Paper 1 Section B: Post-1914 Prose and Play — Edexcel GCSE English Literature

The Post-1914 Texts

Edexcel offers 8 texts for Paper 1 Section B. The most commonly taught are:

• An Inspector Calls (J. B. Priestley, 1945) — social responsibility, class, the detective play
• Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945) — totalitarianism, allegory, propaganda
• Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954) — civilisation vs savagery, leadership, inherited evil
• DNA (Dennis Kelly, 2007) — peer pressure, moral cowardice, contemporary youth
• Blood Brothers (Willy Russell, 1983) — class, fate, nature vs nurture
• Anita and Me (Meera Syal, 1996) — identity, race, belonging

The Question Format

Section B provides no extract — this is a whole-text essay question. The question may be:

• "Explore how [author] presents [theme/character] in [text]."
• "How does [author] use [character/structural device] to explore [theme]?"

One essay, two questions to choose from, approximately 35 minutes of writing time. AO4 (SPaG) is assessed here.

What High-Mark Section B Responses Do

They have a thesis, not a topic

• Topic: "Animal Farm is about propaganda."
• Thesis: "Orwell presents propaganda as inherently linguistic — the power of the pigs rests not on physical force alone but on their ability to control the language through which the other animals understand their own situation."

They use evidence from across the whole text

• Examiners notice when students only use the first and last chapters
• Aim for textual evidence from at least three distinct sections of the text
• The middle of the text is often where the argument develops most richly

They embed context

• For An Inspector Calls: 1945 post-war socialist Britain, Priestley's wartime broadcasts, the welfare state debate
• For Animal Farm: Stalinism, the Russian Revolution (1917), Trotsky, the Moscow show trials
• For Lord of the Flies: post-WWII disillusionment with civilisation, the Hobbesian view of human nature, Golding's naval wartime experience

They remember AO4

• Spell the author's name and key characters' names correctly
• Use subject terminology accurately (allegory, dramatic irony, foreshadowing)
• Vary sentence structure — mix simple, compound, and complex sentences
• Use semi-colons and colons accurately for sophisticated punctuation

Key Themes Across the Most Common Texts

Power and Control

• Animal Farm: the pigs' linguistic and physical control; Squealer's propaganda
• An Inspector Calls: the Birlings' class power vs Eva Smith's vulnerability; the Inspector's moral authority
• Lord of the Flies: Ralph's democratic leadership vs Jack's authoritarian control; the conch as symbol of legitimate power

Individual vs Society

• An Inspector Calls: individual vs collective responsibility (Priestley's central argument)
• Animal Farm: the individual animal's powerlessness against the collective ideology
• Blood Brothers: individual character vs class destiny — the nature/nurture debate through Eddie and Mickey

Appearance vs Reality

• An Inspector Calls: the Birling family's respectable surface concealing moral failure
• Animal Farm: the Commandments' apparent meaning vs their actual operation
• DNA: the group's apparent solidarity concealing individual complicity and cowardice

AO4 Vocabulary Bank (for ambitious expression)

Instead of "shows" — reveals, illuminates, exposes, dramatises, embodies, externalises Instead of "says" — asserts, implies, suggests, contends, argues, signals Instead of "important" — pivotal, central, significant, load-bearing, structurally critical Instead of "about" — explores, interrogates, dramatises, examines, critiques