Question 3 (AQA GCSE English Language): Exam Questions

The terror of a child in prison is quite limitless. I remember once, in Reading prison, as I was going out to exercise, seeing in the dimly-lit cell right opposite my own, a frail boy — minute in stature. Two warders were talking sternly to him. In my heart, I longed to believe that perhaps they were giving him some useful advice about his behaviour but I know the likelihood of this was beyond hope. One was in the cell with him, the other was standing outside. The child’s gaunt face was grey and yellowish, sickly to behold. There was in his eyes the terror of a hunted animal, vulnerable and prone to attack; upon sight of this, my heart could not help but break, overwhelmed with pity and sympathy.

One of my old friends thought he was safe. His corn-field was on a small island of Rock river. He planted his corn; it came up well — but the white man saw it! — he wanted the island, and took his team over, ploughed up the corn, and replanted it for himself! The old man shed tears; not for himself, but the distress his family would be in if they raised no corn.

The white people brought whiskey into our village, made our people drunk, and cheated them out of their horses, guns and traps! This fraudulent system was carried to such an extent that I apprehended serious difficulties might take place, unless a stop was put to it. Consequently, I visited all the whites and begged them not to sell whisky to my people. One of them continued the practice openly.

"The potato-peeling. The same conversation, every year: “I prefer them with the skins on. More fibre.” Nine other people shouting, “MASH MUST NOT HAVE SKINS IN!”

The bins already full, those without mortgages, or children, crushing more bottles and cans down into it, like gonzo gunslingers; those with greater domestic awareness tutting and pointedly taking the bags out to the kerb.

The fight over the stereo — Hark! The Herald Angels Sing replaced by Kanye West; Kanye replaced by Slade. The breakaway group in the toilet upstairs, wrapping presents at the last minute while crouched by the toilet, while someone else sits in the bath going, “Could you wrap mine, too? I just don’t have the knack.”

When Joe was brought into the dark room on so short a notice, his sensations were rather complicated, but they speedily resolved themselves into a firm persuasion that his father was not dead. A variety of causes led him to this conclusion, among which the most prominent were, his having very recently seen his father in the best health; and, besides several half-suppressed winks and blinks from Black Sam, his observing, by looking closely at the sheet, that his deceased parent still breathed.

With very little hesitation the boy perceived what line of conduct he ought to adopt, and at once bursting into a roar of the most distracted grief, flung himself upon the floor, and rolled about in a seeming transport of anguish.

John, not having seen so much of public life as his brother, was not so cunning, and perceiving in his father’s death nothing but a relief from flogging^[1] and books (for both of which he had a great dislike), and the immediate possession of all the plate in the dining room, skipped about the room, indulging in various snatches of song, and, snapping his fingers, declared that he was glad to hear it.

flogging = violent beating

The story of the wretched creatures who lay pining and languishing with typhus fever in its various appalling forms on the banks of our filthy river fell harmless upon the ears of gentlemen who could retire at their pleasure to their country houses. Their senses were never affected, their stomachs were never turned, by the stench which emanates from the river, and from the seething mud which it leaves bare at low water. Of course, all was well. On Wednesday, when the heat was overpowering, they began to imagine that there was something, after all, in the popular outcry. Conviction rose with the quicksilver in the thermometer.

There was a reasonable prospect that, had the heat continued at its full intensity but a few days longer, the two Houses would have summoned their last energies to pass some sort of Bill even this Session which would have convinced the Board of Works that their action was not intended to be purely obstructive. We wish no ill to Mr. SPEAKER, but if he and two or three of the leading members on either side of the House had only a mild attack of Parliament fever, a remedy would soon be found.