Cambridge International AS & A Level

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH 9695/22

Paper 2 Prose and Unseen May/June 2023

2 hours

You must answer on the enclosed answer booklet.

* 5 6 1 5 3 8 9 5 4 2 *

You will need: Answer booklet (enclosed)

INSTRUCTIONS
● Answer two questions in total:
Section A: answer one question.
Section B: answer one question.
● Follow the instructions on the front cover of the answer booklet. If you need additional answer paper,
ask the invigilator for a continuation booklet.
● Dictionaries are not allowed.

INFORMATION
● The total mark for this paper is 50.
● All questions are worth equal marks.

This document has 12 pages. Any blank pages are indicated.

DC (RCL (DF)) 313409/3

© UCLES 2023 [Turn over
 2

Section A: Prose

Answer one question from this section.

IAN McEWAN: Atonement

1 Either (a) Discuss McEwan’s presentation of the love between Cecilia and Robbie in the
novel.

Or (b) Comment closely on the following passage, considering McEwan’s presentation of

Briony and her thoughts.

Within the half hour Briony would commit her crime.

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

It was promotion.

(from Chapter 13)

© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23

 3

NGŨGĨ WA THIONG’O: Petals of Blood

2 Either (a) Discuss ways in which Ngũgĩ presents Christianity in the novel.

Or (b) Comment closely on ways in which Ngũgĩ presents the lawyer and his ideas in the
following passage.

The lawyer started talking.

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

Still they are condemned … damned.

(from The Journey)

© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23 [Turn over

 4

Stories of Ourselves, Volume 2

3 Either (a) Discuss ways in which the writers of two stories present characters’ disappointments.

Or (b) Comment closely on the following passage from Philip K Dick’s Stability, considering
its effectiveness as the end of the story.

He stared at the round ball in disbelief. The Controller looked at Benton with an
amused glance.
‘Odd, how stupid we may be for a time, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘But eventually we
wake up. Don’t touch it! ’
Benton slowly stepped back, his hands shaking. 5
‘Well?’ he demanded. The globe was angry at being in the Controller’s hand.
It began to buzz, and vibrations crept down the Controller’s arm. He felt them, and
took a firmer grip on the globe.
‘I think it wants me to break it,’ he said, ‘it wants me to smash it on the floor
so that it can get out.’ He watched the tiny spires and building tops in the murky 10
mistiness of the globe, so tiny that he could cover them all with his fingers.
Benton dived. He came straight and sure, the way he had flown so many times
in the air. Now every minute that he had hurtled about the warm blackness of the
atmosphere of the City of Lightness came back to help him. The Controller, who
had always been too busy with his work, always too piled up ahead to enjoy the 15
airsports that the City was so proud of, went down at once. The globe bounced out
of his hands and rolled across the room. Benton untangled himself and leaped up.
As he raced after the small shiny sphere, he caught a glimpse of the frightened,
bewildered faces of the Members, of the Controller attempting to get to his feet, face
contorted with pain and horror. 20
The globe was calling to him, whispering to him. Benton stepped swiftly toward
it, and felt a rising whisper of victory and then a scream of joy as his foot crushed
the glass that imprisoned it.
The globe broke with a loud popping sound. For a time it lay there, then a mist
began to rise from it. Benton returned to the couch and sat down. The mist began to 25
fill the room. It grew and grew, it seemed almost like a living thing, so strangely did
it shift and turn.
Benton began to drift into sleep. The mist crowded about him, curling over his
legs, up to his chest, and finally milled about his face. He sat there, slumped over on
the couch, his eyes closed, letting the strange, aged fragrance envelop him. 30
Then he heard the voices. Tiny and far away at first, the whisper of the globe
multiplied countless times. A concert of whispering voices rose from the broken
globe in a swelling crescendo of exultation. Joy of victory! He saw the tiny miniature
city within the globe waver and fade, then change in size and shape. He could hear
it now as well as see it. The steady throbbing of the machinery like a gigantic drum. 35
The shaking and quivering of squat metal beings.
These beings were tended. He saw the slaves, sweating, stooped, pale men,
twisting in their efforts to keep the roaring furnaces of steel and power happy. It
seemed to swell before his eyes until the entire room was full of it, and the sweating
workmen brushed against him and around him. He was deafened by the raging 40
power, the grinding wheels and gears and valves. Something was pushing against
him, compelling him to move forward, forward to the City, and the mist gleefully
echoed the new, victorious sounds of the freed ones.
When the sun came up he was already awake. The rising bell rang, but Benton
had left his sleeping-cube some time before. As he fell in with the marching ranks of 45
his companions, he thought he recognized familiar faces for an instant – men he had
known someplace before. But at once the memory passed. As they marched toward
the waiting machines, chanting the tuneless sounds their ancestors had chanted for
© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23
 5

centuries, and the weight of his tools pressed against his back, he counted the time
before his next rest day. It was only about three weeks to go now, and anyhow, he 50
might be in line for a bonus if the Machines saw fit –
For had he not been tending his machine faithfully?

