English A subject report · November 2012

November 2012 extended essay reports Page 1 English A1 Overall grade boundaries Grade: E D C B A Mark range: 0 - 7 8 - 15 16 - 22 23 - 28 29 - 36 The range and suitability of the work submitted There was the customary wide range of topics, from the well -worn and unrewarding like dystopian fiction to more adventurous, and more profitable, engagements with drama and contemporary novels, and interesting comparisons between English texts and those from other cultures. There were excellent essays, for example, on the role of music and sound in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, and on Richard III and King Lear as proto -typical villains, while another good essay questioned whether the term ‘tragic hero’ was a useful way of describing Macbeth and Othello. Historical fiction about Australia, particularly the novels of David Malouf, was the subject of more than one fine essay, and there was a sophisticated analysis of racial oppression and cultural identity in Wide Sargasso Sea, and an ambitious comparison of Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil and Joyce’s Uly sses, focusing on the relation between symbolism and imagery. Some candidates did well by approaching canonical texts from an unusual angle: one compared the atypical female protagonists in Pride and Prejudice and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, while another expl ored the inextricable nature of love and suffering in Wuthering Heights and Love in the Time of Cholera, and a third used Jung’s notion of the Shadow Archetype to illuminate Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde . Other Research Questions that produced first-class essays were: To what extent does Zusak succeed in engaging his audience by employing an alternative personification of death in The Book Thief? How are dichotomies used to highlight the emancipation of African women in Purple Hibiscus and So Long a Letter? How did the New Woman movement influence Bram Stoker in his portrayal of women in Dracula? Compare the representation and