Literature in English Past Questions

A good plot must posses

'Exposition' in a play means

The dominant feeling in Leopold Sedar Senghor's 'In Memoriam' is

Which of these secondary characters stands out from the others in the development of the action in Ozidi?

In 'Tell Freedom' injustice is symbolized by

Literature is studied as a subject at school because

A narrative poem must

The plot of a novel is best described as

One of the following writers is better known as a playwright than as a novelist

In those days
When civilization kicked us in the face
When holy water slapped our cringing brows
The vultures built in the shadow of their talons
The blood stained monument of tutelage
In those days
There was painful laughter on the metallic hell
of the roads
And the monotonous rythm of the paternoster
Drowned the howling of the plantations
Of the bitter memories of the extorted kisses
Of promises broken at the point of a gun
Of foriegners who did not seem human
You who knew all the books but knew not love
Nor our hands which fertilize the womb of the earth
Hands instinct of the root with revolt
Inspite of your songs of pride in the charnel houses
Inspite of the desolate villages of Africa torn apart
Hope lived in us like a citadel
And from Swaziland's mines to the sweltering sweat
of Europe's factories
Spring will be reborn under our bright steps.
('The Vultures',by David Diop)

The theme of the poem is

The Concubine by Elechi Amadi
The title of this novel is justified because

Gabriel Okara's 'The Call of the River Nun',treats

From the West
Clouds come hurrying with the wind
Turning
Sharply
Here and there
Like a plague of locusts
Whirling
Tossing up things on its tail
Like a madman chasing nothing

Pregnant clouds
Ride stately on its back
Gathering to perch on hills
Like dark sinister wings:
The wind whistles by
And trees bend to let it pass

In the village
Screams of delighted children
Toss and turn
In the dim of whirling wind
Women-
Babies clinging to their backs-
Dart about
In and out
Madly
The wind whistles by
Whilst trees bend to let it pass.
(From 'An African Thunderstorm' by David Rubadiri)

The poet varies the lengths of the lines skillfully

'The Seas Eats Our Lands' by Kwesi Brew

Here stood our ancestral home:
The crumbling wall marks the spot.
Here a sheep was led to the slaughter
To appease the gods and atone
For faults which our destiny
Has blossomed into crimes
There my cursed father once stood
And shouted to us,his children,
To come back from our play
To our evening meal and sleep
The clouds were thickening in the red sky
And night had charmed
A black power into the pounding waves.

Here once lay Keta
Now her golden girls
Erode into the arms
of strange towns.

In this poem,

Your hand is heavy,upon my brow
I bear no heart mercuric like the clouds,to dare
Exacerbation from your subtle plough.

Woman as a clam,on the sea's crescent
I saw your jealous eye quench the sea's
Fluorescence,dance on the pulse incessant

Of the waves.And i stood,drained
Submitting like the sands,blood and brine
coursing to the roots.Night,you rained

Serrated shadows through dank leaves
Till, bathed in warm suffusion of your dappled calls
Sensations pained me, faceless, silent as night thieves.
Hide me now, when night children haunt the earth
I must hear none! These misted calls will yet
Undo me; naked, unbidden, at night's muted birth
('Night' by Wole Soyinka)

In the poem above, Soyinka,

'All's over,Sweet',he cried
To the wife,thus guise;for the young page was she
'Tis as we hoped and said't would be.
He never guessed...we mount and ride
To where our love can reign uneyed
He's clay,and we are free.
From Thomas Hardy's,The Duel)
The theme of this poem is