Sample Context Answer with Instructions

You will be graded for:

• Identification- 1
• Relevance to text, theme, plot, character- 3
• Literary features- 1
• Language- 3

Extract

Step 1: Identification

• Author: William Shakespeare
• Genre: Shakespearean sonnet
• 14 Lines
• 3 Quatrains
• Final rhyming Couplet
• Rhyming scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
• Iambic pentametre

Other special features: Addressed to the fair youth. The Fair Youth poems are expressions of spiritual love towards a young man.

Step 2: Briefly interpret the extract

• In me you may see the season of Autumn when few or no yellow leaves hang upon those branches which shake against the cold wind; the trees where birds used to sing are now ruined and deserted. You could further elaborate this by adding the possibility of “bare ruin’d choirs” signifying monasteries that are demolished by King Henry the eighth.

Step 3: Analysing the extract

Techniques

• The poet creates a bleak visual image of Autumn using features associated with the season including yellow leaves, cold wind, emptiness and silence. (don’t forget to give evidence in the form of quotations)

• Bleak: It induces feelings of hopelessness and depression.

• The tone is pensive (serious)

• This image of Autumn is a metaphor for the speaker's old age.

• Connecting to the theme: Thus, the extract reveals the poet’s preoccupation (concern/worry/anxiety) with old age and the transient (impermanent) nature of life.

(The theme may evolve throughout the text. Track the theme relevant to the extract. State how this theme evolves to become the one that is expressed at the end.)

• Although the first quatrain is limited to revealing his preoccupation with old age, his attitudes change during the course of the poem. During the final couplet he asserts the ability of spiritual love to triumph over old age, death and decay.
• Practice these steps and you will never end up in a low grade.