HINTS ON HOW TO ANSWER LITERATURE QUESTIONS

 HINTS ON HOW TO ANSWER LITERATURE 

 QUESTIONS

It is important for candidates writing examinations on literature to know the following points in respect of literature papers and to use them as guide for study towards passing the examination without undue stress.

1.     Read the full texts of the books (plays, novels, and poems) recommended for reading.  At no time must you substitute the abridged or retold editions for the full texts.  No study guide material can replace the real texts.

2.     Ensure that you really fully understand the text you read, paying attention to the main plot and the sub-plots, the main theme and sub-themes, the characterization, and the use of language together with the narrative or dramatic technique.

3.     Before you begin to answer any question, be sure that  you read and understand  the general and specific instructions that the paper carries.  Adhere strictly to the instructions.

4.     Share out the time allowed for the paper equally among the number of questions are to answer.

5.     Attempt the number of questions you are asked to answer.  However well you answer a question, you cannot get more than the marks allotted to it.   

If you fail to answer the number of questions required, you have missed the

marks given to the  number of questions you have left unanswered.

6.     Note that when a question asks you to discuss critically examine an event,

 a situation, or an idea, you are being asked to give your own opinion

  regarding it. You are therefore, expected to consider the cause and the

  effect, the merits and the demerits of the event, and then take a position,  

  that is your  opinion must  however be justified by your arguments.

7.      When a question requires you to compare and contrast two characters or  

  events, you are expected to look at the perspectives in which the two are

  alike and the area in which the two are dissimilar.

8.       Always ensure that your answers have good introductory and concluding

  paragraphs.  Do not abruptly end your answers.

9.       Let your answers be as brief and as straight to the point as possible.  What

  matters to the examiner are the relevant points you make, not the volume

  of your work.

10.                          You are required to present your materials (arguments, narration, etc)

  in a   simple and clear language and in a manner that is logical – well    

  organized.

REVISION QUESTIONS AND MODEL ANSWERS

Most literatures in this site have various questions and answers which  will further help the student to answer most likely examinations questions in literature the world over.

Question: Barlow’s ‘Building the Nation’ is both satiric and ironic. Discuss.

Answer: Henry Barlow’s   Building the Nation’ is indeed a satire and an irony.  It is a   satire because the poem seeks to present the idleness the ostensible dutifulness that is characteristic of government functionaries in Uganda particularly and many other Africa countries in general.  The poem exposes to ridicule, the so called ‘highly delicate diplomatic duties’ whose importance is said to be reflected by the menu.

     Cold Bell beer with small talk,

     The fried chicken with niceties

     Wine to fill the hollowness of the laughs

     Ice-cream to cover the stereotype jokes

     Coffee to keep the PS awake on return journey.

An occasion such as this is what the government functionaries regard as ‘an important urgent function’.

     The poem satirizes the time and money wasted on such extravagant leisure at the expense of other assignments, which are not classified by the government functionaries as important and urgent, that will actually culminate into building a strong and virile nation.

     The poem is also ironic because the two nation builders involved in this poem – the driver and the PS – are presented in such a manner that while the one genuinely builds the nation, the other devours it.   The two nation builders suffer ‘terrible stomach pains’ as a result of building the nation: the driver because of hunger; the PS because of overeating.

     The irony is clearly brought out in the PS’s lamentation:  ‘The pains we suffer in building the nation!’ (line 27). Whereas, it is the driver who should be complaining of not being remembered as a dutiful civil servant at a gathering where assorted drinks, ice-cream, chicken, etc. are plentiful; the PS is actually the one bemoaning the pains he suffers not indeed in building the nation but in servicing his own stomach.

     In conclusion, sarcasm and irony are the two major figures of speech effectively employed in this poem to satirize the waste of public fund and time through the presentation of contrast that exists between a boss and his driver; between the oppressor of contrast that exists between a boss and his driver; between the oppressor and the oppressed in Uganda’s life and by extension, in most African states.

