AQA A-Level English Literature B: Option 2B Political and Social Protest Writing — Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions, and the unseen extract below was written for this page. Examination boards hold copyright in their own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available free from your board, since genuine board material is the only reliable guide to exact phrasing and mark scheme wording for your specific examination series.

Related: Paper 2 Texts and Genres study guide, revision notes, Paper 2 exam-technique practice and Option 2A practice.

What does Paper 2B ask you to do? Paper 2B (7717/2B) is a 3-hour, open-book exam worth 75 marks and 40% of AQA A-level English Literature B. You answer one compulsory question on an unseen extract (Section A), one essay on a set text (Section B) and one essay connecting two political and social protest texts you did not use in Section B (Section C), each worth 25 marks. Your three texts must be one post-2000 prose text, one poetry text and one further text, and at least one of the three must be written before 1900.

Which texts can you write about in Option 2B?

The current AQA specification (Version 1.5.1, 1 October 2025, section on Elements of political and social protest writing) lists these set texts.

Category	Set texts
Post-2000 prose	Jim Crace, Harvest; V. V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless Night; Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Poetry	William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (pre-1900); Tony Harrison, Selected Poems (‘V’, ‘National Trust’, ‘Them and [uz]’, ‘Divisions’, ‘Working’, ‘Marked with D’)
Further text	Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale; Charles Dickens, Hard Times (pre-1900); Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House (pre-1900; Bloomsbury Methuen Drama edition, translated by Michael Meyer); William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part I (pre-1900)

The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, so it is not a post-2000 text: it can only be your further text. A single text can meet two requirements at once; Blake’s Songs, for example, counts as both the poetry text and the pre-1900 text.

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Section A: unseen passage (25 marks)

The following extract was written for this page. It is part of a speech given by a factory worker, Annie, at a public meeting in an invented mill town in 1912.

They tell us the mill is a family. Very well. In this family the children start at six in the morning and the father sleeps until nine. In this family the daughters keep the looms running and the sons-in-law keep the books. And when one of us loses a hand to the shuttle, the family sends flowers, and a new girl is at the loom by Monday.

I am not here to be thanked. I have been thanked. I was thanked in 1908 when the wages were cut, and thanked again in 1910 when the windows were bricked up to save on the rates. Gratitude is cheap, gentlemen. It is the cheapest thing you make.

You say we are not educated enough to sit on your committee. Then educate us. You say the town cannot afford it. Then tell me what the town has been spending us on.

1. Explore the significance of elements of political and social protest writing in this extract. Remember to include in your answer relevant detailed analysis of the ways the author has shaped meanings. [25]

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Section B: one set text (25 marks)

Answer one question. Each asks you to weigh a view; you must include relevant detailed exploration of the author’s methods.

2. Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience. “Blake protests most powerfully when he speaks through the voices of the powerless.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

3. Harrison, Selected Poems. “Harrison’s poems are angrier about class than about any other injustice.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

4. Harvest. “In Harvest, change is the real oppressor.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

5. Brotherless Night. “The novel shows that there is no neutral ground in a war.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

6. The Kite Runner. “Amir’s betrayal of Hassan is a political act as much as a personal one.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

7. The Handmaid’s Tale. “Gilead’s power depends more on the complicity of women than on the force of men.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

8. Hard Times. “Dickens is more interested in the damage done to individuals than in the politics of Coketown.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [25]

9. A Doll’s House. “Nora’s final decision is the play’s only true act of rebellion.” To what extent do you agree with this view? Remember to include relevant detailed exploration of Ibsen’s dramatic methods. [25]

10. Henry IV Part I. “The play’s real rebels are not the Percys but Falstaff and his companions.” To what extent do you agree with this view? Remember to include relevant detailed exploration of Shakespeare’s dramatic methods. [25]

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Section C: connecting two texts (25 marks)

Answer one question. You must write about two texts that you have not used in Section B.

11. “Protest writing shows that those without power always find a way to resist.” Explore the significance of resistance in two political and social protest texts you have studied. [25]

12. Explore the significance of work and the workplace in two political and social protest texts you have studied. [25]

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How are these answers marked?

AQA marks every Paper 2 answer holistically against five level descriptors that cover all five assessment objectives: AO1 (informed, coherent response), AO2 (analysis of how meanings are shaped), AO3 (contexts), AO4 (connections across texts) and AO5 (different interpretations). The indicative content below shows what a top-band answer is likely to explore; it is not a points scheme.

Question 1: indicative content

• Type of text and voice. A speech at a public meeting is a direct form of protest. The first-person plural “us” positions Annie as a representative voice, while “gentlemen” names the audience she challenges.
• Power and powerlessness. The extended metaphor of the mill as “a family” is taken over and turned against the owners: the “father sleeps until nine” while children work from six. This maps onto the specification’s elements of the behaviours of those with power and those without and the connection of the smaller world to the larger world.
• Gender politics and class. “The daughters keep the looms running and the sons-in-law keep the books” exposes a gendered division of labour and profit, a named element of the option.
• Structure. Three paragraphs move from exposure (the false family) to grievance (dated wage cuts and bricked-up windows) to demand (a seat on the committee). The tension rises and is left unresolved, which links to how political tensions are heightened and perhaps resolved.
• Language. Short declaratives (“I have been thanked”) and repetition of “thanked” build irony. The epigram “Gratitude is cheap … It is the cheapest thing you make” turns the mill’s own vocabulary of production into satire. The closing parallel pattern (“You say … Then …”) hands the owners’ arguments back to them, and “what the town has been spending us on” makes workers into a commodity.
• Context and effect. A 1912 setting places the speech in a period of industrial unrest and campaigns for women’s political rights; strong answers note how the passage invites a reader to reflect on present-day workplaces, the final element on the specification’s list.

