Literature in English past questions and Answer, 1978 JAMB, Part 3

Literature in English, JAMB 1978:

Please read questions 15 - 32 here

33.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down.

This set down were led all that way for Birth or Death

There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like death, our death.

We returned to our places, these kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods

I should be glad of another death.

From T.S, Eloit’s “Journey of the Magi”

The Magi are no longer at ease because

1. they suffered a lot on their way to Bethlehem
2. they found greater spiritual satisfaction from their journey
3. death and birth are one and the same thing
4. their kingdoms can no longer offer them satisfaction
5. the world has changed for the worse

34. Mr. Johnson, by Joyce Cary, is an interesting novel for the reason that

1. Mr. Johnson, the chief character, is a typical African
2. Mr. Rudbeck is a British colonial officer
3. It is a great love story between Mr. Johnson and his wife Bamu
4. Mr. Johnson is an active character full of drama, song and poetry
5. All the characters are nice and considerate people

35. Wole Soyinka’s “Telephone Conversation” is

1. an attack on the British telephone system
2. a complaint about the difficulty of getting telephones installed in private houses
3. about the colour of Soyinka’s passport
4. a humorous and satirical comment on colour prejudice in Britain
5. about the game of hide and seek

36. Romeo and Juliet

Juliet: O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?

Beautiful tyrant: Fiend angelical

Dove-feathered raven! Wolfish-ravening lamb!

Despised substance of divinest show! A dammed saint, an honourable villain!

From Romeo and Juliet

Juliet is referring in the above passage to

1. Tybalt
2. Mercutio
3. Old Capulet
4. Lady Montague
5. Romeo

37.

Maria: If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourself into stitches, follow-me. Yond gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no Christian, that means to be saved by believing rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages of grossness. He’s in yellow stockings.

Sir Toby: And cross – gartered?

Maria: Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school in the church. I have dogged him, like his murderer. He does obey every point of the letter that I dropped to betray him: he does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the indies: you have not seen such a thing as ‘tis. I can hardly forbear hurling things at him. I know my lady will strike him: if she does, he’ll smile and take it for a great favour.

From Twelfth Night

Which of the following statements reflects best the statement revealed above?

1. Malvolio is greatly admired by Maria and Sir Toby
2. Malvolio’s dress and bearing will please Lady Olivia very much
3. Malvolio is deceived into doing things hated by Olivia
4. Malvolio is a heathen and pedant
5. The author of Twelfth Night pokes fun at foolishly misguided people, like Malvolio here

38. New Year’s Eve Midnight

Now the bells are tolling

A year is dead

And my heart is slowly beating

The Nunc Dimittis

To all my hopes and mute

Yeaning of a year

And ghosts hover round

Dream beyond dream

Mingling with the dying

Bell-sounds fading into memories

Like rain drops falling into a river.

And now the bells are chiming

A year is born.

And my heart – bell is ringing in a dawn

But its shrouded things I see dimly stride

On heart – canopied parts to a riverside

The mood of the above poem is

1. optimism
2. pessimism
3. optimism mixed with pessimism
4. much optimism qualified by a little pessimism
5. much pessimism lightened by a little optimism

39. In the fiction “No Longer at Ease” by Chinua Achebe, Obiajulu Okonkwo’s fall can be traced to the fact that

1. the Nigerian society is often wicked to the individual
2. he is at bottom a very bad man
3. he believes in using bribes to get to the top
4. the weaknesses between him and the society unite to pull him down
5. he fancies women too much

40.

“All’s over, Sweet”, he cried

To the wife, thus guised; for the young page was she.

“Tis as we hoped and said’t would be.

He never guessed …. we mount the 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

1. bravery
2. honour
3. betrayal
4. death of a fool
5. the evil of dueling

41.

Your hand is heavy, upon my brow,

I bear no heart mercuric like the clouds, to dare

Exacerbation from your subtle plough.

Woman as calm, on the sea’s crescent

I saw your jealous eye quench the seas

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

1. describes nightfall and its effect on him
2. does not wish to surrender to night
3. rejects the night’s presence
4. says that night has no progress
5. does not need protection from the dangers of night

42. “The Sea eats our lands” by Kwesi Brew

Here stood our ancestral home

The crumbling wall marks the spot

Here a sheep was led to 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

At 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,

1. the gods are being abused for their causing  natural disaster
2. the poet’s father is being ‘cursed’ for stopping the children’s play
3. a natural disaster is linked to the moral and religious life of a people
4. the ‘golden girls’ are being praised for leaving home to go to the city
5. nature is seen as an enemy

Read part 1 of Literature in English, 1978 JAMB here

Read part 4 of Literature in English, 1978 JAMB here. ANSWERS ARE PRESENT HERE

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