Cambridge IGCSE™
WORLD LITERATURE 0408/33
Paper 3 Set Text October/November 2023
1 hour 30 minutes
You must answer on the enclosed answer booklet.
* 1 3 9 6 3 7 9 4 4 5 *
You will need: Answer booklet (enclosed)
INSTRUCTIONS
● Answer two questions in total:
Section A: answer one question.
Section B: answer one question.
● Your questions may be on one set text or on two set texts.
● Follow the instructions on the front cover of the answer booklet. If you need additional answer paper,
ask the invigilator for a continuation booklet.
INFORMATION
● The total mark for this paper is 50.
● The number of marks for each question or part question is shown in brackets [ ].
This document has 16 pages. Any blank pages are indicated.
DC (RCL (DF)) 317598/1
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SECTION A
Answer one question from this section.
Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing.
YUKIO MISHIMA: The Sound of Waves
1 Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it:
The couple at the lighthouse had one child, a daughter, who was attending the
university in Tokyo.
Content removed due to copyright restrictions.
The lighthouse was dead during the daytime,
with only one of the young assistants in the watchhouse to report ship movements.
How does Mishima create such memorable impressions of the lighthouse-keeper and his wife at
this moment in the novel? [25]
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TURN OVER FOR QUESTION 2.
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FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA: Yerma
2 Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it:
[The area around a shrine in the mountains.
Content removed due to copyright restrictions.
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Content removed due to copyright restrictions.
[The WOMEN go out.]
In what ways does Lorca make this such a disturbing moment in the play? [25]
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AMY TAN: The Bonesetter’s Daughter
3 Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it:
The next day, Ruth telephoned Art to tell him what she had read.
Content removed due to copyright restrictions.
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Content removed due to copyright restrictions.
What else?’
How does Tan vividly portray the relationship between Ruth and Art at this moment in the novel?
[25]
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NIKOLAI GOGOL: The Government Inspector
4 Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it:
Postmaster: What’s all this about some government official?
Mayor: What, haven’t you heard?
Postmaster: I heard something from Pyotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky. Just now, in
the post office.
Mayor: So? What do you think? 5
Postmaster: What do I think? I think we’re going to war with Turkey.
Judge: Exactly! Just what I thought!
Mayor: Now they’re both barking up the wrong tree!
Postmaster: No, it’s obvious! War with the Turks—it’s the French up to their dirty
tricks again. 10
Mayor: War with the Turks, my foot! We’re the ones who’re going to suffer,
not the Turks. That’s a fact: I’ve had a letter.
Postmaster: Ah, a letter! Then it’s not war with the Turks.
Mayor: Now, what do you say to that, Ivan Kuzmich?
Postmaster: Me? More to the point, what do you say to it, Anton Antonovich? 15
Mayor: Me? Oh, I’m not worried, not very much. It’s true the shopkeepers
and townsfolk bother me a bit, they complain I’ve been giving them
a hard time, but let me tell you, if I do take the odd thing from them
I do it without any malice. As a matter of fact, I have a sneaking
feeling [taking him by the arm, draws him to one side] someone 20
might have informed on me. Otherwise why should they send an
inspector to us? Listen, Ivan Kuzmich, don’t you think you might
perhaps, for the benefit of us all, just take every letter which goes
through your post office, and, you know, steam it open a little and
see what it’s about, if it’s anyone informing, or just run of-the-mill 25
correspondence? If it’s harmless, seal it up again. Actually, you can
even deliver it like that, unsealed.
Postmaster: Oh I know the way … No need to tell me, I do it anyway, but not
to check up on people … more out of curiosity, really. I’m just
devilish curious about what’s going on in the world. And let me tell 30
you, letters make fascinating reading … Some are such a delight
to read—the way they describe things, and so edifying, too …
Sometimes better than anything in the Moscow Gazette!
Mayor: Well, in that case tell me, didn’t you read anything about some
official from St Petersburg? 35
Postmaster: No, nothing about a St Petersburg official. Plenty about Kostroma
and Saratov officials, though. Pity you don’t read the letters, you
don’t know what you’re missing. Just recently, in a letter to his
friend, a lieutenant described a ball in quite the most audacious …
really a fine description: ‘My life, my dear friend, unfolds, as they 40
say, in the Empyrean sphere: flags unfurling, bands playing, ladies
aplenty.’ … Yes, written with great, great feeling. I even kept it for
myself. Shall I read it to you?
