Post-1914 Prose/Drama — Skills for the Extract and Essay Questions

Overview of Component 2, Section A

Section A asks you to respond to ONE post-1914 prose or drama text with a two-part question:

• Part (i): an extract question — close analysis of a printed passage
• Part (ii): a whole-text essay — sustained response across the entire text

Both parts are marked for AO1, AO2 and AO3 — weighted equally. AO4 does not apply in Section A.

The key difference from Shakespeare: post-1914 texts require you to engage with the specific context of the 20th century (world wars, post-colonial identity, class politics, gender equality debates), and the literary techniques include those of modern prose and drama rather than Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre.

How to Approach the Extract Question (Part i)

Before you write

1. Read the extract twice — first for overall meaning; second for language and structure
2. Annotate: underline key words; mark techniques; note the beginning, middle and end of the extract
3. Ask: What is the writer doing in this extract? What is the effect on the reader?
4. Plan: three or four points, each with a quotation and a contextual link

During the extract response

• Open with a clear interpretive statement: what is the extract doing overall?
• Each paragraph: AO1 (what you argue) + AO2 (how the language/structure creates it) + AO3 (contextual link)
• Zoom in on specific words — "close reading" is the core AO2 skill
• Comment on structure: where is this moment in the text? Why is it here?
• For drama: consider the theatrical dimension — stage directions, performance, audience response

What is different about prose vs drama extracts?

Prose extracts: Consider the narrator's perspective; the narrative technique (first/third person, omniscient/limited); the narrative voice's attitude; descriptive choices (setting, character appearance); dialogue (what does it reveal about power between characters?).

Drama extracts: Stage directions are written text and carry meaning; consider how actors would deliver lines; consider the audience's perspective; think about what is NOT said (silence, pause); consider dramatic irony — what does the audience know that characters don't?

How to Approach the Whole-Text Essay (Part ii)

Planning

• Take 3–5 minutes to plan: identify three moments from across the text (beginning, middle, end)
• Frame your response around a clear argument, not a list of points
• Aim for four or five substantial analytical paragraphs

Structure

• Opening: state your argument about the whole text and the question's theme/character
• Paragraphs 1–4: each makes a different point, supported by evidence from different parts of the text
• Range: show you know the WHOLE text — don't write only about the opening
• Closing: brief conclusion restating your argument

Key techniques in post-1914 texts

For prose texts:

• Narrative perspective: first person (intimate, subjective, unreliable); third person limited (follows one character's perspective); omniscient (all-knowing narrator)
• Setting as symbol: the island in Lord of the Flies; Tollington in Anita and Me; the Birling house in Inspector Calls — settings carry thematic meaning
• Structure and pacing: chapter lengths, flashback, foreshadowing, in medias res openings
• Dialogue: reveals character and power relationships; what is NOT said is often as revealing as what is

For drama texts:

• Stage directions: "Pause." / "She turns away." — physical actions carry meaning; directors interpret them
• Dramatic irony: the audience knows something characters don't; creates tension or tragic anticipation
• The Act structure: rising tension through acts; the climax (typically Act 3 or 4); the dénouement
• Subtext: what characters mean beneath what they say — especially important in An Inspector Calls

AO3 Context for Post-1914 Texts

Unlike Victorian texts, post-1914 contexts are within living or recent memory — but they still need to be linked precisely to textual choices.

Key contexts by text:

• An Inspector Calls (Priestley, 1945): WWII aftermath; socialist politics; class inequality; Edwardian hypocrisy; dramatic irony of 1912 setting viewed from 1945
• Lord of the Flies (Golding, 1954): WWII and the Holocaust; Cold War nuclear threat; Ballantyne's Coral Island (subverted); Christian theology and original sin
• Anita and Me (Syal, 1996): 1970s race relations; National Front; British Asian experience; immigrant aspiration; semi-autobiographical
• Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro, 2005): medical ethics; what it means to be human; repression and denial; England in an alternative recent past