Find Grade 11 English Paper 2 Poetry Questions and Answers. You can use the questions for your exam and test revision studies.
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Poetry Essay Question
Read the poem below and then answer the question that follows:
- Turning and turning in the widening gyre
- The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
- Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
- Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
- The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
- The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
- The best lack all conviction, while the worst
- Are full of passionate intensity.
- Surely some revelation is at hand;
- Surely the Second Coming is at hand;
- The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
- When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
- Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
- A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
- A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
- Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
- Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
- The darkness drops again; but now I know
- That twenty centuries of stony sleep
- Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
- And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
- Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Question: In a carefully planned essay, critically discuss how the poet uses diction, imagery and tone to suggest a future world characterised by violence and chaos. Your essay must be 200–250 words (about ONE page) in length.
Contextual Questions
THE WOMAN – Kristina Rungano
- A minute ago I came from the well
- Where young women drew water like myself
- My body was weary and my heart tired.
- For a moment I watched the stream that rushed before me;
- And thought how fresh the smell of flowers,
- How young the grass around it.
- And yet again I heard the sound of duty
- Which ground on me – made me feel aged
- As I bore the great big mud container on my head
- Like a big painful umbrella.
- Then I got home and cooked your meal
- For you had been out drinking the pleasures of the flesh
- While I toiled in the fields.
- Under the angry vigilance of the sun
- A labour shared only by the bearings of my womb.
- I washed the dishes – yours –
- And swept the room we shared
- Before I set forth to prepare your bedding
- In the finest corner of the hut
- Which was bathed by the sweet smell of dung
- I had this morning applied to the floors
- Then you came in,
- In your drunken lust
- And you made your demands
- When I explained how I was tired
- And how I feared for the child – yours – I carried
- You beat me and had your way
- At that moment
- You left me unhappy and bitter
- And I hated you;
- Yet tomorrow I shall again wake up to you
- Milk the cow, plough the land and cook your food,
- You shall again be my Lord
- For isn’t it right that woman should obey,
- Love, serve and honour her man?
- For are you not the fruit of the land?
Questions:
- Comment on the repetition of ‘And’ throughout the poem. (2)
- Critically discuss the change in tone in the poem. (3)
- Consider the poem as a whole. To what extent is this poem a commentary
on the traditional roles of women in rural Africa? Refer to diction in support of
your answer.