Question:     Compare and contrast Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’ and Soutar’s ‘Parable’ from both thematic and formal perspectives.

Answer:      Both Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’ and Soutar’s ‘Parable’ were written at about the same time.  The two poems take a more philosophical look at the popular English axiom which says that ‘Good fences make good neighbour’ and react to it in a tone that is both condemnatory and didactic.  These poems are of the opinion that fences or walls do not necessarily enhance good neighbourliness as commonly supposed, and that they are not even necessary or required in some instances.

     Frost is equivocal in the statement of his theme.  He uses the mask of the poetic persona to argue that such fences are useful only where there are cows (lines 30 and 31)  that may cause some destruction to plantations; that such fences should be pulled down if they are meant to fence off men because no man is an island, ‘entire in itself’.  This fact of nature is expressed in the indefinable ‘something’ that hates a wall (line 1) .  This line is repeated in line 35 in order to emphasize this point.  In ‘Mending

Wall’, Frost maintains that walls make a man to be physically separated from his neighbours as well as causing psychological distancing of neighbours; that fencing is against nature, symbolically represented in ‘something’ and ‘the work of hunters’ that cause ‘the gaps’ in the wall; that fencing is against the philosophy of the brotherhood of man and mutual co-existence; and that the time and effort used in mending a wall could be used to do some more profitable things.

     Soutar in ‘Parable’ sees the wall as ‘the battlement of peace’ (line 16) rather than a haven of peace.   Soutar’s and Frost’s themes are the same on the phenomenon called wall.  However, Soutar adds that man’s discontentment, pride, and jealousy often lead him to his destruction and untimely death. He uses the story of two dense, proud and jealous neighbours who thought that their peaceful co-existence was made possible by the fence separating their plots of land; and therefore decided to further reinforce their good neighbourliness by replacing the fence with a wall.  This bid, in fact, resulted in their untimely death Soutar’ subtly condemns the unnecessary dissipation of energy, and the wasteful spending of time and money involved in erecting a wall.

     At the formal level, the two poems are not segmented into stanzas.  While Soutar’s ‘Parable’ has a rhyming pattern of the heroic couplet (ab,ab).   Frost’s “Mending Wall’ is a blank verse modeled after the American speech rhythm.   Both poems are narrative and lyrical, and they both make use of alliteration and assonance quite prominently.

     In conclusion, it is evident that though Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’ and Soutar’s Parable’ are different in titles, they however have the same subject matter, the same concern and the same philosophy.  They are very much similar both in theme and form.

Question: Amadi’s The Concubine is a novel of mystery and death.  Discuss.

Answer:  Amadi’s The Concubine is a novel which tells the story of Ihuoma’s unfortunate fate.  A matter of fate, as it were, is beyond the control of man, therefore no man can be said to be responsible for, or understand his fate.  It is against this background that the novel contains certain strange, inexplicable happenings that result in death.  In other words, The Concubine exposes the fact that ordinary events can have far-reaching supernatural consequences.

     Mystery and death in The Concubine are closely connected with Ihuoma, the heroine, whose unlucky fate brings sorrow and death to her suitors.  The first of such mysterious occurrences is Emenike’s sudden illness.  Though it is understandable that Emenike sustains a severe side injury in his fight with Madume, this cannot  be said to be wholly responsible for Emenike’s illness and subsequent death. He recovers fully from his illness, but it has been divined by the medicine man, Anyika, that the long, eerie hoot of an owl outside Ememike’s house portends bad omen.  However, because he has already been marked for destruction, Emenike dares to maintain a facial contact with Nwokekoro, the priest of Amadioha, while performing sacrificial rituals on a Great Eke day.  Out of sheer curiosity, and being his first day at the shrine of Amadioha, Emenike does the forbidden and incurs the wrath of the gods.  He dies under mysterious circumstances a few days later.

