Specimen question commentary

An explanation of how a question taken from the specimen assessment material addresses the assessment objectives, with some suggestions of how the task might be approached.

Different combinations of texts will be considered. This explanation does not include all possible combinations; neither are the suggested ideas that might be included exhaustive, but the explanation will provide a workable way into the question and the intention is to offer some support for teachers preparing students for the examination.

This type of question from Section C of Paper 2 Elements of crime writing invites students to write about the significance of an element of crime writing across two texts. As with the Section C questions on Paper 1, the two texts do not need to be written about equally but each must receive substantial coverage in terms of depth. One hour is recommended for this question. There does not need to be explicit comparison but there will be connection through the element of crime writing set up in the question (here that element is 'the ways victims are presented'). This is an open book paper and so students will need to know their texts well and be able to refer to them in detail in the examination.

Sample question

'In crime writing there are always victims.'

Explore the significance of the ways that victims are presented in two crime texts you have studied.

How the question meets the assessment objectives

In this question, as throughout the paper, the assessment objectives are all assessed. The application of the AOs in relation to the task is similar to the way it works in Section C questions on Paper 1, though here AO2 is signalled by 'presented' (and 'significance') and the invitation to debate and explore meanings and to consider relevant contextual factors (AO5 and AO3) is signalled by 'significance'. In terms of AO3, as students engage with significance, different relevant contextual material will emerge in relation to the crime writing genre depending on the chosen texts, when they were produced, how they have been received and whether they are prose, poetry or drama. As with Paper 1, AO4 is explicit in that two texts must be connected in the exploration of the signficance of the crime writing element of 'victims'.

Possible content

The possible content of the mark scheme provides some ideas that students might write about. However, there are clearly many others and if students are reading their texts through a crime writing lens they will be able to identify many ideas themselves. The texts the students use could well be different types and, almost certainly, the writers will not have presented their victims in the same way. Therefore, students do not have to treat the discussion of victims in the same way in relation to their two texts. If students were using, for example, the postmodern text Atonement and Brighton Rock, they might be writing about how victims are created differently in a twenty first century historical novel, where victims are not always clearly defined, and how they are used in a twentieth century realist crime novel, where the victims are more in the foreground of the novel's action. In Section C questions, students will need to think carefully about exactly how the given element operates in their two texts.

Students will also have to understand how to effectively use their open book texts. To do this they will need to have been specifically taught how to do so. They need to know that it means more than looking up quotations. Selecting key passages for detailed focus is essential and clearly students need to be able to navigate their way around their texts in an efficient way so that they are not wasting valuable examination time looking for those passages. It is expected that students will choose relevant sections of their texts on which to base their discussion and use specific details as they construct their answers.

The possible content from the mark scheme, outlined below, offers some ideas related to all the texts. Depending on their specific pair of texts, centres can build up further relevant details.

• Browning, Crabbe and Wilde – the Duchess, Porphyria, Elise, Pauline, presented with varying degrees of sympathy and detachment; Peter's victims who are life's unfortunates, victims of an uncaring society (they are workhouse boys), Peter's father, perhaps Peter himself; the trooper in The Ballad of Reading Gaol who is also a criminal - and by extension all who face the death penalty etc.
• Coleridge – the albatross, perhaps Christianity if read in an allegorical way, the crew who become accomplices, the wedding guest who misses the wedding feast, perhaps the mariner - a victim of vengeful spirits etc.
• McEwan– Robbie and Cecilia, Briony - of her parents and her own imagination, the soldiers in the war, the reader - an unsuspecting victim of authorial deception etc.
• Atkinson - the young Joanna and her family, the older Joanna, Reggie perhaps, Billy, a case could be made for others etc.
• Dickens –Oliver who is sentimentalised, Nancy, and any of the boys in Fagin's pay, Agnes, Mr Brownlow etc.
• Greene – Hale, Rose, Spicer - comment might well focus on some of the victims themselves being criminals, perhaps Pinkie who is a criminal and perhaps a victim of the world in which he lives etc.
• Christie – Ackroyd, Mr Ferras in the back-story, Ralph who is the main suspect, perhaps the reader who feels cheated at the trickery of Christie's use of the unreliable narrator etc.
• Shakespeare - the Ghost, Hamlet, Ophelia, Polonius, Laertes, perhaps Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are all victims of the rottenness at the heart of Denmark which results from Claudius' killing of his brother etc.

Students might address significance in terms of meanings and/or significance to the narratives or sequence of ideas and/or significance of the contextual factors connected to victims.

AO2: Arguments above should be linked to some of the following writers' methods: dramatic method (e.g. exits and entrances, dialogue, soliloquies, use of crisis and climax, action, settings, etc), poetic method (e.g. structural issues: stanzas, patterns, rhythm, beginning and end, settings; language issues: the title, sentences, diction, imagery etc), narrative method, (e.g. structure, sequencing, voices, titles, settings, language, characterisation and role, etc.)

Text combinations

Clearly there are many combinations of texts which schools and colleges can choose, all of which can be justified and lead to interesting investigations by students. Schools and colleges have the responsibility though of satisfying the rubric so it must be noted that not all combinations are possible. Students have to study three texts. One must be a post 2000 novel; one must be a (pre-1900) poetry text and there must be one further text. It is possible to study both poetry texts or both post 2000 novels.

