JAMB Literature in English 1982 Past Questions

Wordsworth's 'The World is Too Much With Us' is a

'The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me in borrowed robes?
Macbeth is putting this question to

The grave procession in Soyinka''s ''procession l-Hanging day'' is meant to suggest in the entire poem

The dominant attitude in T.S. Eliot's 'Journey of the magi's is

Gray's 'Elegy Written in a country churchyard' can be seen as

In Shakespeare''s Macbeth, the central character-Macbeth-is

The 'Myth of the Bagre' is recited at the

Dramatic irony entails

what is the subject of Kalu Uka's 'Earth to Earth?

Which character made the following statement in Macbeth?:
This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses'

Which character does NOT fit into the group?

The subject of 'If You Should Know Me' by Oswald Mtshali is that the

In The Marriage of Anansewa, to which character
do the following praise-names refer?
'Oh Mighty-Tree-of-Ancient-Origin
Mighty-Tree-of-Ancient-Origin
Rooted in the shrine of deity
Countless branches in which
Benighted wandering birds
Are welcome to shelter'

In Oswald Mtshali's 'nightfall in Soweto', Night represents

Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' is a romantic poem because

In Mine Boy Peter Abraham's is of the view that in South Africa

'He sat down on a box. he took out letter he had received from Joseph the other Friday and read it again. Then he put it back. A tear, a single tear, ran down his face. he rubbed it off, rather impatiently. he poured water, cold water from a cup, into one hand and washed his face.
He was suddenly very lucid, calm inside'.
What makes this scene taken from a novel very real to the reader is the writer's use of

'Folk all fade. And whither.
As i wait alone where the fair was?
Into the clammy and numbing night fog
Whence they entered hither
Soon one more goes thither!
In these lines, 'the clammy and numbing night fog' (line3) refers to

'Dead leaves blew into the room.
And alighted upon my bed.
Ans a tree declared to the gloom
Its sorrow that they were shed'
The mood registered in these lines is

So fair fancy few would weave
In these years!
The poetic device consciously used here is

'But now as he climbed the steep path leading to his home, his courage started to lag behind. His conscience lagged behind. His weak body and hungry stomach pushed him expectantly up the path towards home, where rest and satisfaction awaited him...'
The literary device predominantly used in this passage is

'He glanced at his bitten nails, and with his chin resting on his knees, said, 'well, i ask them to let me go below to visit my pa in the cell. they feel sorry for me, and say its okay. So i go down to see him, this man what made my ma's life a misery like hell, and who never had a word for me, and did nothing but give me the belt'.
From what he says, the kid in this passage

'Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knowest and i know not-
So much the happier am i'
This verse is taken from a poem written by a soldier at the battle-front. He clearly sees dying in battle as

'Cheers!' said koomson. he looked ready to add something as he raised his glass, but the high voice of his wife cut the air to pieces.
'This local beer,'she was saying, 'does agree with my constitution.'
'And what sort of constitution is it that you have?'asked the man from his isolated place.

What the writer feels for or toward the woman in his passage is

'But it has been from the first her great mistake to meet him, marry him, to love him as she so bitterly had. Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that all women had been cursed from the cradle: all, in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to suffer the weight of men'.
The sentiment expressed here about the curse on women is

He would like some good Fufu, but without a lot of meat, street Fufu is miserable food, and with meat the cost will crucify a man completely.
The man in this passage is obviously

'And now the bells are chiming
A year is born
'And my heart bell is ringing
in a dawn'
The writer of these words is in a state of

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered Figuring what anything is far;

Enough for her devotions that things are And can be contemplated soon as gathered

She knows how every living thing was fathered,
She calculates the climate of each star,
She counts the fish at sea, but cannot care
Why any one of them exists, fish, fire or feathered

The dominant rhetorical device used in the poem is

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered Figuring what anything is far;

Enough for her devotions that things are And can be contemplated soon as gathered

She knows how every living thing was fathered,
She calculates the climate of each star,
She counts the fish at sea, but cannot care
Why any one of them exists, fish, fire or feathered

The poet suggests that science

In Zambia Shall Be Free Kaunda's 'wandering day's resulted from his

In Mine Boy, the dominant shebeen queen who is described as 'tall and big, with the smooth yellowness of the Basuto women...'is

'Local colour'in a novel or play is feature which

''London''

I wander thro'' each charter''d street

Near where the charter''d Thames does flow,

And mark in every face i meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe



In every cry of every Man

In every infant''s cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forged manacles i hear.



How the chimney-sweeper''s cry

Every black''ning Church appalls;

And the hapless Soldier''s sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls.



But most thro'' midnight streets i hear

How the youthful Harlot''s curse

Blasts the new born infant''s tear,

And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

The stanza form in ''London'' is referred to as

Kaunda's reminiscences of his boyhood in Lubwa were

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Close bosom-friend of the mating sun:
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the
thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples and moss'd cottage tress
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the ground, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er brimm'd their clammy cells.



The most important figure of speech in the above passage is

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Close bosom-friend of the mating sun:
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the
thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples and moss'd cottage tress
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the ground, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er brimm'd their clammy cells.


The above passage derives its theme from

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Close bosom-friend of the mating sun:
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the
thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples and moss'd cottage tress
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the ground, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er brimm'd their clammy cells.


The dominant images in the above passage are

As non-fiction, V.S Naipaul's The Middle Passage belongs more properly to the genre of

When Di says of Eliza, 'That girl is tragedy already' she means

The other team was composed of much bigger boys than any we had in Galike and they chose the biggest of them all, sending him out like Goliath from the Philistines to challenge one of our team.
In this passage Kenneth Kaunda makes his account of the fight more vivid through the use of

Kenneth Kaunda fought a much bigger boy from another school after a football match because he

I have thee not yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling, as to sight'
'fatal vision' in the second line is a reference to

Which of the following is a major source of interest in As You Like It?

This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me
The simple news that Nature told
With tender majesty

Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen
Judge tenderly of me'

To whom does 'her' in line 5 refer?

Girls dance and sing. Men clap .The walls sing and press inward. They press the men and girls, they press inward. They press the men and girls they press John towards a centre of physical ecstasy .

Tom whom does 'they refer?

In The Narrow Path Nani is transferred very frequently because he is

Which of the following comes closest to a correct interpretation of the symbol of the mine dumps in Mine Boy?

In ' Salute to the Elephant the line 'The elephant's head is his burden which he balances' suggests that

The role of the Storyteller in The Marriage of Anansewa is that of a