Insert
The source that follows is:
- Source A: 20th-century prose fiction
- Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
An extract from a work first published in 1936.
This extract is from George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), where Gordon, in a bookshop, surveys the shelves with bitterness and self-doubt, reflecting on literary snobbery and his belief that money and class privilege control culture and stifle his own writing.
Source A
1 Gordon turned away from the door and back to the book-shelves. In the shelves to your left as you came out of the library the new and nearly-new books were kept--a patch of bright colour that was meant to catch the eye of anyone glancing through the glass door. Their sleek unspotted backs seemed to yearn at you from the shelves. 'Buy me, buy me!' they seemed to be saying. Novels
6 fresh from the press--still unravished brides, pining for the paperknife to deflower them--and review copies, like youthful widows, blooming still though virgin no longer, and here and there, in sets of half a dozen, those pathetic spinster-things, 'remainders', still guarding hopefully their long preserv'd virginity. Gordon turned his eyes away from the 'remainders'. They called up
11 evil memories. The single wretched little book that he himself had published, two years ago, had sold exactly a hundred and fifty-three copies and then been 'remaindered'; and even as a 'remainder' it hadn't sold. He passed the new books by and paused in front of the shelves which ran at right angles to them and which contained more second-hand books.
16 Over to the right were shelves of poetry. Those in front of him were prose, a miscellaneous lot. Upwards and downwards they were graded, from clean and expensive at eye-level to cheap and dingy at top and bottom. In all book-shops there goes on a savage Darwinian struggle in which the works of living men
21 gravitate to eye-level and the works of dead men go up or down--down to Gehenna or up to the throne, but always away from any position where they will be noticed. Down in the bottom shelves the 'classics', the extinct monsters of the Victorian age, were quietly rotting. Scott, Carlyle, Meredith, Ruskin, Pater, Stevenson--you could hardly read the names upon their broad dowdy
26 backs. In the top shelves, almost out of sight, slept the pudgy biographies of dukes. Below those, saleable still and therefore placed within reach, was 'religious' literature--all sects and all creeds, lumped indiscriminately together. The World Beyond, by the author of Spirit Hands Have Touched me. Dean Farrar's Life of Christ. Jesus the First Rotarian. Father Hilaire
31 Chestnut's latest book of R. C. propaganda. Religion always sells provided it is soppy enough. Below, exactly at eye-level, was the contemporary stuff. Priestley's latest. Dinky little books of reprinted 'middles'. Cheer-up 'humour' from Herbert and Knox and Milne. Some highbrow stuff as well. A novel or two by Hemingway and Virginia Woolf. Smart pseudo-Strachey predigested
36 biographies. Snooty, refined books on safe painters and safe poets by those moneyed young beasts who glide so gracefully from Eton to Cambridge and from Cambridge to the literary reviews. Dull-eyed, he gazed at the wall of books. He hated the whole lot of them, old
41 and new, highbrow and lowbrow, snooty and chirpy. The mere sight of them brought home to him his own sterility. For here was he, supposedly a 'writer', and he couldn't even 'write'! It wasn't merely a question of not getting published; it was that he produced nothing, or next to nothing. And all that tripe cluttering the shelves--well, at any rate it existed; it was an
46 achievement of sorts. Even the Dells and Deepings do at least turn out their yearly acre of print. But it was the snooty 'cultured' kind of books that he hated the worst. Books of criticism and belles-lettres. The kind of thing that those moneyed young beasts from Cambridge write almost in their sleep--and that Gordon himself might have written if he had had a little more money.
51 Money and culture! In a country like England you can no more be cultured without money than you can join the Cavalry Club. With the same instinct that makes a child waggle a loose tooth, he took out a snooty-looking volume--Some Aspects of the Italian Baroque--opened it, read a paragraph, and shoved it back with mingled loathing and envy. That devastating omniscience! That
56 noxious, horn-spectacled refinement! And the money that such refinement means! For after all, what is there behind it, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money.
