Place in Literary Texts (9675): Revision Notes

Condensed for the final weeks. For the full explanation, use the Place in Literary Texts study guide.

Unit 2 at a glance

2 hours, open book, 50 marks = 50% of the International AS, 20% of the full International A-level.

Section	Focus	Marks
A	Essay, chosen prose text	25
B	Essay, chosen poetry selection	25

One prose text and one poet’s selection in total — open book. Only a clean, unannotated copy may be taken into the exam; that is a matter of examination regulations rather than something the specification itself states, since the specification says only that this is an open-book exam.

The nine “place” angles

Learn these as a checklist of angles to bring evidence for, not a definition of place itself:

1. Specific geographical locations and their significance
2. The location and time period a story is set in
3. The natural world — its beauty, or its despoliation
4. Social identity and how people are positioned within society
5. Social class as expressed through place
6. Place as a setting for human relationships
7. Place as a political space
8. Home and homeland
9. The language a text uses to represent place

A strong essay ranges across several angles rather than settling on geography alone, since “place” is deliberately left open by the specification.

Prose text options

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, Andrea Levy’s Small Island, Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day.

Poetry selection options

A William Wordsworth selection, a Robert Frost selection, a Thomas Hardy selection, or a Seamus Heaney selection — each is a body of poems, not a single poem.

Open-book technique

Because candidates may bring a clean copy of the set texts into the exam, the exam itself is not a memory test of quotations. Preparation time is better spent building an analytical framework — a set of angles with supporting moments already identified — that can be applied quickly once the paper starts, rather than memorising exact wording. Practise locating relevant passages fast under timed conditions, since the open-book advantage is wasted if a candidate cannot find the right material quickly.

Poetry: compare across the selection

Because Section B assesses a poet’s selection rather than one poem, strong answers draw evidence from at least two or three poems, showing how the writer’s treatment of place varies or develops across their work — a single-poem answer under-uses the available marks even if the analysis of that one poem is strong.

Worked example: applying the angles to a prose text

Take The Great Gatsby as a model of how several angles combine in one text. The geographical split between West Egg and East Egg maps onto social class (new money versus old money), the Valley of Ashes sits between them as a third space of human cost, and the green light across the water works as a place-based symbol of an unreachable home. A condensed exam answer does not need to cover every angle exhaustively — it needs to show the language constructing the place (recurring imagery of light, water, distance) and connect that construction explicitly to class or aspiration, rather than describing the settings as background detail.

Unit 1 vs Unit 2: don’t mix up the conditions

	Unit 1	Unit 2
Genre	Tragedy	Place
Text types	Two plays	One prose text, one poetry selection
Book policy	Closed book	Open book (clean copy only)
Preparation focus	Memorised quotation bank	Analytical framework, fast retrieval

Revising the two units together risks blending their quite different exam conditions — keep a clear mental separation between “closed book, plays, tragedy conventions” and “open book, prose and poetry, place angles.”

Exam traps

• Reducing “place” to physical geography only, ignoring class, identity, politics and language angles.
• Writing the poetry answer from a single poem in the selection.
• Bringing an annotated copy of the text into the open-book exam, which is not permitted.
• Confusing Unit 1 (tragedy, closed book) revision with Unit 2 (place, open book) — the two units assess different genres and different exam conditions.
• Spending unequal revision time on Sections A and B despite both being worth 25 marks.

Timing under exam conditions

With 2 hours for two 25-mark essays, aim for roughly equal time on each section, leaving a short window at the end to reread both answers against the question actually asked. Because the exam is open book, resist the temptation to spend exam time searching for quotations from scratch — that search should already be done in preparation, with only quick confirmation needed on the day.

Self-test

1. How many marks is Unit 2 worth, and what proportion of the International AS does it represent?
2. Name three of the specification’s nine “place” angles.
3. Why is memorising quotations a less efficient use of revision time for Unit 2 than for Unit 1?
4. What is the main weakness of a poetry answer built around only one poem?
5. Is an annotated copy of the set text permitted in the exam?

Answers: 1. 50 marks, 50% of the International AS (20% of the full International A-level). 2. Any three of: geographical locations, setting/time period, the natural world, social identity, social class, place as a setting for relationships, place as a political space, home and homeland, language. 3. Because the exam is open book, so preparation is better spent on a flexible analytical framework than on memorising exact wording. 4. It under-uses the available marks, since strong answers are expected to range across the poet’s selection rather than rely on one poem. 5. No — examination regulations require a clean, unannotated copy; this is not something the specification itself states.

Related resources

• Place in Literary Texts study guide
• Place in Literary Texts practice questions