It might be helpful here to look at two exemplar routes and what these combinations of texts can offer to students. It needs to be said though that these suggestions are in no way recommended models; others might be equally as good or better.

Example 1

Let us imagine that this student has been prepared for the following three texts for Paper 2A: Atonement, Browning, Crabbe and Wilde and Brighton Rock. Let us also imagine that the student, having considered all the questions in Sections B and C has made the choice to write about Browning, Crabbe and Wilde in Section B. The student will now be using Atonement and Brighton Rock to answer Question 10. With these two texts in mind, this question would be a good choice as both texts have different kinds of victims and there is much to debate about them; the texts while both being novels are clearly of very different types. The student would therefore be able to explore this crime writing element in interesting ways. The student could show knowledge of the different ways a postmodern novel and a realist crime novel work in terms of the victims of crimes. There are many characters that could be seen as victims in both texts but students do not need to write about them all. Their selection will be important and the way they look at significance.

In Atonement, the student could select Robbie Turner and write about how he is accused and convicted of a crime he did not commit. Comment might be made about his being a victim of Briony's vivid imagination, of class prejudice and of the power of the ruling elite. Much might be said about how the real perpetrator of the crime, Paul Marshall, is happy to allow Robbie to be convicted to protect himself. Comment might also be made on how the victim becomes the novel's hero - both through a manipulation of events through Briony as novel writer, who wants to atone for her crime, and, of course, through McEwan. Students might also focus on the victim of rape, Lola, who is not treated as a victim by the novel's narrator. Some might see it as unusual that the victim of rape marries her rapist and apparently lives a happy life. There could also be discussion of Cecilia as a tragic victim of love and of war, like the man she loves. In writing about these victims it is likely that students will embed relevant comment on the novel's structure and settings since they are crucial to how the reader learns of the events and how they are played out. There is also likely to be discussion of the post-modern nature of the novel and how the reader is manipulated and tricked by McEwan's using a narrator who is consciously playing with the novel's possibilities, the novelist who has the 'absolute power of deciding outcomes'.

The discussion of Brighton Rock will be different, though there might well be discussion of the narrator. Here the voice is detached and at times ironic making some subtle judgements. The settings of Brighton Rock will be important in the discussion of victims. Greene chooses to tell his story of gang warfare and protection rackets in Brighton in the 1930s. Whereas Atonement deals with a genteel world in the same period, Brighton Rock focuses on the raw violence of the underworld. There are a number of victims who might be considered. Fred Hale is an obvious victim, mysteriously murdered in the back-story by Pinkie. Spicer is also a victim of Pinkie's violence, though he is himself a criminal. The main victim of the novel though is Rose, a vulnerable girl who is manipulated by Pinkie to serve his purposes. Students might discuss her innocence and the naive love she feels for Pinkie who returns it by plotting to kill her. It may be that students will see Pinkie himself as a victim of circumstances and of an environment which brutalises him.

Example 2

Let us imagine that this student has a different combination of texts. This student has studied When Will There Be Good News, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Hamlet. The student has also thought carefully about the questions in Sections B and C and has decided to answer on Kate Atkinson's post 2000 novel in Section B, leaving the poetry text and Hamlet for Section C.

Given the task, this would also be a good combination for Question 10. It could be argued that the main victims in both texts are themselves killers - the Mariner who kills the albatross and Hamlet who kills Polonius, Laertes and Claudius and indirectly Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The student could discuss how Shakespeare and Coleridge present their victims through their dramatic and poetic forms. (Hamlet is the play's protagonist pitted against the antagonist Claudius; the mariner essentially is a first person narrator in a ballad, though there is an overarching frame). The nature of the two characters as victims and the texts in which they appear are very different and the student will be able to explore some interesting avenues. Although the question does not require comparison, it may be that the student will choose to do so.

Much can be said about Hamlet as a victim. While grieving for his dead father and distressed by the quick marriage of his mother to his uncle, he is required by the ghost to be a revenger, a task for which his intellectual and sensitive nature does not equip him. He therefore becomes a victim of conflicting thoughts and demands and in the end is destroyed by them, both mentally and physically.  The student could easily embed comments on Shakespeare's dramatic method in the discussion, with Hamlet's soliloquies being rich for exploration. The student might also discuss Ophelia as an innocent female victim, caught up in the conflict between her male relatives and Hamlet. There could also be discussion of old Hamlet as a victim who is murdered by his scheming brother, but who then places an appalling demand on his son.

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner the student could focus on the mariner who seems to be unreasonably victimised after he shoots the albatross. He is buffeted by the elements, by loneliness, by his crew members' accusation of him, by the bizarre movements of the ship and by the hostility of nature and God.  The student might here discuss the cross over and ill-defined barrier between victimisation and punishment and that would make for fruitful discussion. Focus might be on the mariner as embedded narrator who has to tell his story whenever the woeful agony returns and how Coleridge frames this narrative with an omniscient voice. The student could also discuss the significance of the albatross as victim. This might well be the main part of the discussion. The albatross could be discussed in eco-critical terms as a representative of the innocent world which man is destroying. Much could be done by the student writing about the bird as allegory.

The significance of all victims, in both examples given, can be teased out in a variety of ways in terms of how the victims can be interpreted and how the victims are significant to the design of the crime narratives.

This resource is part of the Elements of crime writing resource package.