Mayor: This is hardly the time. But do me a favour, Ivan Kuzmich, if you
should happen to get one with any complaints or denunciations in 45
it, then don’t hesitate to intercept it, have no qualms about it.
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Postmaster: Why, of course, with great pleasure.
Judge: You’d better be careful, you two, or you’ll find yourselves in hot
water.
Postmaster: God forbid! 50
Mayor: Nonsense. It’s not as if we’re going to make them public knowledge;
this is strictly confidential, you understand?
Judge: Yes, there’s a nasty smell in the air. As a matter of fact, I was just
coming to see you, Anton Antonovich, with a little treat: a puppy.
From the same litter as that handsome hound of mine, you know 55
the one I mean. You’ve heard, of course, that Cheptovich is suing
Varkhovinsky, which is splendid for me: I can have free hunting on
both their estates …
Mayor: For heaven’s sake! Don’t talk to me about your hunting now: I can’t
get this damned incognito out of my head. Any minute I expect the 60
door to open—and lo and behold …
In what ways does Gogol make this early moment in the play so shocking? [25]
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SONGS OF OURSELVES Volume 2: from Part 2
5 Read this poem, and then answer the question that follows it:
The Stars Go Over the Lonely Ocean
Unhappy about some far off things
That are not my affair, wandering
Along the coast and up the lean ridges,
I saw in the evening
The stars go over the lonely ocean, 5
And a black-maned wild boar
Plowing with his snout on Mal Paso Mountain.
The old monster snuffled, ‘Here are sweet roots,
Fat grubs, slick beetles and sprouted acorns.
The best nation in Europe has fallen, 10
And that is Finland,
But the stars go over the lonely ocean,’
The old black-bristled boar,
Tearing the sod on Mal Paso Mountain.
‘The world’s in a bad way, my man, 15
And bound to be worse before it mends;
Better lie up in the mountain here
Four or five centuries,
While the stars go over the lonely ocean,’
Said the old father of wild pigs, 20
Plowing the fallow on Mal Paso Mountain.
‘Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy
And the dogs that talk revolution,
Drunk with talk, liars and believers.
I believe in my tusks. 25
Long live freedom and damn the ideologies,’
Said the gamey black-maned wild boar
Tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain.
(Robinson Jeffers)
Explore the ways in which Robinson Jeffers makes this such a memorable poem. [25]
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TURN OVER FOR QUESTION 6.
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From STORIES OF OURSELVES Volume 2
6 Read this extract from The Gold Watch (by Mulk Raj Anand), and then answer the question that
follows it:
There was something about the smile of Mr Acton, when he came over to Srijut
Sudarshan Sharma’s table, which betokened disaster. But as the Sahib had only said,
‘Mr Sharma, I have brought something for you specially from London—you must come
into my office on Monday and take it …’, the poor old dispatch clerk could not surmise
the real meaning of the General Manager’s remark. The fact that Mr Acton should come 5
over to his table at all, fawn upon him and say what he had said was, of course, most
flattering. For, very rarely did the head of the firm condescend to move down the corridor
where the Indian staff of the distribution department of the great Marmalade Empire of
Henry King & Co., worked. But that smile on Mr Acton’s face!—specially as Mr Acton was
not known to smile too much, being a morose, old Sahib, hard working, conscientious 10
and a slave driver, famous as a shrewd businessman, so devoted to the job of spreading
the monopoly of King’s Marmalade, and sundry other products, that his wife had left
him after a three month’s spell of marriage and never returned to India, though no one
quite knew whether she was separated or divorced from him or merely preferred to stay
away. So the fact that Acton Sahib should smile was enough to give Srijut Sharma cause 15
for thought. But then Srijut Sharma was, in spite of his nobility of soul and fundamental
innocence, experienced enough in his study of the vague, detached race of the white
Sahibs by now and clearly noticed the slight awkward curl of the upper lip, behind which
the determined, tobacco-stained long teeth showed, for the briefest moment, a snarl
suppressed by the deliberation which Acton Sahib had brought to the whole operation 20
of coming over and pronouncing those kind words. And what could be the reason for his
