as a dispute over what a maker owes what he makes, and then withholds a verdict, so that the question of responsibility outlives both characters.
The conflict begins with a refusal. When the creature opens its eyes, Victor reports that “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” The ambition that drove him ends in revulsion, and he flees. At the moment of creation the novel places the first failure of responsibility, so everything that follows can be read as the consequence of a duty left unmet.
The creature’s argument makes that failure explicit. Confronting Victor, he says, “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.” The allusion casts Victor as a creator who has failed the being he made, and the creature’s claim that “misery made me a fiend” shifts the blame for his violence toward neglect. Victor’s reply, “There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies”, refuses the claim without answering it. The exchange sets two accounts of responsibility against each other: the creature says it is owed, Victor behaves as if it can be disowned.
The conflict then escalates through deaths that move it from an argument to a pattern. Each killing deepens Victor’s guilt, so the conflict becomes internal as well as interpersonal, and the reader, who has heard the creature’s reasoning, cannot simply side with Victor. The creature’s eloquence unsettles the expected roles, so the question of who is monstrous becomes part of the novel’s meaning.
The ending refuses a clean resolution. Victor dies urging Walton to “seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition”, which acknowledges a cost without confessing a duty. The creature, standing over the body, cries, “That is also my victim!”, admitting his own part in the destruction. Walton’s last report is that the creature “was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.” Each party accepts partial blame, but neither answers the other’s claim, and the creature vanishes before the end he promises can be seen.
The conflict therefore develops the novel’s idea of responsibility by making it mutual and unfinished. Because the characters cannot settle it, the judgment passes to the reader, which is why a novel about one man’s act of creation can still read as a warning to anyone who makes something and then walks away.
Annotation: the line of reasoning.
| Paragraph | Claim | Evidence | Unit 9 skills used |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | The conflict begins with Victor’s refusal of responsibility | “breathless horror and disgust” | Significant event (9.3), perspective (9.5) |
| 3 | The creature’s argument frames the dispute | “I ought to be thy Adam”, “we are enemies” | Conflict (9.4), allusion and diction |
| 4 | Escalation makes the conflict internal as well as interpersonal | Pattern of deaths; Victor’s guilt | Conflict (9.4), complexity (9.2) |
| 5 | The ending leaves responsibility mutual and unresolved | “avoid ambition”, “That is also my victim!”, “lost in darkness and distance” | Resolution and open endings (9.4), complexity (9.2) |
| 6 | Whole-work meaning | Synthesis | Thesis and commentary (9.6), evidence across the work (9.7) |
Self-score against the suggested Marlbridge rubric.
| Row | Evidence in the model | Judgment |
|---|---|---|
| Thesis | A defensible interpretation of the whole novel (responsibility mutual and unresolved), specific to the prompt | Earns the point |
| Evidence and commentary | Evidence from the beginning, middle and end; short, accurate quotations; commentary linking each to the claim and thesis; several elements (event, dialogue, allusion, ending) | Top band |
| Sophistication | The ending’s refusal of a verdict is developed into the claim that the reader inherits the judgement, and linked to a broader sense of the work’s continuing relevance | Likely to earn the point |
This is a Marlbridge teaching tool, not an official scoring guideline. When you mark your own essay, check each row honestly: a thesis that restates the prompt, summary offered as evidence, quotations that are guessed, or a sophisticated-sounding final line that the essay has not earned all lose credit. Quotations in the model were checked against a public-domain text.
How to use your results
- If you struggled with Questions 1 to 3, go back to the study guides for 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4 and 9.5.
- If you struggled with Questions 4 to 6, revisit 9.6 and 9.7, then write your own response to the prompt on a work you know and mark it with the rubric.
- Build an evidence ledger for two works you know well, and rehearse a timed plan for the literary argument essay.