Elements of Crime and Mystery (9675): Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions, and they do not replicate the exam’s exact structure, question count or mark tariffs — examination boards hold copyright in their own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available free from your board.

Related: Elements of Crime and Mystery revision notes · Unit 3 study guide

Unit 3 of OxfordAQA International A-level English Literature (9675) is a two-hour, closed-book exam: two 25-mark essays, one on each of your two crime and mystery set texts, each assessing AO1, AO2 and AO3 equally. The questions below are framed around the genre elements the specification lists. Answer one question on each of your two texts in timed conditions (about an hour each).

Questions (25 marks each)

1. Macbeth. “In Macbeth the real punishment is not death but guilt.” Explore the significance of guilt and punishment in the play.

2. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Explore the significance of confession in the poem.

3. Browning, Selected Poems. “Browning’s murderers are more interesting than their victims.” Explore the significance of the presentation of criminals and victims in at least two of the selected poems.

4. Oliver Twist. Explore the significance of the settings of crime in the novel.

5. Poe, Collected Stories. “Poe is less interested in solving crimes than in exploring guilt.” Explore this view with reference to at least two stories.

6. Stevenson, Collected Stories. Explore the significance of respectability and its concealment of crime in at least two of the stories.

7. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. “Christie plays fair with the reader, even as she deceives them.” Explore the significance of narration in the novel.

8. Death of a Red Heroine or When Will There Be Good News? Explore the significance of the detective figure in your chosen novel.

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Indicative content

All three AOs are equally weighted. AO1 = genre, contexts and interpretations; AO2 = authorial methods; AO3 = argued response, concepts and accurate writing. Credit any well-supported argument.

Question 1 (Macbeth)

AO	Points
AO1	Guilt as internal punishment (hallucinations, sleeplessness, Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking and death) versus external punishment (Macduff’s revenge, Malcolm’s restoration); Jacobean beliefs about regicide and divine order; alternative readings that Macbeth feels less guilt as the play continues
AO2	Imagery of blood (“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?”) and sleep (“Macbeth does murder sleep”); the prose of the sleepwalking scene; soliloquies tracing numbness (“I have almost forgot the taste of fears”); structure moving through crises to order
AO3	A clear position on “real punishment”; terms such as tragic hero, hamartia, catharsis used accurately

Question 2 (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

AO	Points
AO1	The killing of the albatross as a transgression against nature and the sacred; penance; the Mariner’s compulsion to tell his tale as unending confession; readings of the poem as Christian allegory or psychological study
AO2	The frame narrative with the Wedding-Guest; ballad form and archaic diction; the marginal glosses; imagery of the becalmed sea (“Water, water, every where”); the moment of blessing the water-snakes
AO3	An argument about whether confession brings release or only repetition

Question 3 (Browning)

AO	Points
AO1	Murderers given voice in dramatic monologue; victims silenced (the Duchess, Porphyria); readers positioned as judges; Victorian interest in abnormal psychology; feminist readings of objectified women
AO2	Dramatic monologue and the implied listener (“My Last Duchess”); rhyming couplets with enjambment; the calm final line of “Porphyria’s Lover” (“And yet God has not said a word!”); the poisoner’s eager anticipation in “The Laboratory”
AO3	Evaluation of “more interesting”: interest is constructed by the form, which may itself be a critique

Question 4 (Oliver Twist)

AO	Points
AO1	London’s slums, Fagin’s den, Jacob’s Island and Saffron Hill as spaces of crime; contrast with the Brownlow and Maylie homes; Dickens’s social criticism of the New Poor Law and urban poverty
AO2	Gothic description of darkness, mud and decay; setting as moral symbol; the chase of Sikes across rooftops; omniscient, satirical narrator
AO3	Argument about whether setting causes crime or reflects character

Question 5 (Poe)

AO	Points
AO1	Ratiocination in the Dupin stories against guilt-driven confessions; Gothic and detective genres; readings of the narrators as unreliable or insane
AO2	First-person confession and dramatic irony (“The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”); the analytical narrator of “Rue Morgue”; symbolism of the house in “Usher”; sound and repetition
AO3	A judgement on “less interested”, supported across two stories

Question 6 (Stevenson)

AO	Points
AO1	Victorian respectability and repression; double lives; Jekyll and Hyde and “Markheim” as studies of conscience; “The Body Snatcher” and medical crime
AO2	Multiple narrators and documents in Jekyll and Hyde; Utterson’s limited perspective; the visitant in “Markheim”; settings of fog and closed doors
AO3	Argument about whether respectability hides crime or produces it

Question 7 (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)

AO	Points
AO1	The Golden Age “fair-play” convention; the narrator as murderer; reader response and controversy over the twist; Poirot as restorer of order
AO2	First-person narration with omissions rather than lies; retrospective confession in the final chapters; clues hidden in plain sight; structure building to the drawing-room revelation
AO3	An argued view of whether the deception is fair

Question 8 (detective figure)

AO	Points
AO1	Inspector Chen’s position between duty and political pressure in 1990s Shanghai; or Jackson Brodie’s damaged, haunted investigator; the detective as moral centre or flawed figure
AO2	Narrative viewpoint and how much the reader shares the detective’s knowledge; interweaving of plotlines; the use of poetry and quotation (Qiu) or shifting focal characters (Atkinson)
AO3	A judgement on whether the detective restores order

Level guidance (illustrative)

• Top: a sustained argument about the significance of the element, integrating authorial methods, contexts and alternative interpretations; precise references from memory; fluent critical writing.
• Middle: a relevant argument with some analysis of methods and some context or interpretation; references accurate but less selective.
• Lower: narrative of the crime with general comment; methods identified but not explained.

Model paragraph (Question 7)

“Christie’s deception depends on what Sheppard leaves out rather than on what he invents. His account of the evening Ackroyd dies is accurate sentence by sentence, but the moment of hesitation he records at the study door, wondering “if there was anything I had left undone”, hides the murder itself. Readers who feel cheated have a case, since the convention of the narrator’s honesty is broken; yet on rereading, every clue is present, which supports the view that Christie keeps the rules of fair play while exposing how much readers trust a first-person voice.”

Frequently asked questions

How many quotations should I learn per text? The specification does not set a number. Because Unit 3 is closed book, learn a bank of short, flexible quotations for each major genre element.

Can I answer on two texts by the same author? You study two texts from the list, and each set text is a single item (for example, Poe’s collected stories), so the two must be different list items.

Do I need critics? AO1 rewards understanding “the ways in which different interpretations can be found”. Critics can help, but alternative readings argued from the text also meet this.

Official specification

OxfordAQA International AS and A-level English Literature (9675), Version 5.3, 4.1 Unit 3 — oxfordaqa.com.