english lit paper 1

Question 1

‘fair is foul and foul is fair’

Answer 1

the witches instantly create an ambiguous atmosphere

Question 2

’ he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops’

Answer 2

macbeth’s brutal killing of the rebel macdonwald

Question 3

‘what! can the devil speak the true?’

Answer 3

banquos shock when the witches prediction comes true

Question 4

‘let not night see my black and deep desires’

Answer 4

macbeth struggles to hide his desire to kill the king

Question 5

‘it is too full of the milk of human kindness’

Answer 5

lady macbeth worries macbeth is too weak to murder

Question 6

‘this castle hath a pleasant seat’

Answer 6

duncan ironically states macbeths castle is a lovely place

Question 7

‘vaulting ambition/ which overleaps itself’

Answer 7

Macbeth recognizes his ambition is running away with him

Question 8

‘is this a dagger which i see before me’

Answer 8

macbeth sees a vision of a dagger

Question 9

‘a little water clears us of this deed’

Answer 9

lady macbeth believes they can wash away the evidence

Question 10

‘oh horror, horror, horror’

Answer 10

macduff’s utter disgust upon finding Duncan’s corpse

Question 11

‘No cousins, i’ll to fife’

Answer 11

Macduff goes home opposed to attending the coronation

Question 12

‘i fear thou play’dst most foully for it’

Answer 12

banquo begins to recognize macbeth is scheming

Question 13

‘fly, good fleance, fly, fly, fly’

Answer 13

banquo cries to fleance to escape

Question 14

‘hence horrible shadow’

Answer 14

macbeth orders banquo’s ghost to disapper

Question 15

’ a wayward son, spiteful and wrathful’

Answer 15

hecate’s description of macbeth

Question 16

‘our suffering country, under an accursed hand’

Answer 16

lennox laments the state of scotland under Macbeth’s reign

Question 17

‘something wicked this way comes’

Answer 17

witches describe macbeth’s approach

Question 18

‘wisdom to leave his wife, his babes’

Answer 18

lady macduff criticizes her husband

Question 19

‘what all, my pretty chickens’

Answer 19

macduff’s utter grief when he discovers his family’s slaughter

Question 20

‘out damned spot, out i say@

Answer 20

lady macbeth’s guilt cannot be washed away

Question 21

‘like a giant’s robe on a dwarfish thief’

Answer 21

angus’s description of macbeth

Question 22

‘no man born of women shall ever have power upon thee’

Answer 22

macbeth remind himself that he is infallible

Question 23

‘let every solider hew him down a bough’

Answer 23

malcolm orders his soldiers to cut down trees for camouflage

Question 24

‘life’s but a walking shadow’

Answer 24

Macbeth voices his despair about the hopelessness of life

Question 25

'worthy Macduff'

Answer 25

Malcolm's description of macduff as he leads the army into war

Question 26

'but swords i smile at, weapons laugh to scorn'

Answer 26

Macbeth revels in the belief he cannot be killed

Question 27

'Macduff was from his mother's womb/ Untimely ripped'

Answer 27

Macduff declares he was not born of a woman

Question 28

' a moment before i had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved[...] and now i was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows'

Answer 28

this is the point in the novel when balance is disrupted: jekyll changes spontaneously into hyde. contrasts here highlight the juxtaposition between the two sides of jekyll

Question 29

'i concealed my pleasures'...' i regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame'

Answer 29

jekyll tried to hide the sinful, pleasurable side of himself by completely repressing one side of his personality and plunging himself into charity work. we links to victorian values of repression and restraint, and their consequences

Question 30

' the other snarled aloud into a savage laugh'

Answer 30

Hyde's default personality is violent, savage, and animalistic, emphasised by the savage verbs and adjectives.

Question 31

'with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway'

Answer 31

again, animal imagery is used to describe hyde in an almost direct link to darwinism. the violent verbs and graphic auditory imagery emphasise hyde's violent and uncontrollable nature