Questions 2 to 10: what a strong essay does

• Question 2 (Blake). For: ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ poems and ‘Holy Thursday’ speak through or about children exploited by church and state, and their innocence makes the reader see the cruelty. Against or complicating: ‘London’ uses an adult wanderer who sees “mind-forg’d manacles” in every face, a more direct and systemic protest. Strong answers explore Blake’s paired contrary states and the ballad and hymn forms he subverts.
• Question 3 (Harrison). Class is central: ‘Them and [uz]’ attacks the policing of Received Pronunciation, and ‘V’ is set in a Leeds cemetery during the miners’ strike of 1984 to 1985. Counter-arguments: ‘Working’ gives voice to a child mine worker from the 1842 parliamentary reports, so the protest is also about child labour and silenced testimony; ‘Marked with D’ is as much elegy as anger. Good answers analyse Harrison’s sonnet variants and his use of dialect.
• Question 4 (Harvest). For: Walter Thirsk narrates the end of a village’s open-field way of life as enclosure for sheep arrives; the threat is a historical process. Against: change is carried by people, the new landowner, and the village’s own scapegoating of outsiders shows oppression coming from below as well. The unnamed, timeless setting lets Crace generalise.
• Question 5 (Brotherless Night). The novel follows a young Tamil woman training as a doctor in Jaffna during the Sri Lankan civil war, whose brothers are drawn into the conflict. Arguments can weigh her attempts at medical neutrality against the pressures from militant groups and the state; strong answers consider the retrospective first-person narrative as testimony.
• Question 6 (The Kite Runner). For: Hassan is Hazara and Amir Pashtun, and Assef’s assault draws on ethnic hatred; Amir’s silence reproduces a social hierarchy. Against: the novel frames the betrayal through guilt, fatherhood and friendship, with politics (the Soviet invasion and the Taliban) as backdrop. Amir’s redemption through Sohrab can be read either way.
• Question 7 (The Handmaid’s Tale). For: the Aunts train Handmaids, Wives such as Serena Joy enforce the household hierarchy, and Ofglen’s betrayals and loyalties show women policing women. Against: the Commanders, Guardians and Eyes hold armed power, and the Ceremony rests on male authority. The ‘Historical Notes’ complicate the view by showing the male academic who later edits Offred’s story.
• Question 8 (Hard Times). For: Louisa’s breakdown, Tom’s corruption and Stephen Blackpool’s fate show individual damage, and Gradgrind’s opening “Now, what I want is, Facts” is a philosophy of education. Against: Coketown’s factories, Bounderby’s self-made myth and the union orator Slackbridge make the politics of industry explicit; strong answers note Dickens’s ambivalence towards trade unions and his attack on utilitarian thinking.
• Question 9 (A Doll’s House). For: Nora’s departure overturns the domestic order the play has built. Against: her secret loan and forgery, done to save Torvald’s life, is already a rebellion against laws that forbade a wife to borrow without her husband’s consent, and Kristine and Krogstad make their own choices against social judgement. Discuss staging, especially the final exit.
• Question 10 (Henry IV Part I). For: Falstaff’s tavern world mocks honour (“What is honour? A word”) and law, a comic rebellion against order. Against: the Percys’ armed rising against the king is the play’s political crisis, and Hal’s “I know you all” soliloquy shows his tavern life as a strategy, so Falstaff is ultimately contained. Strong answers explore the play’s double plot.

Questions 11 and 12: what a strong connective essay does

• Organise by aspect. For Question 11, paragraphs might cover open revolt, quiet or private resistance, and the cost of resistance, moving between both texts in each.
• Choose pairs with real tension. Offred’s private acts of memory set against Nora’s public exit; Blake’s sweeps beside Harrison’s child miner in ‘Working’; Hard Times beside Harvest for Question 12.
• Include context and interpretation. Industrial England, enclosure, Gilead’s sources in twentieth-century politics, or nineteenth-century property law for married women.
• Give each text substantial depth and avoid two separate mini-essays.

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Where are marks usually lost on Paper 2B?

• Treating The Handmaid’s Tale as the post-2000 prose text, which leaves the text requirements unmet.
• Using the Section B text again in Section C.
• Describing oppression in general terms without analysing how the writer’s methods shape it.
• Quoting from an unofficial translation of A Doll’s House: the specification requires the Bloomsbury Methuen Drama edition translated by Michael Meyer.
• Leaving too little time for the unseen extract.

Frequently asked questions

Which texts count as post-2000 prose for Option 2B? Harvest, Brotherless Night and The Kite Runner. The Handmaid’s Tale is a further text, because it was published in 1985.

Is Paper 2B open book? Yes. You may take clean copies of your set texts into the exam, but they must not be annotated or contain any additional notes or materials.

Do I need a pre-1900 text? Yes. One of your three texts must be written before 1900. Blake’s Songs, Hard Times, A Doll’s House and Henry IV Part I all meet this requirement.

What kind of unseen passage will appear? The unseen extract may be poetry, prose or drama, and can include literary non-fiction. It will contain elements of political and social protest writing for you to analyse.

Official syllabus

AQA AS and A-level English Literature B specification (7716/7717), Version 1.5.1, 1 October 2025, Paper 2 Texts and genres, Elements of political and social protest writing (numbered 3.2.2 in this site’s course outline). See aqa.org.uk.