Specifications that use this resource:

Example student response and examiner commentary

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.

Sample question

'Women characters are presented primarily as those who suffer and endure.'

By comparing two prose texts, explore the extent to which you agree with this statement.

Band 4 response

Stereotypically, women are portrayed as the weaker sex in pre-1900 literature and they often suffer and endure unhappy marriages because of the inequality of the sexes. In post-1900 literature, however, women are shown as more equal and so writers don't focus on their suffering alone but also on the suffering of male characters in relationships. This is true of The Great Gatsby and The Rotters' Club where women do suffer and endure but arguably men are presented as suffering even more.

The Great Gatsby focuses on the main character of Jay Gatsby and his unrequited love for Daisy whereas The Rotters' Club includes many relationships. There are, however, similarities between Gatsby's suffering and that of Benjamin Trotter and Sam Chase, although the outcomes are different, and so this essay will focus on those male characters.

Gatsby's suffering is emphasised by Fitzgerald because he withholds it from the reader to begin with. Fitzgerald suggests Gatsby is successful and popular before we meet him through his house parties where 'champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger bowls' so his lovesickness is a surprise to the reader. We learn, that 'Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay' and Fitzgerald uses the symbolism of the green light Gatsby can see at the bottom of Daisy's land to show how he is pining for her: 'he stretched out his arms toward the dark water…I could have sworn he was trembling.'

Having loved Daisy from afar for five years, Gatsby engineers afternoon tea at Nick's to reacquaint himself with her and Fitzgerald presents Gatsby as so desperate to impress her that he becomes very nervous with 'trembling fingers' and 'a strained counterfeit of perfect ease'. In the same way, Benjamin is presented as 'anxious' to know whether Cicely still loved him after her stay in America and his 'yearning' and 'nervousness' is 'transparent.'  Where we see Gatsby's lovesickness through Nick's narration, Coe gives Benjamin a 36-page sentence to narrate his and his rambling style emphasises how he has suffered through loving Cicely from afar:  'I had tried not to doubt her during that time, but once or twice, it's inevitable I suppose, you find yourself wondering, not about other men, I was never worried about that, but feelings fade, it happens all the time, or so I'm told, or so I've read.'

Having been reunited with their loves, Gatsby and Benjamin are unable to relax and believe that everything will be alright. Although 'consumed with wonder at her presence' in his house, Gatsby is presented as 'running down like an over-wound clock' because 'he had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set…at an inconceivable pitch of intensity.' Where Gatsby is obsessed with turning back time to recapture the five years they lost, Benjamin has a 'fear of the past, fear of how the past might have turned out, because we came within a whisker, Cicely and I, of missing each other altogether…and the thought of that, the thought that we might never have reached this point at all, oh, it was almost unbearable, unsupportable.'

The outcomes for Gatsby and Benjamin are, however, very different. By the end of the novel, Cicely and Benjamin are together and Coe effectively expresses Benjamin's relief and joy: 'suddenly it's as if everything refers to me and Cicely, everything is a metaphor for the way we feel, somehow the entire city has become nothing less than a life-size diagram of our hearts'. Gatsby's dream, however, crumbles, Firstly Daisy doesn't enjoy Gatsby's party, which he believed would impress her, and this leads to 'his unutterable depression' where he stops the parties and sack his servants 'so the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the disapproval of her eyes.' Undeterred, however, Gatsby continues to pursue Daisy to the point of humiliation. When Daisy admits to having loved Tom, 'the words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby' but he still takes the blame for Myrtle's death to protect Daisy and then pitifully sits outside Daisy's house until 4 a.m. in a misguided belief he is protecting her from Tom when he is 'watching over nothing.'

Like Gatsby, Sam Chase is humiliated in The Rotter's Club but by his wife's affair with their son's art teacher, Miles Plumb, who seduces Barbara with his academic language. As with Gatsby, this could be seen as a class issue where Plumb is educated and Sam believes he needs to enlarge his vocabulary to win his wife back. Coe amusingly sets Barbara's reading of Plumb's love note against Sam's attempts and failure to master the 'quick and easy crossword.' Barbara is struggling to understand Plumb's compliments such as ''callipygic enchantress, apogee of all that is pulchritudinous in this misbegotten, maculate world'. At the same time, Sam makes mistakes such as: 'It's not exactly Doctor Chicago is it?' and makes such a mess of the crossword that Barbara asks:  'Giving up again?' and 'with just a hint of a taunt in her voice.'

Unlike Gatsby, who loses his confrontation with Tom and so loses Daisy, Sam wins Barbara back after a humorous phone call to Miles Plumb. Coe shows the absurdity of the situation where, feeling that 'he had to meet this man on his own terms,' Sam practises insults to use such as 'you are a temerarious poltroon, a rebarbative mooncalf, a pixilated dunderhead' but when it comes to it Sam can't get the words out. Humiliated and angry with himself, he 'screwed his eyes tight shut, and instinctively, without thinking about it, blew the longest and loudest raspberry he had ever blown in his life', which had the desired effect on Miles Plum.

For Gatsby, however, the ending is more tragic not only because of his death but also because right before he is shot he still hopes he can win Daisy: 'I suppose Daisy'll call too. He looked at me anxiously, as if he hoped I'd corroborate this.'  In the end, 'he must have felt that he had…paid a high price for living too long with a single dream'.

Examiner commentary

AO1

This is a logical and thorough argument where ideas are presented coherently. There is appropriate use of concepts and terminology and expression is accurate.

AO2

The candidate shows a thorough understanding of a range of ways in which meanings are shaped although analysis is often implicit rather than explicit. Discussion is supported purposefully with relevant textual evidence.

AO3

The candidate makes the literary presentation of women characters as the primary sufferers relevant to the period in which these texts were written; the focus instead on the suffering of male characters is supported by well-chosen examples.

AO4

The candidate makes a number of logical comparisons between the texts and shows an awareness of the wider presentation of characters as suffering and enduring for love.

AO5

The candidate engages thoroughly with the debate set up in the question in the focus on the suffering of male characters in these texts and in the discussion of different forms of suffering.

Overall: Coherent and thorough: this response seems to fit the Band 4 descriptors.

This resource is part of the Love through the ages resource package.