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AQA English Language - Paper 1 Question

Extract:

"Arthur Rowe looked wistfully over the railings - there were still railings. The fête called him like innocence: it was entangled in childhood, with vicarage gardens and girls in white summer frocks and the smell of herbaceous borders and security. He had no inclination to mock at these elaborately naïve ways of making money for a cause. There was the inevitable clergyman presiding over a rather timid game of chance; an old lady in a print dress that came down to her ankles and a floppy garden hat hovered officially, but with excitement, over a treasure-hunt (a little plot of ground like a child's garden was staked out with claims), and as the evening darkened - they would have to close early because of the blackout - there would be some energetic work with trowels. And there in a corner, under a plane tree, was the fortuneteller's booth - unless it was an impromptu outside lavatory. It all seemed perfect in the late summer Sunday afternoon. "My peace I give unto you. Not as the world knoweth peace..." Arthur Rowe's eyes filled with tears, as the small military band they had somehow managed to borrow struck up again a faded song of the last war: Whate'er befall I'll oft recall that sunlit mountainside.
Pacing round the railings he came towards his doom: pennies were rattling down a curved slope on to a chequer-board - not very many pennies. The fête was ill-attended; there were only three stalls and people avoided those. If they had to spend money they would rather try for a dividend - of pennies from the chequer-board or savings-stamps from the treasure-hunt. Arthur Rowe came along the railings, hesitantly, like an intruder, or an exile who has returned home after many years and is uncertain of his welcome.
He was a tall stooping lean man with black hair going grey and a sharp narrow face, nose a little twisted out of the straight and a too sensitive mouth. His clothes were good but gave the impression of being uncared for; you would have said a bachelor if it had not been for an indefinable married look...
"The charge," said the middle-aged lady at the gate, "is a shilling, but that doesn't seem quite fair. If you wait another five minutes you can come in at the reduced rate. I always feel it's only right to warn people when it gets as late as this."
"It's very thoughtful of you."
"We don't want people to feel cheated - even in a good cause, do we?"
"I don't think I'll wait, all the same. I'll come straight in. What exactly is the cause?"
"Comforts for free mothers - I mean mothers of the free nations."
Arthur Rowe stepped joyfully back into adolescence, into childhood. There had always been a fête about this time of the year in the vicarage garden, a little way off the Trumpington Road, with the flat Cambridgeshire field beyond the extemporized bandstand, and at the end of the fields the pollarded willows by the stickleback stream and the chalk-pit on the slopes of what in Cambridgeshire they call a hill. He came to these fêtes every year with an odd feeling of excitement - as if anything might happen, as if the familiar pattern of life that afternoon might be altered for ever. The band beat in the warm late sunlight, the brass quivered like haze, and the faces of strange young women would get mixed up with Mrs Troup, who kept the general store and post office, Miss Savage the Sunday School teacher, the publicans' and the clergy's wives. When he was a child, he would follow his mother round the stalls - the baby clothes, the pink woollies, the art pottery, and always last and best the white elephants. It was always as though there might be discovered on the white elephant stall some magic ring which would give three wishes or the heart's desire, but the odd thing was that when he went home that night with only a second-hand copy of The Little Duke, by Charlotte M. Yonge, or an out-of-date atlas advertising Mazawattee tea, he felt no disappointment: he carried with him the sound of brass, the sense of glory, of a future that would be braver than today. In adolescence the excitement had a different source; he imagined he might find at the vicarage some girl whom he had never seen before, and courage would touch his tongue, and in the late evening there would be dancing on the lawn and the smell of stocks. But because these dreams had never come true there remained the sense of innocence..."

A student, having read the extract, commented: “Arthur Rowe
Enjoys the community spirit of the fête and will always look back fondly on his childhood.” To what extent do you agree?

In your response, you could:

Consider your own impressions of how Arthur Rowe feels.
Evaluate how the writer creates the atmosphere.
Support your opinions with quotations from the text.

Need help, thanks!!!!

Reply 1

username5281476

Hey I'm in year 11 and I'm predicted pretty decent grades. Here is a point for the beginning of an essay.
- Focus on specific use of words such as "entangled" and "herbaceous" and the connotations they have. I'd say they connote confusion and an explosive atmosphere but the choice is yours.

If you need help about how to explain writers techniques and how to structure your answer, jus gimme a shout :smile: