AQA English language paper 2 writers viewpoints and perspectives/AQA English language paper 2 writers viewpoints and perspectivesAQA English language paper 2 writers viewpoints and perspectivesAQA English language paper 2 writers viewpoints and perspectivesAQA English language paper 2 writers viewp...
GCSE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Paper 2 Writers’ viewpoints and perspectives
Insert
The two sources that follow are:
Source A: 20th Century literary non-fiction
Touching the Void
An extract from an autobiographical account by Joe Simpson published in 1988
Source B: 19th Century non-fiction
Climbing the Meije
An extract from a letter written by explorer Gertrude Bell in 1899
Please turn the page over to see the sources
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, 2
Source A
Source A is an extract from Touching the Void, in which experienced climber Joe Simpson
describes how he and fellow climber Simon Yates scaled a 21 000 foot mountain in Peru. On
the way down, Joe fell and broke his leg. In this extract, Joe explains how, because of his
broken leg, Simon had to lower him down the mountain using a rope.
1 The col was exposed and windy. Directly beneath us the glacier we had walked up five
days ago curved away towards the crevasses which led to base camp, nearly 3 000 feet
below us. It would take many long lowerings, but it was all downhill, and we had lost the
4 sense of hopelessness that had invaded us at the ice cliff.
5 ‘What time is it?’ Simon asked.
‘Just gone four. We don’t have much time, do we?’
I could see him weighing up the possibilities. I wanted to carry on down, but it was Simon’s
decision. I waited for him to make up his mind.
‘I think we should keep going,’ he said at last.
10 Simon let me slide faster than I had expected and, despite my cries of alarm and pain, he
had kept the pace of descent going. I stopped shouting to him after fifty feet. The rising
wind and continuous avalanches drowned out all communications. Instead I concentrated
on keeping my leg clear of the snow. It was an impossible task. Despite lying on my good
leg, the right boot snagged in the snow as the weight of my body pushed down. Each
15 abrupt jerk caused searing pain in my knee. I sobbed and gasped, swore at the snow and
the cold, and most of all at Simon. At the change-over point, I hopped on to my left leg,
trying to think the pain away. It ebbed slowly, leaving a dreadful throbbing ache and a
leaden tiredness.
The tugs came again far too soon, and carelessly I slumped against the rope and let myself
20 go. The drop went on until I could bear it no longer, yet there was nothing that I could do to
bring the agony to an end. Howling and screaming for Simon to stop achieved nothing; the
blame had to lie somewhere, so I swore Simon’s character to the devil.
23 The terrible sliding stopped, and I hung silently against the slope. Three faint tugs trembled
the taut rope, and I hopped up on to my leg. A wave of nausea and pain swept over me. I
25 was glad of the freezing blasts of snow biting into my face. My head cleared as I waited for
the burning to subside from my knee. Several times I had felt it twist sideways when my
boot snagged. There would be a flare of agony as the knee kinked back, and parts within
the joint seemed to shear past each other with a sickening gristly crunch. I had barely
ceased sobbing before my boot snagged again. At the end my leg shook uncontrollably. I
30 tried to stop it shaking, but the harder I tried, the more it shook. I pressed my face into the
31 snow, gritted my teeth, and waited. At last it eased.
Simon had already started to climb down. I looked up but failed to make out where he was.
I began digging Simon’s belay* seat. It was warming work and distracted attention from my
knee. When I looked up again Simon could be seen descending quickly.
35 ‘At this rate we should be down by nine o’clock,’ he said cheerfully.
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