61 He jingled the coins in his pocket. He was nearly thirty and had accomplished nothing; only his miserable book of poems that had fallen flatter than any pancake. And ever since, for two whole years, he had been struggling in the labyrinth of a dreadful book that never got any further, and which, as he knew
66 in his moments of clarity, never would get any further. It was the lack of money, simply the lack of money, that robbed him of the power to 'write'. He clung to that as to an article of faith. Money, money, all is money! Could you write even a penny novelette without money to put heart in you? Invention, energy, wit, style, charm--they've all got to be paid for in hard cash.
Questions
Instructions
- Answer all questions.
- Use black ink or black ball point pen.
- Fill in the boxes on this page.
- You must answer the questions in the spaces provided.
- Do not write outside the box around each page or on blank pages.
- Do all rough work in this book. Cross through any work you do not want to be marked.
- You must refer to the insert booklet provided.
- You must not use a dictionary.
Information
- The marks for questions are shown in brackets.
- Time allowed: 1 hour 45 minutes
- The maximum mark for this paper is 80.
- There are 40 marks for Section A and 40 marks for Section B.
- You are reminded of the need for good English and clear presentation in your answers.
- You will be assessed on the quality of your reading in Section A.
- You will be assessed on the quality of your writing in Section B.
Advice
- You are advised to spend about 15 minutes reading through the source and all five questions you have to answer.
- You should make sure you leave sufficient time to check your answers.
Section A: Reading
Answer all questions in this section. You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.
Question 1
Read again the first part of the source, from lines 1 to 5.
Answer all parts of this question.
Choose one answer for each question.
1.1 What did Gordon turn back to?
- the library
- the book-shelves
- the glass door
[1 mark]
1.2 Where were the new and nearly-new books kept?
- in the shelves straight ahead
- in the shelves to your right
- in the shelves to your left
[1 mark]
1.3 What was meant to catch the eye of anyone glancing through the glass door?
- their sleek unspotted backs
- a patch of bright colour
- the book-shelves
[1 mark]
1.4 What did the sleek unspotted backs seem to do?
- catch the eye of anyone
- glance through the glass door
- yearn at you from the shelves
[1 mark]
Question 2
Look in detail at this extract, from lines 1 to 15 of the source:
1 Gordon turned away from the door and back to the book-shelves. In the shelves to your left as you came out of the library the new and nearly-new books were kept--a patch of bright colour that was meant to catch the eye of anyone glancing through the glass door. Their sleek unspotted backs seemed to yearn at you from the shelves. 'Buy me, buy me!' they seemed to be saying. Novels
6 fresh from the press--still unravished brides, pining for the paperknife to deflower them--and review copies, like youthful widows, blooming still though virgin no longer, and here and there, in sets of half a dozen, those pathetic spinster-things, 'remainders', still guarding hopefully their long preserv'd virginity. Gordon turned his eyes away from the 'remainders'. They called up
11 evil memories. The single wretched little book that he himself had published, two years ago, had sold exactly a hundred and fifty-three copies and then been 'remaindered'; and even as a 'remainder' it hadn't sold. He passed the new books by and paused in front of the shelves which ran at right angles to them and which contained more second-hand books.
How does the writer use language here to present the new books and Gordon’s feelings about them? You could include the writer’s choice of:
- words and phrases
- language features and techniques
- sentence forms.
[8 marks]
Question 3
You now need to think about the structure of the source as a whole. This text is from the start of a story.
How has the writer structured the text to create a sense of despair?
You could write about:
- how despair intensifies by the end of the source
- how the writer uses structure to create an effect
- the writer's use of any other structural features, such as changes in mood, tone or perspective.
[8 marks]
Question 4
For this question focus on the second part of the source, from line 16 to the end.
In this part of the source, Gordon's focus on money makes him sound very bitter. The writer suggests this is just an excuse for his own failure to write successfully.
To what extent do you agree and/or disagree with this statement?
In your response, you could:
- consider your impressions of how the hyena behaves
- comment on the methods the writer uses to present the hyena
- support your response with references to the text.
[20 marks]
Question 5
At next week’s careers fair, your college careers office will display short creative pieces about working life.
Choose one of the options below for your entry.
-
Option A: Describe a cobbler's shop from your imagination. You may choose to use the picture provided for ideas:
-
Option B: Write the opening of a story about returning to a former workplace after many years.
(24 marks for content and organisation, 16 marks for technical accuracy)
[40 marks]