Insert
The source that follows is:
- Source A: 20th-century prose fiction
- This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
An extract from a work first published in 1920.
This extract is from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 novel This Side of Paradise, following Princeton student Amory Blaine as a night drive turns to tragedy, prompting reflections on mortality and class, before campus gaiety resumes, revealing the novel's contrasts of youthful glamour and grim reality.
Source A
1 Then tragedy’s emerald eyes glared suddenly at Amory over the edge of June. On the night after his ride to Lawrenceville a crowd sallied to New York in quest of adventure, and started back to Princeton about twelve o’clock in two machines. It had been a gay party and different stages of sobriety were represented. Amory was in the car behind; they had taken the wrong road and
6 lost the way, and so were hurrying to catch up. It was a clear night and the exhilaration of the road went to Amory’s head. He had the ghost of two stanzas of a poem forming in his mind. ...
11 So the gray car crept nightward in the dark and there was no life stirred as it went by.... As the still ocean paths before the shark in starred and glittering waterways, beauty-high, the moon-swathed
16 trees divided, pair on pair, while flapping nightbirds cried across the air.... A moment by an inn of lamps and shades, a yellow inn under a yellow
21 moon—then silence, where crescendo laughter fades... the car swung out again to the winds of June, mellowed the shadows where the distance grew, then crushed the yellow
26 shadows into blue.... They jolted to a stop, and Amory peered up, startled. A woman was standing beside the road, talking to Alec at the wheel. Afterward he remembered the harpy effect that her old kimono gave her, and the cracked hollowness of her
31 voice as she spoke: “You Princeton boys?” “Yes.”
36 “Well, there’s one of you killed here, and two others about dead.” “My God!”
41 “Look!” She pointed and they gazed in horror. Under the full light of a roadside arc-light lay a form, face downward in a widening circle of blood. They sprang from the car. Amory thought of the back of that head—that hair—that hair... and then they turned the form over.
46 “It’s Dick—Dick Humbird!” “Oh, Christ!”
51 “Feel his heart!” Then the insistent voice of the old crone in a sort of croaking triumph: “He’s quite dead, all right. The car turned over. Two of the men that weren’t
56 hurt just carried the others in, but this one’s no use.” Amory rushed into the house and the rest followed with a limp mass that they laid on the sofa in the shoddy little front parlor. Sloane, with his shoulder punctured, was on another lounge. He was half delirious, and kept calling
61 something about a chemistry lecture at 8:10. “I don’t know what happened,” said Ferrenby in a strained voice. “Dick was driving and he wouldn’t give up the wheel; we told him he’d been drinking too much—then there was this damn curve—oh, my God!...” He threw himself face
66 downward on the floor and broke into dry sobs. The doctor had arrived, and Amory went over to the couch, where some one handed him a sheet to put over the body. With a sudden hardness, he raised one of the hands and let it fall back inertly. The brow was cold but the face not
71 expressionless. He looked at the shoe-laces—Dick had tied them that morning. He had tied them—and now he was this heavy white mass. All that remained of the charm and personality of the Dick Humbird he had known—oh, it was all so horrible and unaristocratic and close to the earth. All tragedy has that strain of the grotesque and squalid—so useless, futile... the way animals
76 die.... Amory was reminded of a cat that had lain horribly mangled in some alley of his childhood. “Some one go to Princeton with Ferrenby.”
81 Amory stepped outside the door and shivered slightly at the late night wind—a wind that stirred a broken fender on the mass of bent metal to a plaintive, tinny sound. Next day, by a merciful chance, passed in a whirl. When Amory was by himself
86 his thoughts zigzagged inevitably to the picture of that red mouth yawning incongruously in the white face, but with a determined effort he piled present excitement upon the memory of it and shut it coldly away from his mind. Isabelle and her mother drove into town at four, and they rode up smiling
91 Prospect Avenue, through the gay crowd, to have tea at Cottage. The clubs had their annual dinners that night, so at seven he loaned her to a freshman and arranged to meet her in the gymnasium at eleven, when the upper classmen were admitted to the freshman dance. She was all he had expected, and he was happy and eager to make that night the centre of every dream. At nine the upper
96 classes stood in front of the clubs as the freshman torchlight parade rioted past, and Amory wondered if the dress-suited groups against the dark, stately backgrounds and under the flare of the torches made the night as brilliant to the staring, cheering freshmen as it had been to him the year before.
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 Where did the crowd sally to in quest of adventure?
- New York
- Princeton
- Lawrenceville
[1 mark]
1.2 What did the crowd start back to about twelve o’clock?
- Princeton
- New York
- Lawrenceville
[1 mark]
1.3 Which phrase states what was ‘represented’?
- different stages of sobriety
- a gay party
- a crowd
[1 mark]
1.4 Where was Amory?
- in the car behind
- in quest of adventure
- over the edge of June
[1 mark]
Question 2
Look in detail at this extract, from lines 11 to 20 of the source:
11 So the gray car crept nightward in the dark and there was no life stirred as it went by.... As the still ocean paths before the shark in starred and glittering waterways, beauty-high, the moon-swathed
16 trees divided, pair on pair, while flapping nightbirds cried across the air.... A moment by an inn of lamps and shades, a yellow inn under a yellow
How does the writer use language here to describe the night-time car journey? 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 middle of a novel.
How has the writer structured the text to create a sense of drama?
You could write about:
- how drama unfolds throughout 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 26 to the end.
In this part of the source, Amory’s decision to go to a party after the crash seems very cold. The writer suggests he is using the fun to hide from the terrible truth.
To what extent do you agree and/or disagree with this statement?
In your response, you could:
- consider your impressions of Amory's reaction to Dick Humbird's death
- comment on the methods the writer uses to portray Amory after the tragedy
- support your response with references to the text.
[20 marks]
Question 5
A digital arts festival is inviting creative pieces to be displayed on screens in the city centre.
Choose one of the options below for your entry.
-
Option A: Describe a rooftop drone port from your imagination. You may choose to use the picture provided for ideas:
-
Option B: Write the opening of a story about a malfunction in a smart city.
(24 marks for content and organisation, 16 marks for technical accuracy)
[40 marks]