ENG3705
EXAM PACK
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,ENG3705 MAY/ JUNE 2024
UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS
May/June 2024
ENG3705
Modern and Postmodern Literature in English
100 Marks
Duration: 4 Hours
Examiners: EL Nortjé, AE Pretorius
External examiner: C Thurman
This paper consists of 4 pages.
Instructions:
The examination paper consists of two sections. Answer ONE question from Section A,
and ONE question from Section B. You should answer TWO (2) questions in total.
Your answers should be in the form of essays of at least 1000 words each.
IMPORTANT:
You may use your primary texts – the poem, short stories, and the novels – to assist you, but you
must cite these correctly. If you decide to use additional resources, you must cite these sources
correctly.
If you copy from another source without proper acknowledgement, or use AI to generate
an answer, you WILL face disciplinary action and risk suspension from the university.
We will be using Turn-it-in software to compare your answers to all the information available on
the web, so it will not be possible to hide plagiarism. Remember to sign the Honesty Declaration
upon submission.
QR code for Invigilator App: Scan this code before you do anything else.
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,ENG3705 MAY/ JUNE 2024
SECTION A
Answer Question 1 OR Question 2
Question 1: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
In the traditional “Beauty and the Beast” fairy tale, Beauty restores the Beast’s humanity
through her love for him. However, in “The Tiger’s Bride” by Angela Carter, the Tiger
saves the Bride by stripping away her humanity. Do you agree with this statement?
Conduct a close reading of the extract below to justify your answer in an essay of at least
1000 words.
He was pacing backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, the tip
of his heavy tail twitching as he paced out the length and breadth of his
imprisonment between the gnawed and bloody bones.
He will gobble you up.
Nursery fears made flesh and sinew; earliest and most archaic of fears, fear
of devourment. The beast and his carnivorous bed of bone and I, white,
shaking, raw, approaching him as if offering, in myself, the key to a
peaceable kingdom in which his appetite need not be my extinction.
He went still as stone. He was far more frightened of me than I was of him.
I squatted on the wet straw and stretched out my hand. I was now within the
field of force of his golden eyes. He growled at the back of his throat,
lowered his head, sank on to his forepaws, snarled, showed me his red
gullet, his yellow teeth. I never moved. He snuffed the air, as if to smell my
fear; he could not.
Slowly, slowly he began to drag his heavy, gleaming weight across the floor
towards me.
A tremendous throbbing, as of the engine that makes the earth turn, filled
the little room; he had begun to purr.
The sweet thunder of this purr shook the old walls, made the shutters batter
the windows until they burst apart and let in the white light of the snowy
moon. Tiles came crashing down from the roof; I heard them fall into the
courtyard far below. The reverberations of his purring rocked the
foundations of the house, the walls began to dance. I thought: 'It will all fall,
everything will disintegrate.'
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He dragged himself closer and closer to me, until I felt the harsh velvet of
his head against my hand, then a tongue, abrasive as sandpaper. 'He will
lick the skin off me!'
And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the
skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs.
My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I
shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.
(50 marks)
OR
Question 2: The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
Think about what you have learned in this course and select a poetic device that you are
familiar with. Write an essay of at least 1000 words in which you discuss how Eliot uses
this poetic device in any 10 consecutive lines from The Waste Land. (You can refer to
fewer or more lines but try to keep it brief and focused).
Remember that you need to formulate a thesis statement in relation to your argument
and include it in your introduction.
(50 marks)
SECTION B
Answer Question 3 OR Question 4
Question 3: Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Despite efforts to do so throughout the novel, the Magistrate is unable to recall the
barbarian girl before she was maimed by the torturers. The Magistrate’s efforts to
remember her are at times echoed in his dreams: “The face I see is blank, featureless; it
is the face of an embryo or a tiny whale; it is not a face at all but another part of the human
body that bulges under the skin; it is white; it is the snow itself” (1980: 37).
In a critical essay of at least 1000 words, discuss the ways in which the Magistrate’s
dreams of the barbarian girl both reflect and contrast with events in the novel. Your essay
could include a close reading of the Magistrate’s dreams and a discussion of why the
Magistrate tries so hard to recall the barbarian girl before she was tortured.
(50 marks)
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