Final Examination: English 2700-003
Identify the work from which the following passages are taken. If possible, give the page number. If you are in doubt, make an informed guess. Then explain why the passage sheds light upon the work’s themes, characters, imagery, or any other aspect that strikes you as important. Please refer to the movies, too, if you would find this helpful. Where appropriate, show what the passage tells us about Ireland. N. B. Please answer the questions in the order given and write on one side of the page. Leave a space in your blue book if you wish to go back to an identification that you did not initially make.
1. “No, he of course is charming, but he seems to have no relations. One cannot trace him. His mother, he says, lives in Surrey, and of course you do know, don’t you, what Surrey is. It says nothing absolutely. Part of it is opposite the Thames Embankment. Practically nobody who lives in Surrey ever seems to have been heard of, and if one does hear of them they have never heard of anyone else who lives in Surrey. Really altogether, I think all English people are difficult to trace. They are so pleasant and civil, but I often wonder if they are not a little shallow: for no reason at all they will pack up everything and move across six counties . . .”
2. “In Surrey we while away the time, we clip our hedges. On a bridge night there’s coffee at nine o’clock, with macaroons or petits fours. Last thing of all we watch the late-night News, packing away our cards and scoring pads, our sharpened pencils. There’s been another incident in Armagh, one soldier’s had his head shot off, another’s run amok. Our lovely Glens of Antrim, we all four think, our coastal drives: we hope that nothing disturbs the peace. We think of Mr Malseed, still busy at Glencorn Lodge, and Mrs Malseed finishing her flower-plaques for the rooms of the completed annexe.”
3. “Hey, did ya hear about the Corkman who on Mastermind?
His friend is shaking his head, and already laughing at the conceit. Kerrymen like them have always made jokes about Corkmen, and vice versa; the rest of Ireland makes jokes about Cork and Kerry, and the English make jokes about the whole of Ireland, in the belief that there’s nothing funny about Surrey.
“So Pat goes on Mastermind He goes and sits in the chair in the spotlight, like, and they announce his special subject: “Ireland, the Easter Rising, and the War of Independence, 1916 to 1921.”
“Start the clock,” says yer man. First question, name one of the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916.
“Pass.”
“Name the IRA leader who led the fight against the British before agreeing to partition.”
“Pass.”
“Name the first president of the Irish Free State.”
“Pass.”
“And a voice shouts out from the audience. “Good man, Pat. Tell the bastards fuck all.”
4. In a playful way, she thought, she would tell the story in the common-room when they returned to St Mildred’s: how Miss Ticher had been picked up by a ne’er-do-well Irishman and ended up in a squiffy condition. Miss Grimshaw wanted to laugh, but prevented herself.
5. The conversation drifted about. Dekko told us an Irish joke about a drunk who couldn’t find his way out of a telephone box . . .
6. “Oh, it’s dead!” wailed Philippa. I did think that I should have been in time to save it.”
“Well, if that doesn’t beat all!” said Dr. Hickey.
7. [The youth] rushed back to the pan and with a fish slice served the eggs on to plates. He put all the black puddings on his father’s plate. He loathed them, made from blood, like cross-sections of large warts bound in black Sellotape.
8. The girls were stunning; very black skirts to just above the knees with an extension at the back so they could walk, black sleeveless tops, hair held up, except the fringe, as near to the Ronettes as they could manage, black high heels, loads of black eye shadow, very red lipstick.
9. Alex locked her car with unsteady hands, and walked quickly to Julio Cesar’s, the new Italian restaurant on the Quays, full of nervous excitement, and anticipation. Nigel had phoned that morning from Brussels, asking her to book a table somewhere quiet, telling her he wanted to talk about their future, taking her completely by surprise.
10. Sixty or seventy yards away, to the south-west, next to the foundations of some sort of stone hut or shelter, is a sunken pool. For all we know, it could have been some kind of ceremonial sauna; but it is believed to be a fulacht fiadh, or ancient cooking place. Stones were heated in a nearby fire, then plunged into the shallow water to cook deer and vegetables. Experiments suggest that seventy gallons could be boiled this way in eighteen minutes, and that water could be kept hot for three hours, which explains why Irish vegetables have never been served al dente.
11. It was in 1959, an arbitrary date as far as the people who lived in and around Drumgawnie were concerned, that visitors began to take an interest in the stones,, drawing their cars up by the mill and the grain stores. English or French people they usually were, spring or summertime tourists who always called in at the shop to inquire the way. Mrs Mullally, who owned the shop, had thought of erecting a small sign but in the end had abandoned the notion on the grounds that one day, perhaps, a visitor might glance about her premises and purchase something. None ever had.
