Literary Representations (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: Literary Representations revision notes · Unit 4 study guide

Unit 4 of OxfordAQA International A-level English Literature (9675) is either a 2 hour 30 minute exam (4a: one unseen prose question and one unseen poetry question, 25 marks each, on different areas of representation) or a non-exam assessment (4b: two essays of 1,250–1,500 words). Part 1 is a full 4a-style paper; the prose passage and poem are original texts written for this resource. Part 2 gives 4b-style tasks on texts outside the 9675 exam lists.

Part 1: Unit 4a-style examination

Section A: Prose (25 marks)

1. Read carefully the following passage, written for this resource in the style of a mid-twentieth- century memoir, and complete the task below.

Write an analysis of this passage in which you explore the significance of the writer’s representation of childhood.

In the summer I was nine, the river was the whole of the world. My brother and I were allowed as far as the second bridge and no further, and so the second bridge became the edge of everything, the place where maps ran out. We built a dam there every morning and every evening the water took it, politely, as if returning something it had borrowed. Our mother called us in at six. We pretended not to hear, and she pretended to believe us, and in that agreement I think we were happier than we have ever been since. It was only later, much later, that I understood she had stood at the kitchen window the whole afternoon, watching the water, counting us.

Section B: Poetry (25 marks)

2. Read carefully the following poem, written for this resource, and complete the task below.

Write an analysis of this poem in which you explore the significance of the poet’s representation of war.

Telegram, 1917

The boy on the bicycle is fourteen and has learned to ride without looking at the doors. Each street knows him by the sound of the bell he does not ring.

Women at windows lift the corner of a curtain and let it fall. A dog runs with him for a while, delighted, the only one in the street who is.

Part 2: Unit 4b-style NEA tasks (1,250–1,500 words each)

Choose one prose task and one poetry task, linked to different areas.

3. Prose (women/men). “Brontë presents marriage in Wuthering Heights as a prison for both women and men.” Exploring Emily Brontë’s representation of women and men, say how far you agree.

4. Prose (race/class/culture). Explore the significance of Achebe’s representation of culture and change in Things Fall Apart.

5. Poetry (war). Explore the significance of Wilfred Owen’s representation of the soldier’s body in a selection of his poems.

6. Poetry (childhood). Explore the significance of William Blake’s representations of childhood in Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

7. A student proposes a 4b submission on a selection of war poems by Owen, Sassoon and Rosenberg. Explain the problem. [2]

---

Indicative content

Question 1 (childhood)

AO	Points a strong answer might make
AO1	Childhood represented as a bounded, self-contained world (“the river was the whole of the world”); memory and nostalgia; the adult narrator’s later understanding as a second perspective; readings of the passage as idealised or as quietly anxious
AO2	Retrospective first-person narration with two time-frames; the boundary of the “second bridge” as a symbol of limits and safety; personification of the river taking the dam “politely”; the balanced sentence “We pretended not to hear, and she pretended to believe us” suggesting a shared game; the delayed revelation in the final sentence; the verb “counting” reframing play as parental fear
AO3	A clear argument about the significance of the final sentence, using terms such as focalisation, retrospective narration and symbolism

What separates stronger answers. They see that the passage represents childhood through an adult’s reconstruction, so the child’s freedom depends on an adult vigilance the child could not see, and they weigh a nostalgic reading against a more troubled one.

Question 2 (war)

AO	Points a strong answer might make
AO1	War represented at home, through those who receive news of death; a child drawn into adult grief; the date 1917 and the delivery of telegrams announcing deaths in the First World War
AO2	The title as the poem’s unspoken subject; the boy who has “learned to ride without looking / at the doors” (learned avoidance); “the bell he does not ring” as silence and dread; women’s gestures at curtains showing fear and relief; the dog’s delight as bitter contrast; the final short line “the only one in the street who is” isolating joy; two quatrains moving from the boy to the watchers
AO3	Argued interpretation: the poem represents war not through battle but through waiting, and makes the reader complicit in the curtain-watchers’ relief that the boy passes their door

What separates stronger answers. They analyse how absence (no telegram is opened, no death is named) carries the meaning, and connect the child messenger to the representation of war’s reach into childhood, while keeping the focus on war as the question requires.

Questions 3–6 (NEA tasks)

Task	AO1 (meanings, contexts, interpretations)	AO2 (methods)
3 Wuthering Heights	Catherine’s choice of Edgar; Heathcliff’s marriage to Isabella as revenge; property and inheritance; feminist and Marxist readings	Frame narrators (Lockwood, Nelly); paired houses; doubling across generations
4 Things Fall Apart	Igbo society represented from within; colonial and missionary arrival; postcolonial readings and Achebe’s response to European representations of Africa	Proverbs, folk tales, three-part structure, the District Commissioner’s closing perspective
5 Owen	The damaged body against heroic ideals; readings of Owen as protest or elegy	Half-rhyme, graphic imagery, ironic titles and allusion, direct address to the reader
6 Blake	Innocence and experience as “contrary states”; child labour and the church; readings of Blake as radical critic	Paired poems, ballad and hymn forms, the child speaker, symbolic imagery

Each 4b essay must offer an “individual and independent” reading, and the texts must allow access to a range of critical views, so build in at least one alternative interpretation and evaluate it.

7. A 4b poetry text must be by a single author [1]; a selection by three poets does not meet the rule, so the student should choose one poet, for example Owen alone [1].

Frequently asked questions

Can I use the same area for both 4a answers? You do not choose: the two 4a questions refer to different areas, and each question names the area to focus on.

Are Owen and Blake allowed for 4b? They are allowed provided the texts are not on any AS/A-level exam set-text list for 9675; check the current lists with your teacher before choosing.

Should I bring contextual research into a 4a answer? Only lightly. The specification says students are not expected to draw on extensive contextual knowledge of the areas; use the date or details printed with the text.

Official specification

OxfordAQA International AS and A-level English Literature (9675), Version 5.3, 4.2 Unit 4 — oxfordaqa.com.