     Madume is another character who also has his eyes on Ihuoma.  Ihuomas’s husband having died, Madume wants to seize the advantage to renew his relationship with Ihuoma with desperation.  On two attempts to get close to Ihuoma.  Madume suffers disasters.  First, Madume loses his big toe mysteriously; and when he seeks to know the cause from Anyika, it is confirmed that some unknown spirits are determined to ruin him.  Second, a mysterious cobra spits into his eyes and he loses his sight.  He becomes too unbearable for his wife and children and they desert him.  Having become frustrated as a result of his blindness and his family’s desertion, Madume commits suicide.

     Ekwueme is the third character whose death is as unfortunate as it is mysterious.  In spite of initial constraints,  Ekwueme and Ihuoma are already hopeful of a marriage and are in the mood for it when horror strikes.  On the eve of their wedding, Ihuoma and Ekwueme engage in a very intimate discussion and enjoy an intimate embrace.  A short while after, Nwonna ‘s  barbed arrow hits Ekwueme and he falls.  He never recovers from the injury sustained and he subsequently dies.  This is a mystery because a coloured male lizard needed for the sacrifice to appease the gots has already been caught, and Nwonna is quiet aware of it.  But the mysterious forces use Nwonna to take the life of Ekwueme so that his relationship with Ihuoma can be terminated.

     In conclusion, Amadi’s   The Concubine is indeed a novel of mystery and death because the major characters who have love relationships with the central figure of the novel, Ihuoma, are afflicted with strange disease or spiritual attack and dies under mysterious circumstances.  The wrath of the water spirits and the sea-king is upon them and they die unnaturally.

Question:  Comment on the language and style of Laye’s  The African Child.

Answer:   Laye’s  The  African Child is an autobiography, therefore, the use of personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘me’ is understandably prominent in the novel.  The author, Laye, presents his childhood innocence and the experience of his adulthood.  This is adequately reflected in the childlike simplicity of the language of the novel: the simplicity which portrays the childlike innocence of Laye as reflected in his probing rhetorical questions.

            What was it those eyes were actually gazing at?  I do not know 

            The surrounding countryside?  Maybe.  Maybe it was the distant

            trees, and the far-off sky.  Maybe not.  Maybe those eyes were

            gazing at nothing, fixed on the visible, and maybe that is what

            made them appear so trance, so abstracted … Wasn’t it enough

            to see the ears of rice bowing before the long, gentle wave of those   

            black bodies.

            Poetic diction is also effectively used by Laye to romanticize his

     childhood days and to long for such unrelieved days:

            I remember our love with feelings of piercing sweetness, I think

             and dream about it, dream about it with feelings of inexplicable

            melancholy, because it seems to be now that I lived than one last

            and fragile moment of my youth, a moment in which all my young

            body seemed to take fire.  It is a moment I shall never recapture,

            and which now has only the bitter-sweet charm of something

            vanished forever.

From the above excerpt, we can see that Laye’s The African Child is not just a mere story of Laye’s childhood and adolescent period, it is also about what he feels about those times.  This is the reason why the novel is a blend of the past and present tense.  Autobiographies are personal narratives of people’s life histories; therefore, they are usually in the past tense.  Laye, however, shifts from the past to the present and vice-versa in order to show the relationship between his past and his present and to enable him to express his present views on some actions or states in the past.

     The narrative style of Laye’s The African Child is quite fascinating.  Laye does not merely report the events that he experienced as ‘a little boy’; he gives credibility to the story because it enables the reader to see that the writer has not tainted the remarks by his own prejudice.

            You see, I had no father to look after me, as you had.  At least, not

            for very long: when I was twelve years old I became an orphan;

            and I had to make my own way in life.

    This excerpt is Laye’s father’s advice to Laye when he was about leaving home for his studies in Conakry.  This style even makes the language of the novel dramatic in some situtations such as the meeting of Laye and his uncle, Mamadou:

  

   Laye asks, ‘Are you my father’s brother Mamadou?  ‘Yes’ the man

   Replies, ‘and you must be my nephew Laye.  I recognized you at

   Once you are the living image of your mother….

