Modern times: Literature from 1945 to the present day: exemplar student response

Below you will find an exemplar student response to a Section B question in the specimen assessment materials, followed by an examiner commentary on the response.

Paper 2B, Section B 

Comparative texts

'Modern literature shows isolated characters as being profoundly damaged.'

Compare the significance of isolation in two other texts you have studied. Remember to include in your answer reference to how meanings are shaped in the texts you are comparing.

Band 2 response

Both Revolutionary Road and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof have characters in them who are damaged by being isolated. In Revolutionary Road April is really lonely because she is married to Frank who she does not love and she is bored and wants to escape to Paris. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Maggie is lonely because she is married to Brick who does not love her and so she can't have children.  In this essay I will show how the writers have written about this type of isolation.

Yates tells us that April has always been lonely because she was abandoned by her parents as a baby:

'I think my mother must've taken me straight from the hospital to Aunt Mary's,' she told him. 'At any rate I don't think I ever lived with anyone but Aunt Mary until I was five, and then there were a couple of other aunts, or friends of hers or something, before I went to Aunt Claire, in Rye.'

He then tells us that April married Frank just because she was lonely and so it is sad that she is so unhappy in her marriage. They have lots of arguments in the book but mostly April is just bored with being Frank's wife. One example is where Frank has told April that he has had an affair and April doesn't seem to care:

'In other words you don't care what I do or who I go to bed with or anything. Right?'

'No; I guess that's right; I don't,'

April does have two children and some friends called the Campbells so the writer does not really explain why April feels so lonely but we can guess that if she was abandoned by her parents as a baby and she does not love Frank she is still going to feel really alone. She does, however, try to make her life happier by suggesting to Frank that they move to Paris. At first Frank agrees to go but when April gets pregnant again he says they can't go. April tries to persuade Frank that they should abort the baby so that they can go to Paris but Frank won't agree and so April feels stuck in her lonely life.

April's behaviour shows that she has been damaged by her loneliness and Frank says that she should go to see a psychiatrist. In the end, April does go a bit mad and decides to get rid of the baby herself at home which leads to her losing a lot of blood and then dying. This shows that loneliness can make a person profoundly damaged.

In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof all of the scenes are in Maggie and Brick's bedroom where we see Maggie and Brick arguing, like April and Frank do. At the beginning Maggie is getting dressed so that she looks attractive but Brick is not taking any notice of her because he does not love her: 'Living with someone you love can be lonelier – than living entirely alone!' The stage directions show how lonely Maggie is:

'Margaret is alone, completely alone, and she feels it. She draws in, hunches her shoulders, raises her arms with fists clenched, shuts her eyes tight as a child about to be stabbed with a vaccination needle.'

Brick doesn't love Maggie because he is really a homosexual and loves a man who is now dead. He won't sleep with Maggie and so she can't have a baby and that makes her feel useless especially as Mae has had lots of babies: 'You're jealous! You're just jealous because you can't have babies!' Maggie doesn't have any friends in the play and so she is just stuck with Brick who doesn't love her. His family who all want to know why she isn't having a baby and blame her for Brick being unhappy and drinking too much: 'Something's not right! You're childless and my son drinks.' Brick tells Maggie that he won't give her a baby: 'But how in hell on earth do you imagine – that you're going to have a child by a man who can't stand you?'

Maggie is damaged by being lonely and she does something mad at the end of the play like April does and pretends that she is pregnant. The family are all pleased to hear the news but of course Brick knows that it isn't true. Maggie bribes him into sleeping with her by locking away his alcohol and only letting him have some if he agrees.

Both of these books were written in the 1950s when women didn't go to work and so would be lonely if they didn't have good marriages. April and Maggie have bad marriages for different reasons and that's what makes them lonely and damaged.

Examiner commentary

AO1 

There is a simple sense of comparison – both female characters are lonely within an unhappy marriage – and the ideas around this are simply structured. Appropriate concepts and terminology are scarce; expressions like 'feels stuck in', 'get rid of', and 'go a bit mad' reflect the candidate's simple expression. Spelling and (most) punctuation are correct.

AO2

The answer consists mainly of generalised descriptions of events although the candidate evidences characters' feelings through a limited number of quotations, at times over-long, and reference to stage directions.

AO3

Examples are given of the reasons for the characters' isolation, but there is little analysis of the true nature of that isolation or of its consequences beyond the immediate. There is simple awareness of the context of women in the 1950s.

AO4 

Comparisons between the characters in the texts are made in a generalised manner.

AO5

As required, the candidate has written about examples of two genres, but no overt or meaningful comparisons are made between them, and in this respect the question has not been properly answered.

Overall: Simple and generalised. 'This response seems to fit the descriptors in Band 2'.

This resource is part of the Modern times - Literature from 1945 to the present day resource package.