First Examiners: Prof. A. Kreuiter and Ms L. Nortje
Second Examiners: Ms L. Phakathi and Dr B. Janari
, lOMoARcPSD|49173813
ENG1501 October/November 2024
QUESTION 1: SHORT STORY: ‘Supermarket Soliloquy’ – Moira Crosbie Lovell
Read the extract from Moira Crosbie Lovell’s story “Supermarket soliloquy” and then answer
the questions that follow.
Each answer must:
• be written as a paragraph of between 5 and 10 lines
• begin with a topic sentence that reflects the main topic of the paragraph
• be substantiated by giving evidence from the short story
• end with a conclusion that summarises and reflects on the significance of what you
have argued.
• Use the dictionary to look up words you do not understand.
Supermarket soliloquy by
Moira Crosbie Lovell
, lOMoARcPSD|49173813
ENG1501 October/November 2024
There's a queue of empty trolleys lined up outside. Like wire
prams. The one you choose has a gammy wheel, which seriously
affects your gait and reminds you that you are not a spry young
mother with a comatose cutie out for a walk, but a middle-aged
woman with a bare cupboard and intimations of mortality.
Entrance is free. 'Welcome to a walk in the supermarket park.
Where the sun never sets (fluorescent lighting); the air's fresh and
bracing (air-conditioned); and the band's always playing (on tape).
No dogs allowed'.
But there is a catch. It’s just like life. Entrance is free. But you
accumulate debts on the way. And you have to pay before you exit.
Just like life.
On the right, as you enter, eggs, bulging in their trays, lie like
wards of pregnant women waiting to deliver the contents of their
stomachs. You take down a tray. One egg's already broken in its
bed. Stickily. Prematurely. And the porcelain womb, cracked, can't
be repaired with glue. It's finished. Like yours.
A little further on there's a refrigerator shelf stacked with great plastic
breasts of milk. You hold one in each hand, feeling the weight,
pressing them gently. They are as full as yours used to be. A
brimming cup of C. And nippleless. As yours are now, awaiting
reconstruction. For a moment, weighing the smooth packets in the
scale of your palms, you think you won't bother, after all, with that
final artifice. You have no need now of nipples. Either for feeding or
for flirting.
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