     Laye has been able to use the simple narrative language to explore his  childhood  through  adolescence experiences in a manner enriched by the

Chronological unraveling of events.

Question:  The God’s Are Nit to Blame is indeed an appropriate tittle for Ola Rotimi’s play. Discuss.

Answer:   Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame is a play which demonstrates the fact that fate is inevitable.  The play seeks to vindicate that man is a helpless creature in the hands of the gods; and that no matter how hard a man tries to change his fate, his efforts will come to naught.

     In the main, the story centres on Odewale whose fate is to kill his own father and to marry his mother.  This revelation through divination brings unhappiness to his parents – King, Adetusa and Queen Ojuola because the baby boy with bad luck (Odewale) is their first child.  The only way to forestall the bad luck from happening is to kill the boy, the narrator maintains.  Consequently, the boy’s feet are tied up and he is handed over to Gbonka, the king’s special messenger, to bear to the evil grove for sacrifice.

     The Ogun priest who ties the boy’s feet with a string of cowries is in the best position to carry the baby to the evil grove but he asks Gbonka to do it.  Apparently out of sheer compassion for the baby,  Gbonka leaves the baby in the bush unkilled, and Alaka, an apprentice to hunter Ogundele, picks him up in the brush at Ipetu village and since hunter Ogundele and his wife, Mobike, have no child they are willing and ready to adopt him.  Odewale is nursed by the Ogundeles and he grows up to know them as his parents.  However, he feels insulted by Ogundele’s brother who addresses him as ‘a butterfly calling himself bird’.  He therefore, consults the oracle to know who exactly he is.  The oracle tells him that he will kill his father and marry his mother.

            Son, you cannot run away from it, the gods have willed that you

            will kill your father, and then marry  your mother.

    

     At the knowledge of this terrible omen, Odewale decides to run away from Ijekun-Yemoja in order to avert his killing of his father and the marrying of his own mother.  He despises the warning

To run away would be foolish.  The snail may try, but it cannot cast off its shell.  Just stay where you are, Stay where you are… stay where you are…

     Unknown to Odewale that hunter Ogundele and his wife Mobike are his foster-parents, he leaves Ijekun-Yemoja to settle and farm at a place near Ede.   There on his farm at a place near Ede, he has an encounter with King Adetusa, his own biological father, though unknown to him, and kills him.  A few years later, he becomes the king of Kutuje and as is the custom, he inherits the queen, his own mother and raises children by her.  The will of the gods has been fulfilled fully.

     For two reasons we can argue that the title of the text is appropriate.  First, if indeed the Priest of Ogun or Gbonka had killed the unlucky boy; the bad omen would have been permanently averted.  For this act of negligence we cannot really blame the gods because if the boy had been killed, the supreme will of the gods would not have been fulfilled.  Second, if Odewale heeded the warning not to run away from Ijekun-Yemoja, he probably would not have met with King Adetusa at all, let alone kill him.  But he disregards the warning and flees to a place where the deed is actually done.  We cannot blame the gods for Odewale’s disregard for the oracle’s warnings or instructions.   These are the two accounts upon which we can justify the appropriateness of the title.

      We may, however, have to blame the gods forever creating such a person as Odewale.  Odewale cannot really be blamed for anything because he is a mere helpless agent being used by the gods to carry out their will.  The oracle likens him to a snail:  ‘That snail may try, but it cannot cast off its shell. ‘He has been fated to live the way he lives and that is why every step taken is in the direction of fulfilling the will of the gods.

      In conclusion, we can only blame the gods for creating Odewale with such a bad fate.  We however, cannot blame the gods for not preventing the bad fate, the curse, from happening, rather the Ogun  Priest or Gbonka should be blamed for not killing the unfortunate child.

By Eguriase S. M. Okaka