The Student Room Group

AS-Level English Literature OCR Exam

Scroll to see replies

If anyone wants to compare Yeats points:

Intro - Written after WW1. Cautionary tale to stop further wars.

Point 1 - "Blood dimmed tide / The ceremony of innocence is drowned". My first point was weak as I was just starting the exam. I said how "innocence" got represent Maud Gonne and the blood dimmed tide is a reference to Maud's involvement in revolutionary politics which changed her world. Compare Maud's involvement to revolutionary politics to Leda and the Swan, both were deeply effected by the two elements. Linked "slow thighs" in the Second Coming to "loosening thighs" in Leda.

Point 2 - Biblical language. Second Coming - Jesus came back to life at Easter (Easter Rising?).

Point 3 - Something about revolutionaries changing Ireland - bloodshed. "The best lack conviction / Whilst the worst are full of passionate intensity" - Linked to the Fisherman and him sitting in "his seat" and letting the revolutionaries change the world.

Point 4 - Structure. Stanza 1 is 8 lines, 2 is 14 lines. Yeats allegedly proposed to Maud Gonne on the 14 August 1917 - reference? Said both stanzas start with repetition - Stanza 1 is about the world's descent into chaos, whereas, Stanza 2 is about the apocalyptic world. Repetition shows it's the same world, etc.

Conc - Quoted Edmund Burke : "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for the good man to do nothing". Linked to Yeats belief about the revolutionaries changing the world for the worse, etc.


:smile:
I stupidly put the wrong form, do you think I'll get marks taken away from my overall mark or do you think they'll just not mark it? I feel really stupid haha :colondollar:
Original post by JohnsHatun
Yh me too. I didnt write about language at all! Just wrote about ellen moers and how she was a feminist that said Shelley felt guilty for the death of her mother and her own miscarriages. Also that the women were passive in gothic lit so thats why they may have died as they were not important. I also talked about the fact that shelley criticizes not what victor has done but what he isnt doing such as nurturing etc. and that society shaped the actions of the monster. Oh god. Poetry was so disguisting..


Posted from TSR Mobile


Me too. But I forgot to talk about language, form AND imagery for Jane Eyre, and Yeats was a disgusting poem - did you do Yeats?
Original post by Phil Dunphy
Me too. But I forgot to talk about language, form AND imagery for Jane Eyre, and Yeats was a disgusting poem - did you do Yeats?


I thought the Yeats was a perfect poem and a great open ended question
Original post by GeneralStudent95
I thought the Yeats was a perfect poem and a great open ended question


Well it was one I didn't revise for the night before - so I forgot most of it :tongue: Had to treat it like an unseen.

What did you write?

I did:

"Intro - Written after WW1. Cautionary tale to stop further wars.

Point 1 - "Blood dimmed tide / The ceremony of innocence is drowned". My first point was weak as I was just starting the exam. I said how "innocence" got represent Maud Gonne and the blood dimmed tide is a reference to Maud's involvement in revolutionary politics which changed her world. Compare Maud's involvement to revolutionary politics to Leda and the Swan, both were deeply effected by the two elements. Linked "slow thighs" in the Second Coming to "loosening thighs" in Leda.

Point 2 - Biblical language. Second Coming - Jesus came back to life at Easter (Easter Rising?).

Point 3 - Something about revolutionaries changing Ireland - bloodshed. "The best lack conviction / Whilst the worst are full of passionate intensity" - Linked to the Fisherman and him sitting in "his seat" and letting the revolutionaries change the world.

Point 4 - Structure. Stanza 1 is 8 lines, 2 is 14 lines. Yeats allegedly proposed to Maud Gonne on the 14 August 1917 - reference? Said both stanzas start with repetition - Stanza 1 is about the world's descent into chaos, whereas, Stanza 2 is about the apocalyptic world. Repetition shows it's the same world, etc.

Conc - Quoted Edmund Burke : "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for the good man to do nothing". Linked to Yeats belief about the revolutionaries changing the world for the worse, etc.
Reply 445
Original post by Charlotte1801
Yh I did this one - bit weird a first but managed to get my points in I mentioned:
-intro on Faust setting in relation to qu
-yellow book - influence
-epigrams spoken word - tempter influence
-sibyl and how she made him a victim n Dorian a tempter (duality of DG an sibyl and of lord Henry and issacs as tempters!!
ending of novel and how dorian die contrast to lord Henry being a victim!!
Wbu?? :smile:


guys for that dorian question, it was asking how far and in what ways we agree with the view that lord henry is a victim of dorian right?
Reply 446
Original post by EL77
guys for that dorian question, it was asking how far and in what ways we agree with the view that lord henry is a victim of dorian right?


