JAMB Literature in English 1994 Past Questions

In his judgement over the elders,Ovonramwen reveals his preference for

The factor which led to the collapse of the Benin Empire was

UZAZAKPO:
In my madness, I served Oba Adolo, your
father. That same madness has helped me
keep my body in this palace as jester under
your full moon. If you will listen to me and my
madness, I will tell you frankly that the way you
talked to the chiefs was not the right way
The tone of the above statement is

UZAZAKPO:
In my madness, I served Oba Adolo, your
father. That same madness has helped me
keep my body in this palace as jester under
your full moon. If you will listen to me and my
madness, I will tell you frankly that the way you
talked to the chiefs was not the right way'
The play above is basically a

"If
a provoked houseboy
cannot match his
wicked master
strength with strength,
he maims the master's favorite
goat!"

Obaruduagbon employs this proverb to explain why

"There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face...'

Based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth,the above statement means that there is no

"Why should I play the Roman fool, and die
On mine own sword?"

Based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth,playing the Roman fool from the above statement implies

"Rather than so, come fate, into the list,
And champion me to the utterance!"

Based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth, "Rather than so"in the quotation above refers to

"Thou loosest labour
As easy may'st thou the in trenchant air
With thy keen sword impress,..."

Based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the confidence above derives from the fact that

'...Sir, nose-painting, sleep and urine.Lechery,
Sir, it provokes:it provokes the
desire, but it takes away the performance.'

Based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the statement above can best be described as

The word which when applied describes the posture of the speaker in "The Fence" is

"The drum is silenced in mid-throb;
the flute is flung away;
and ears strain to master the malediction
of the thunder."

These lines from "For Christopher Okigbo" shows that the main occurrence in the poem is

"...He who sharpened the edge of hearts...."

In Kunene's To The Soldier "Hero" is

The pauper in Richard Ntiru's poem of that title is

"...Let the greying day grow,
...let the evening horns blow,
...let the melting mountains go...'

The repetition of these lines from Atukwei Okai's
"Sunset Sonata"

"Kwarshiorkor", "grave", "ravage", "wreck", "funeral", "piles" and fearful".

These words from J.P. Clarks "The Casualties" connote

The line 'Ask them why they idle there' in Kofi Awoonor's Song of Sorrow' is a reference to

"...Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbert."

The emotion evoked in this passage from "Journey of the Magi" is that of

"I came down the step with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he
was at the trough before me."

These lines from "Snakes" suggests that the

"Keats" "Ode" to a Nightingale" can best be described as

Based on Ayi Kwei Armah's , The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born, the man is despised by the wife and family because he

"....checking the coins against the tickets, he began to count the morning's take. It was mostly what he expected at this time of the month: small coins, a lot of pesewas,..."

Based on Ayi Kwei Armah's , The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born,what time of the month is being referred to in the above statement from the novel?

"In Oyo's eyes there was now real gratitude.
Perhaps for the first time in their married life the
man could believe that she was glad to have him
the way he was."

Based on Ayi Kwei Armah's , The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born, from the above excerpts, Why was Oyo unhappy with her husband?

"Now take this boat business for instance. There is a lot of money to be made in it,but start something, and fools will start shouting slogans at you."

Based on Ayi Kwei Armah's , The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born, who made the above statement?

Based on Ayi Kwei Armah's , The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born,the Chichidodo is hypocritical because it hates

Based on Ayi Kwei Armah's , The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born, what is the author's perception of real change in the novel?

In the novel "Piggy's" glasses symbolizes

"The officer, surrounded by these noises,
was moved and a little embarrassed.He turned away
to give them time to pull themselves together, and
waited, allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser
in the distance."

Based on the novel Piggy's,in the above passage,Golding focuses on the

"I'm going off by myself. He can catch his own pigs.
Anyone who wants to hunt when I do can come too."

Based on the novel Piggy's, The split in the group of boys occurs with the departure of

"...If someone threw you a rope when you were
drowning. If a doctor said take this because if you don't take this because if you
don't take it, you will die- you would, wouldn't you? I
mean?"

Based on the novel "Piggy's",the "rope" and the doctor's prescription refers to the

"You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you Close
close close! I'm the reason why its no go" Why
things are what they are?"

Based on the novel "Piggy's" , the beast's words represents

Based on the novel "Piggy''s", towards the end of the novel, the boys can best be described as

The expression "The sun kisses the earth" is a

"O Julius Caesar, thou are mighty yet
Thy spirit walks abroad."

Based on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the statement above is

The major source of action in any narrative is

A didactic piece is one in which the writer

An over-used expression is

The literary device in which there is a difference between what is stated and what is actually the case is called

A sub-plot is

What basically distinguishes Literature from other disciplines is its

"Stream of consciousness" is the name for

"Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes,you
can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide
going out revealing whatever has been thrown away
and sunk; broken bottles, old gloves,rusting
pop-cans, nibbled fish bodies, bones.The ruin
you've made."

Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

The passage above claims that when "love recedes", you

"But everything does have a beginning, and so if I
am to tell this story I must begin. Yet i do not know
the starting point of my tale."

Based on Nawal El Saadaw's The Circling Song,the speaker of the above statement is the

"The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew
The furrow followed free
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea."

Based on Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', the dominant figure of speech in the above lines is

"The poet needs to be up at night,when the world
sleeps...needs to exist in places where spiders
forge their webs in silence;near the gutters where
the underside of our dreams fester."

Based on Ben Okri's 'Of Poets and their Antagonists', the poet in the passage above is

"Here lies our sovereign Lord the King,
Whose word no man relies on,
Who never said a foolish thing
Nor ever did a wise one,"

Based on John Wilmot Rochester's Epitaph on King Charles 11, the form of the above stanza is an example of

"Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are corals made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade."

The rhyme scheme of the above stanza is

"In the cold hand of death...
his mouth was cotton filled, his man-pike
shrunk to a sub-soil grub
his head was hallowed and his brain
on scales-was this a trick to prove
fore-knowledge after death?"

Based on Wole Soyinka's '' Post Mortem, one of the techniques employed by this poet is the use of

"Marjorie turns to the fish, They swim slickly
backwards and forwards in the bright heaven of
their tanks:'white gravel,silver bubbles,green weed and the iridescence of their scales.They
cheer her. How much more beautiful fish are than
people, she thinks for the thousandth time.No
ungainliness,no filth;no stupidity."

Based on Lesley Glaister's "Serrusalmus", New Writing, in the passage above, the fish are better than people because they are

"He considers also a little fragile,because artistic:
I need to be cared for, like a potted plant. A little
pruning, a little watering, a little weeding and
straightening up to bring out the best in me."

Based on Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye, the "me" in the above passage is seen as