Recommended; See Other IJMB Past Questions Here
INTERIM JOINT MATRICULATION BOARD EXAMINATION 2022
SUBJECT: LITERATURE-IN-ENGLISH, PAPER II: PROSE-FICTION
TIME ALLOWED: THREE HOURS (3 HRS)
INSTRUCTION: Answer questions ONE (1) from Section A, and ONE (1) questions each from Sections B and C.
SECTION A: UNSEEN PROSE PASSAGE (30 Marks)
Read the passage and ANSWER ALL the questions that follow:
The night before I was to become a pupil at secondary school I cried because I was frightened and friendless. I was on the verge of entering a big, avant-garde strange world, which I knew nothing about. What made things worse, though, was the fact that I had no one to talk to about the impediment that was facing me. My parents would just utter, “there, you have nothing to worry about”. I had no friends to talk to because I had left them all behind me in the cosy world of primary school, or they had gone their separate ways. I wondered if they had the same fears as I had. I doubted it though because I was always the shy, awkward fatty that was always left out of things because I was as fat as a whale. Nobody wanted to know me just because I looked different. And that’s just what it was like for the whole of my first year and most of the second year.
People picked on me, and called me ‘Festo’. In sports, I was always last to be chosen when teams were picked. I made no friends. I was confused with so much homework, the vast modern building, the students, and the teachers. I cried every night when I was in the safety of my bed. It was just like being a newborn baby, coming into a big, wide world.
Answer the following questions:
- In a few words, give a suitable title to the passage.
- What is the main issue that the writer is trying to reveal in the passage?
- Using your own words, explain the meanings of the underlined words
- The expression “as fat as a whale” is an instance of what figure of speech?
- What do the narrator and a newborn baby share in common?
SECTION B: NON-AFRICAN NOVEL (25 Marks)
Samuel Selvon: Lonely Londoners
2. Comment on Selvon’s depiction of the diaspora as a traumatic experience in Lonely Londoners.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
3. To what extent is The Great Gatsby a depiction of the power of money and its limitations?
Toni Morrison: Sula
4. Examine Toni Morrison’s reflection of gender roles in Sula.
5. Compare and contrast the theme of love in The Great Gatsby and Sula.
SECTION C: AFRICAN NOVEL (25 Marks)
Sembene Ousmane: Xala
6. Using relevant examples, examine Sembene’s use of ritual archetypes in Xala.
Ayi Kwei Armah: Fragment
7. Discuss Ngugi’s treatment of the theme of alienation in Fragment, with an adequate illustration.
8. Examine Obafemi’s representation of the upper and lower classes’ relations in The Wheels.
9. Compare and contrast the theme of capitalism in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragment and Olu Obafemi’s The Wheel.