having being singled out, from amongst the twenty-five odd members of the distribution
department? In the usual way, he, the despatch clerk, only received an occasional
greeting, ‘Hello Sharma—how you getting on?’ from the head of his own department,
Mr West; and twice or thrice a year he was called into the cubicle by West Sahib for a 25
reprimand, because some letters or packets had gone astray; otherwise, he himself,
being the incarnation of clock-work efficiency, and well-versed in the routine of his job,
there was no occasion for any break in the monotony of that anonymous, smooth working
Empire, so far at least as he was concerned. To be sure, there was the continual gossip
of the clerks and the accountants, the bickerings and jealousies of the people above 30
him, for grades and promotions and pay; but he, Sharma, had been employed twenty
years ago, as a special favour, was not even a matriculate, but had picked up the work
somehow, and though unwanted and constantly reprimanded by West Sahib in the first
few years, had been retained because of the general legend of saintliness which he had
acquired … he had five more years of service to do, because then he would be fifty-five, 35
and the family-raising, grhast, portion of his life in the fourfold scheme, prescribed by
religion, finished, he hoped to retire to his home town Jullunder, where his father still ran
the confectioner’s shop off the Mall Road.
‘And what did Acton Sahib have to say to you, Mr Sharma?’ asked Miss Violet Dixon,
the plain snub-nosed Anglo Indian typist in her singsong voice. 40
Being an old family man of fifty, who had grayed prematurely, she considered herself
safe enough with this ‘gentleman’ and freely conversed with him, specially during the
lunch hour, while she considered almost everyone else as having only one goal in life—
to sleep with her.
‘Han’, he said, ‘he has brought something for me from England’, Srijut Sharma 45
answered.
‘There are such pretty things in U.K.’, she said.
‘My! I wish, I could go there! My sister is there, you know! Married! …’
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She had told Sharma all these things before. So he was not interested. Specially
today, because all his thoughts were concentrated on the inner meaning of Mr Acton’s 50
sudden visitation and the ambivalent smile.
‘Well, half day today, I am off’; said Violet and moved away with the peculiar
snobbish agility of the Mem Sahib she affected to be.
Srijut Sharma stared at her blankly, though taking in her regular form into his
subconscious with more than the old uncle’s interest he had always pretended to take 55
in her. It was only her snub nose, like that of sarupnaka, the sister of the demon king
Ravana, that stood in the way of her being married, he felt sure, for otherwise she had
a tolerable figure. But he lowered his eyes as soon as the thought of Miss Dixon’s body
began to simmer in the cauldron of his inner life; because, as a good Hindu, every
woman, apart from the wife, was to him a mother or a sister. And his obsession about the 60
meaning of Acton Sahib’s words returned, from the pent up curiosity, with greater force
now that he realised the vastness of the space of time during which he would have to
wait in suspense before knowing what the boss had brought for him and why.
How does Mulk Raj Anand make this such a revealing introduction to Srijut Sharma? [25]
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SECTION B
Answer one question from this section.
Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing.
YUKIO MISHIMA: The Sound of Waves
7 To what extent does Mishima encourage you to feel sorry for Chiyoko? [25]
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA: Yerma
8 How does Lorca vividly capture Yerma’s worsening state of mind?
Do not use the extract printed in Question 2 in answering this question. [25]
AMY TAN: The Bonesetter’s Daughter
9 How does Tan encourage you to sympathise with LuLing during her life in China?
Do not use the extract printed in Question 3 in answering this question. [25]
NIKOLAI GOGOL: The Government Inspector
10 How far do you think Gogol makes the ending to the play satisfying? [25]
SONGS OF OURSELVES Volume 2: from Part 2
11 In what ways does Thomas Hardy make The Darkling Thrush such a powerful poem? [25]
From STORIES OF OURSELVES Volume 2
12 Explore how Katherine Mansfield makes you feel sympathy for the Kelvey sisters in The Doll’s
House. [25]
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