12. Mike hooted that he’d seen the bloody canary but thought it was dead and that anyway one drunk bird was all that he could cope with, and his large bulk shook the chair. Tessa wept silently. She hated Mike; he had such a dirty mind and now he had to go and spoil the one little chance she’d had.
13. Jimmy was in the kitchen filling the kettle when he remembered something, something he’d read a while back. Joe Tex died in 1982.
14. The grey-haired woman laughed.
15. Went to see the Orangemen’s parade today. I am not a bigot but they disgust me with their hypocrisy. The parade led by Evangelists screaming about sin and death and damnation. The swaggering bands follow and animality is very near the surface. Dervishes. It has been called ‘the last folk festival in Europe’. [Note: UK, not US, punctuation!] This is true because they really believe in what they march for. It is so negative. They march against Rome and Popery. Their hatred is not hypocritical. Their banners are nice–colourful and crude. The huge drums are thumped so hard they vibrate in your body like an external heart after sprinting. The air around the procession pulses like blood in fear.
16. she felt that [they] might make some kind of marriage together because there was nothing that could be destroyed, no magic or anything else. He could ask her the question he had asked, while she stood there in her wedding-dress: he could ask her and she could truthfully reply, because there was nothing special about the occasion, or the lounge-bar all covered in confetti.
17. half-way up the avenue under beeches, the thin iron gate twanged (missed its latch, remained swinging aghast) as the last unlit car slid out with the executioners bland from accomplished duty. The sound of the last car widened, gave itself to the open and empty country and was demolished. Then the first wave of a silence that was to be ultimate flowed back confidently to the steps. The door stood open hospitably upon a furnace.
18. [his] voice quivered as his rigmarole ridiculously rambled on; an institution for corrected girls the house became, without carpets on the floors. The bones of the dogs that generations [of the family] had buried in the grounds were dug up by corrected girls when they were ordered by the Mother Superior to make vegetable beds. They threw the bones about, pretending to be frightened of them, pretending they were bones of people . . . The house was burnt to the ground, and people burned with it. The stone walls were broken down, pulled a part in places by the ivy that was let grow.
19. it was grand being alone.
20. There was a smell of garlic on the air, and from the kitchen came the rich odour of the local bouillabaisse, the favourite dish of both them.
21. Dinner was as incongruous as everything else. Detestable soup in a splendid old soup tureen that was nearly as dark in hue is Robinson Crusoe’s thumb; a perfect salmon, perfectly cooked , on a chipped kitchen dish; such cut glass as is not easy to find nowadays; sherry that, as [her grandson] subsequently remarked, would burn the shell off an egg; and a bottle of port draped in immemorial cobwebs, wan with age, and probably priceless. Throughout the vicissitudes of the meal [her] conversation flowed on undismayed, directed sometimes at me–she had installed me in the position of friend of her youth, and talked to me as if I were my own grandfather–sometimes at Crusoe, with whom she had several heated arguments, and sometimes she would make a statement of remarkable frankness on the subject of her horse-farming affairs to [her grandson], who, very much on his best behaviour agreed with all she said, and risked no original remark.
22. —EASY TO BONK YOUR FARE---
23. “What you doing here, cock?”
24. No one spoke nor moved. The motion slowed. Without turning his gaze, the boy put out his hand and set the chair rocking again, then grinning oafishly he motioned the couple toward the empty places at the table.
25. One side of the showroom that fronts the warehouse contains newly made Victorian hardwood bars and cupboards, and repro Guinness ads; the other side, though, is unashamedly modernist. There are smoked-glass tables, chrome bar stools, designer chairs, and all manner of avant-garde knick-knackery.
26. The shocking news reached Clonmore about eight o’clock. It crashed upon the unknowingness of the town like a wave that for two hours, since the event, had been standing and toppling, imminent. The news crept down streets from door to door like a dull wind, fingering the nerves, pausing.
27. She saw herself on Fulham Broadway, haranguing the passers-by, her greying hair blown in the wind, her voice more passionate than it had ever been before. But none of it was the kind of thing she could do because she was not that kind of woman.
28. His head, wrapped in cotton wool to absorb the ooze of blood, secured within a plastic bag and packed in a biscuit tin had been posted to [her]. Layer by layer the parcel had been opened by her in Haslemere. She hadn’t known that he was dead before his dead eyes stared into hers.
29. Men and women sat at tables covered with pink tablecloths and with scarlet-shaded electric lamps on them, the lamps alight even though it was in the afternoon.
30. Merde. Crotte des chiens. Merderer.
31 As Mrs. Cadogan remarked to the sweep, “A Turk couldn’t stand it.”
22.