Just talk about Henry being both a tempter and a victim.
To what extent do you agree with this view.
Reply 447
Original post by Tweek
Just talk about Henry being both a tempter and a victim.
To what extent do you agree with this view.


yeah thats what i did, i had some friends who misread the quote though because it was poorly worded and thought it said dorian is a victim of lord henry's (which does make more sense) but yeah phew! i read it as saying lord henry is a victim of dorian's
Original post by Tweek
Just talk about Henry being both a tempter and a victim.
To what extent do you agree with this view.


So that's what you do with these "how far/extent" questions?

The Jane Eyre question was.

Jane Eyre is a novel full of 'hunger, rebellion and rage'.

How far and to what extent do you find these qualities in Jane Eyre?

I put:

Yes you do:
Talked about HUNGER
Talked about REBELLION
Talked about RAGE

No you don't:
Talked about LOVE
Talked about GENDER (Linked it to rebellion)
Didn't have time to balance it out here so I had 3 for and 2 against the view.

Concluded that it features those qualities, however, it is about much more than just that.

Is that the right way to go about it? :smile:
Reply 449
Original post by EL77
yeah thats what i did, i had some friends who misread the quote though because it was poorly worded and thought it said dorian is a victim of lord henry's (which does make more sense) but yeah phew! i read it as saying lord henry is a victim of dorian's


Some people where saying it was a bit of an odd question, and I had to think for a while to decide how to answer it. Quite a lot seemed to have gone for B this year, where as most go for question A.

But no, you read it right,

Original post by Phil Dunphy
So that's what you do with these "how far/extent" questions?

The Jane Eyre question was.

Jane Eyre is a novel full of 'hunger, rebellion and rage'.

How far and to what extent do you find these qualities in Jane Eyre?

I put:

Yes you do:
Talked about HUNGER
Talked about REBELLION
Talked about RAGE

No you don't:
Talked about LOVE
Talked about GENDER (Linked it to rebellion)
Didn't have time to balance it out here so I had 3 for and 2 against the view.

Concluded that it features those qualities, however, it is about much more than just that.

Is that the right way to go about it? :smile:


I have the OCR companion guide. And it states the best formula to answer such questions is to give views for, then against. This can either be all at once or you can zig-zag between an agreeing view, then a disagreeing, and so on until you make a conclusion. So yes that would be the preferred way to go about answering. You've used the asked themes and brought in relevant ones, so I shouldn't see why you haven't met the criteria as long as you brought in context too.

I decided I'd just completely agree with the question on Dorian Gray though.
Reply 450
Anyone else do Emily Dickinson and The turn of the screw? I thought the poetry was okay but the turn of the screw was a bit sketchy

Posted from TSR Mobile
Reply 451
it definitely was an odd one, but yeah phew thats a relief!
Original post by Tweek
Some people where saying it was a bit of an odd question, and I had to think for a while to decide how to answer it. Quite a lot seemed to have gone for B this year, where as most go for question A.

But no, you read it right,



I have the OCR companion guide. And it states the best formula to answer such questions is to give views for, then against. This can either be all at once or you can zig-zag between an agreeing view, then a disagreeing, and so on until you make a conclusion. So yes that would be the preferred way to go about answering. You've used the asked themes and brought in relevant ones, so I shouldn't see why you haven't met the criteria as long as you brought in context too.

I decided I'd just completely agree with the question on Dorian Gray though.


Glad to hear :smile: I completely forgot about language and structure, however. What does it say about that in the companion guide? :frown: I mentioned imagery once
Reply 453
Original post by GeneralStudent95
What novel and collection of poetry are you doing?

We are doing Frankenstein and WB Yeats :smile:


Jane Eyre & Emily Dickinson
Reply 454
Original post by Phil Dunphy
Glad to hear :smile: I completely forgot about language and structure, however. What does it say about that in the companion guide? :frown: I mentioned imagery once


It's not too serious. The most raw marks you can get for language is 5 in the prose section. Which is in total 1/12 of your overall raw marks. And you can pick them up without directly mentioning structure or other terminology.

I think I just threw in Hubris/Hamartia midway in some attempt to pick one or two up. But if I had just started going into structural features it would have been completely irrelevant and ruined any cohesion to my essay.

