Question 3 (AQA GCSE English Language): Exam Questions

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.

All of a sudden there was a frightful jarring, followed by a crash. I sat up in my berth. From the rack above me my heaviest suitcase was cannonaded down, catching me with fearful force on either knee-cap. This is the end of the world, I thought, and in addition they have broken both my legs. My little world was tilted drunkenly. The window showed me nothing except a few fields. It was six o’clock. I began to dress. I felt very much annoyed. But I climbed out of the carriage into a refreshingly spectacular world and the annoyance passed. The Trans-Siberian Express train sprawled foolishly down the embankment. The mail van and the dining-car, which had been in front, lay on their sides at the bottom. Behind them the five sleeping cars, headed by my own, were disposed in attitudes which became less and less grotesque until you got to the last, which had remained, primly, on the rails. Fifty yards down the line, the engine, which had parted company with the train, was dug in, snorting steam, on top of the embankment. It had a defiant and naughty look; it was definitely conscious of indiscretion.

And as to mosquitoes. Ah! You too must have suffered. You have lain, hour after hour, listening to that never-ceasing war-song, till you were as nervous as a cat. You have turned over; you have lain on your side, lain on your back, lain on your face. You have doubled your fists up under your arm-pits, and twisted your feet into hard knots under your nightclothes, to no avail. You have then fallen back on your dignity and the pygmy-ness of your tormentors, and folded your arms resolutely over your chest, and looked fiercely up to the ceiling… And yet, at that very moment, an “owdacious” bite has sent you flying, with a smothered exclamation, into the middle of the floor, bewailing the day you were born. 

Suddenly, there was a squall of activity all over the campsite as the sky darkened and the rain began to fall in thick, steady drops. Caravan awnings were being winched in, windows slammed shut, towels were being hastily gathered and everywhere, families were retreating to the inside of their tents. Because the ground was so dry, the patter of rain on the hard earth sounded almost metallic and each raindrop sparked up a plume of dust so fine it looked like steam, making the soil look as if it were boiling. In the distance, a low rumble of thunder began rolling towards us, the starter flag for any decent storm, and the rain which had an individual and random quality became more pack-like, shifting shapes like a flock of starlings. The storm was circling the area before clattering in to do its worst. Soon, the rain was slashing down, the relentless battering against the tent canvas loud and frightening.

Fantails came in a weird, blue packet shaped like an isosceles triangle with one corner missing. Each individual Fantail was wrapped in a piece of paper detailing a film star's biography — hence the pun, fan tales. The Fantail itself was a chocolate-coated toffee so glutinous that it could induce lockjaw in a donkey. People had to have their mouths chipped open with a cold chisel. One packet of Fantails would last an average human being forever. A group of six small boys could go through a packet during the course of a single afternoon at the pictures, but it took hard work and involved a lot of strangled crying in the dark. Any fillings you had in your second teeth would be removed instantly, while children who still had any first teeth left didn't keep them long.

The terrible sliding stopped, and I hung silently against the slope. Three faint tugs trembled the taut rope, and I hopped up on to my leg. A wave of nausea and pain swept over me. I was glad of the freezing blasts of snow biting into my face. My head cleared as I waited for the burning to subside from my knee. Several times I had felt it twist sideways when my boot snagged. There would be a flare of agony as the knee kinked back, and parts within the joint seemed to shear past each other with a sickening gristly crunch. I had barely ceased sobbing before my boot snagged again. At the end my leg shook uncontrollably. I tried to stop it shaking, but the harder I tried, the more it shook. I pressed my face into the snow, gritted my teeth, and waited. At last it eased.

I watched as a vast wave gathered behind the boat, soaring above the cabin, a wall of white water towering over our tiny boat. Once again I dug the oars in to propel us forward, but the wave was too big. For a moment it felt like we were moving backwards as we were sucked into the belly of the wave, the horizon disappearing as the churning surf enveloped the stern of the boat. I felt it lift, as a torrent of water crashed over the boat and I felt myself falling backwards. I was aware of the boat collapsing on top of me. I struggled to pull my feet from the stirrups to no avail. The world went black. I felt a weight on top of me and then a rush of cold water as my body was brutally submerged into the bottomless Atlantic Ocean. My feet were sucked from my shoes as I clung on to the oars for dear life, but then they too were dragged from my clasp. My mind went blank as I tumbled through the surf, spun around roughly like clothes in a washing machine.

Riding on a track began to bore me as soon as I had learnt to balance, but I remained steadily practising until I could turn easily, cut figures of eight, get on and off quickly on either side and stop without charging into unwelcome obstacles. This done, burning to try my fate in traffic, and yet as nervous as a hare that feels the greyhound’s breath, I launched my little bicycle early one Sunday morning in July into the stormy oceans of Sloane Street, on my way to visit a sick friend who lived about four miles off. The streets were really very clear, but I shall never forget my terror. I arrived in about two hours, streaming and exhausted, much more in need of assistance than the invalid I went to visit. Coming home it was just as bad; I reached my house about three o’clock and went straight to bed, where I had my lunch, in a state bordering on collapse. I only recount this adventure in order to encourage others who may have had the same experience as myself, but who may not have tried to conquer their nervousness.

So they rode in majestically, always just ahead of the breaker, carried shorewards by its mighty impulse at the rate of forty miles an hour, as the more daring riders knelt and even stood on their surf-boards, waving their arms and uttering exultant cries. They were always apparently on the verge of engulfment by the fierce breaker whose towering white crest was ever above and just behind them, but just as one expected to see them dashed to pieces, they either waded quietly ashore, or sliding off their boards, dived under the surf, and were next seen far out at sea, as a number of heads bobbing about like corks in smooth water, preparing for fresh exploits.

A year ago, he was a sleepy ball of scrunched-up flesh, but is now determinedly his own person. I can see everyone in him – me, my wife, my parents – yet he’s already separate from all of us. He’s giddy and silly. He’s a show-off, albeit one who’s irrationally terrified of my dad. He loves running up to people and waiting for them to twang his lips like a ruler on a table. When he gets tired and barks gibberish in the middle of the room, he throws his entire body into it, like he’s trying to shove the noise up a hill. 

With every tiny development – every new step he takes, every new tooth and sound and reaction that comes along to ambush us – we’re confronted with a slightly different child. 

Photos of him taken in the summer seem like dispatches from a million years ago. Photos of him taken last week seem like a different boy. He’s blasting ahead as far as he can. He’s leaving milestone after milestone in his wake and tiny parts of me along with them.