SECTION A: POETRY SONGS OF OURSELVES: from Part 4 Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing. Read this poem, and then answer the question that follows it: The City Planners Cruising these residential Sunday streets in dry August sunlight: what offends us is the sanities: the houses in pedantic rows, the planted sanitary trees, assert levelness of surface like a rebuke to the dent in our car door. No shouting here, or shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt than the rational whine of a power mower cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass. But though the driveways neatly sidestep hysteria by being even, the roofs all display the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky, certain things: the smell of spilt oil a faint sickness lingering in the garages, a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise, a plastic hose poised in a vicious coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows give momentary access to the landscape behind or under the future cracks in the plaster when the houses, capsized, will slide obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers that right now nobody notices. That is where the City Planners with the insane faces of political conspirators are scattered over unsurveyed territories, concealed from each other, each in his own private blizzard; guessing directions, they sketch transitory lines rigid as wooden borders on a wall in the white vanishing air tracing the panic of suburb order in a bland madness of snows. (Margaret Atwood) To what extent does Atwood make you feel that human activities are pointless in The City Planners?
- full_questionTo what extent does Atwood make you feel that human activities are pointless in The City Planners?[25]
Mark scheme
Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2015). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.
- [AO1] show detailed knowledge of the content of literary texts
- [AO2] understand the meanings of literary texts and their context, and explore texts beyond surface meaning to show deeper awareness of ideas and attitudes
- [AO3] recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure, and form to create and shape meanings and effects
- [AO4] communicate a sensitive and informed personal response
- [Band 1] Answers in this band have all the qualities of Band 2 work, with further insight, sensitivity, individuality and flair. They show sustained engagement with both text and task.
- [Band 2] Sustains a perceptive, convincing and relevant personal response
- [Band 2] • shows a clear critical understanding of the text
- [Band 2] • responds sensitively and in detail to the way the writer achieves her/his effects
- [Band 2] • integrates much well-selected reference to the text
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