Nothing too much to worry about.
Original post by Tweek
It's not too serious. The most raw marks you can get for language is 5 in the prose section. Which is in total 1/12 of your overall raw marks. And you can pick them up without directly mentioning structure or other terminology.

I think I just threw in Hubris/Hamartia midway in some attempt to pick one or two up. But if I had just started going into structural features it would have been completely irrelevant and ruined any cohesion to my essay.

Nothing too much to worry about.


Thanks so much! I have been worrying I may have failed due to not putting language in :tongue:
Reply 456
Original post by Phil Dunphy
Well it was one I didn't revise for the night before - so I forgot most of it :tongue: Had to treat it like an unseen.

What did you write?

I did:

"Intro - Written after WW1. Cautionary tale to stop further wars.

Point 1 - "Blood dimmed tide / The ceremony of innocence is drowned". My first point was weak as I was just starting the exam. I said how "innocence" got represent Maud Gonne and the blood dimmed tide is a reference to Maud's involvement in revolutionary politics which changed her world. Compare Maud's involvement to revolutionary politics to Leda and the Swan, both were deeply effected by the two elements. Linked "slow thighs" in the Second Coming to "loosening thighs" in Leda.

Point 2 - Biblical language. Second Coming - Jesus came back to life at Easter (Easter Rising?).

Point 3 - Something about revolutionaries changing Ireland - bloodshed. "The best lack conviction / Whilst the worst are full of passionate intensity" - Linked to the Fisherman and him sitting in "his seat" and letting the revolutionaries change the world.

Point 4 - Structure. Stanza 1 is 8 lines, 2 is 14 lines. Yeats allegedly proposed to Maud Gonne on the 14 August 1917 - reference? Said both stanzas start with repetition - Stanza 1 is about the world's descent into chaos, whereas, Stanza 2 is about the apocalyptic world. Repetition shows it's the same world, etc.

Conc - Quoted Edmund Burke : "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for the good man to do nothing". Linked to Yeats belief about the revolutionaries changing the world for the worse, etc.


Mine was like:

Intro - Just introduced main points about how he presented a chaotic and disastrous image of the world changing etc

Verse Form - Inconsistent meter and rhyme scheme to show the chaos - linked to The Cold Heaven. Talked about structure and how he moved from general to particular in stanza 1 to stanza 2, different from his other pomes such as In Memory of EGB and CM where he moves from particular to general so it shows something must be wrong etc

Imagery - Mostly talked about the stone metaphor for consistency in 'twenty centuries of stony sleep' which is also used in Easter 1916 and The Man and The Echo. Also talked about how he uses sand as a metaphor for time running out in terms of the second coming occuring.

Language - Talked about how the anaphora and epistrophe reflects his cyclical views about history, and the biblical semantic field to link to a new revolution. Also talked about the ambiguous language and lack of specifics and how it leads to fear of the unknown, and the dark semantic field connotes unclarity and ambiguity as well, and also stuff like how he refers to it as 'mere anarchy' which suggests something much worse will come after it.

Conclusion - Summed up my ideas and talked about how the rhetorical question mark at the end adds some ambiguity to his views about the world changing, and said how he also does this in Wild Swans, Leda, Cold Heaven and Among Schoolchildren which reflects the complexity and ambiguity of some of his ideas.

I think Yeats went well but I'm kinda worried that I approached Frankenstein completely wrongly. Could anyone who did the women question tell me what kinds of things they wrote? :smile:
(edited 10 years ago)
Reply 457
Original post by Jaegon Targaryen
Im doing Jane Eyre and Emily Dickinson

Cramming in the quotes at this point !

Anyone got any Ideas about what might come up or any critic quotes ?


How did you find it?
Reply 458
Original post by Phil Dunphy
I didn't mention any of them :tongue: The red room would've been good to talk about rage - damn! Oh well, the answer to the original question is: no, I did not use language or imagery in the essay. Likely I failed.


I included the red room : Jane "Mad Cat" and Bertha "on all fours" and how they both have "animalistic" features, i used it as in favour of the proposed argument
Reply 459
Original post by Phil Dunphy
We haven't done a Jane Eyre mock, but I got a high C on my poetry mock.

I made up critics (so I've got critics), structure - how can you talk about this for prose? :tongue: I have context :smile:


For prose on structure- Bildungsroman & semi-autobiographical & structured through location/setting & narrated from a first-narrative point of few......................

Quick Reply

Latest