(from Stability)

© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23 [Turn over

 6

MARK TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

4 Either (a) Huck says: ‘I got so down-hearted and scared, I did wish I had some company.’

In the light of Huck’s comment, discuss ways in which Twain presents companionship
in the novel.

Or (b) Comment closely on Twain’s presentation of the duke and the king in the following
passage.

‘Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these
gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in
blue jeans and misery, the wanderin’, exiled, trampled-on and sufferin’ rightful King
of France.’
Well, he cried and took on so, that me and Jim didn’t know hardly what to do, 5
we was so sorry – and so glad and proud we’d got him with us, too. So we set in,
like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort him. But he said it warn’t
no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; though
he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him
according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always 10
called him ‘Your Majesty’, and waited on him first at meals, and didn’t set down in
his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him, and doing
this and that and t’other for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down.
This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. But the duke
kind of soured on him, and didn’t look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; 15
still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke’s great-grandfather
and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father and
was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke staid huffy a good
while, till by-and-by the king says:
‘Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time, on this h-yer raft, 20
Bilgewater, and so what’s the use o’ your bein’ sour? It’ll only make things
oncomfortable. It ain’t my fault I warn’t born a duke, it ain’t your fault you warn’t born
a king – so what’s the use to worry? Make the best o’things the way you find ’em,
says I – that’s my motto. This ain’t no bad thing that we’ve struck here – plenty grub
and an easy life – come, give us your hand, Duke, and less all be friends.’ 25
The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away all
the uncomfortableness, and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a
miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above
all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards
the others. 30
It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings nor
dukes, at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never
let on; kept it to myself; it’s the best way; then you don’t have no quarrels, and
don’t get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn’t no
objections, ’long as it would keep peace in the family; and it wan’t no use to tell Jim, 35
so I didn’t tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way
to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.

(from Chapter 19)

© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23

 7

TURN OVER FOR SECTION B.

© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23 [Turn over

 8

Section B: Unseen

Answer one question from this section.

Either

5 Discuss the presentation of the speaker’s feelings about rejection in the following poem.

Consider the writer’s choice of language, structure and poetic methods in your answer.

At Last Withdraw Your Cruelty

At last withdraw your cruelty

Or let me die at once.
It is too much extremity,
Devised for the nonce,1
To hold me still alive 5
In pains still for to strive.
What may I more sustain,
Alas, that die would fain2
And cannot die for pain?

For to the flame wherewith I burn 10

My thought and my desire,
When into ashes it should turn
My heart by fervent fire
You send a stormy rain
That doth it quench again 15
And makes my eyes express
The tears that do redress
My life in wretchedness.

Then when these should have drowned

And overwhelmed my heart 20
The heat doth them confound,
Renewing all my smart.
Then doth the flame increase.
My torment cannot cease.
My pains doth then revive 25
And I remain alive
With death still for to strive.

But if that you will have my death

And that you would no nother3
Then shortly for to stop my breath 30
Withdraw the one or other,
For this your cruelness
Doth let itself, doubtless,
And that is reason why
No man alive nor I 35
Of double death can die.

1 nonce: moment
2 would fain: would like to
3 no nother: nothing else
© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23
 9

Or

6 Discuss the presentation of the events in the following extract.

Consider the writer’s choice of language, imagery and narrative methods in your answer.

‘Hey, you!’ the police inspector called to Sunday.

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23 [Turn over

 10
Content removed due to copyright restrictions.
The startled crowd
had stopped singing and was staring open-mouthed at the spectacle.

© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23

 11

BLANK PAGE

© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23

 12

BLANK PAGE

Permission to reproduce items where third-party owned material protected by copyright is included has been sought and cleared where possible. Every
reasonable effort has been made by the publisher (UCLES) to trace copyright holders, but if any items requiring clearance have unwittingly been included, the
publisher will be pleased to make amends at the earliest possible opportunity.

To avoid the issue of disclosure of answer-related information to candidates, all copyright acknowledgements are reproduced online in the Cambridge
Assessment International Education Copyright Acknowledgements Booklet. This is produced for each series of examinations and is freely available to download
at www.cambridgeinternational.org after the live examination series.

Cambridge Assessment International Education is part of Cambridge Assessment. Cambridge Assessment is the brand name of the University of Cambridge
Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), which is a department of the University of Cambridge.

© UCLES 2023 9695/22/M/J/23