Paper 2: Texts in shared contexts - Option A: WW1 and its aftermath - Section B: Chosen comparative set texts — AQA A-Level English Literature
Test yourself on Paper 2: Texts in shared contexts - Option A: WW1 and its aftermath - Section B: Chosen comparative set texts with AQA A-Level practice questions.
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Your focus
- Students study two texts. These texts can be taken from the following list or from the core set text list. Any text from the core set text list used in the Section A response, however, cannot be used in Section B.
Paper 2: Texts in shared contexts - Option A: WW1 and its aftermath - Section B: Chosen comparative set texts exam tips
Quick Revision Summary (Key Takeaway)
This AQA A-Level English Literature unit requires comparative analysis of a core WW1 text (e.g. 'Birdsong' or 'Regeneration') with a chosen partner text (e.g. 'Journey's End' or 'My Boy Jack'), exploring themes of trauma, memory, masculinity, and the aftermath of conflict. Examiners demand integrated comparison, contextual understanding of 1914-1939, and analysis of how writers use form, structure, and language to shape meaning.
Topic Overview
This unit requires you to study a core WW1 text (such as Sebastian Faulks's 'Birdsong' or Pat Barker's 'Regeneration') alongside a chosen partner text (such as R.C. Sherriff's 'Journey's End' or David Haig's 'My Boy Jack'). You will explore how writers represent the causes, experiences, and aftermath of the First World War, focusing on themes like trauma, memory, masculinity, class, and the home front. The exam demands integrated comparison, so you must analyse both texts together, not separately.
The unit sits within the broader 'Texts in shared contexts' module, which encourages you to see literature as a product of its historical moment. You will develop skills in close reading, contextual analysis, and comparative argument, all of which are essential for the 25-mark essay. Understanding the differences between genres (novel, drama, poetry) and the times of writing (1920s vs. 1990s) is crucial for accessing the highest marks.
Key Concepts
- →Integrated comparison: examiners reward analysis that moves fluidly between texts, comparing methods and meanings within the same paragraph, not in separate blocks.
- →Context of production and reception: consider how the time of writing (e.g. 1928 for 'Journey's End', 1991 for 'Regeneration') shapes the portrayal of war, memory, and masculinity.
- →Form and structure: novelists use narrative perspective, tense, and interiority; dramatists use stage directions, dialogue, and off-stage sound to create meaning.
- →Themes: trauma and shell-shock, the erosion of identity, class tensions, the role of women, and the contrast between home front and battlefront.
- →AO4 (comparison) and AO3 (context) are equally weighted with AO1 (argument) and AO2 (analysis), so a balanced approach is essential.
Examiner Tips
- 💡Plan your essay around themes or methods, not around the texts. This ensures integrated comparison from the start.
- 💡Use precise terminology: 'focalisation', 'diegetic sound', 'caesura', 'dramatic irony'. This demonstrates AO2 sophistication.
- 💡Embed short quotations and analyse specific words. Avoid long quotes that eat into your time and dilute analysis.
Common Mistakes
- Students think comparison means simply stating similarities and differences. In fact, AQA wants you to compare how writers use methods to explore shared themes, integrating your analysis throughout.
- Many believe context is just biographical facts about the author. Context should be about the historical, social, and literary influences on the text and how they shape meaning, not a list of dates.
- Some assume that all WW1 literature is anti-war. While much is critical, texts like 'Journey's End' also celebrate camaraderie and duty; nuance is key.
Revision Plan
- 1Week 1: Read both texts closely, annotating for themes, character development, and key quotations. Create a comparative grid of themes (e.g. trauma, masculinity) with evidence from both texts.
- 2Week 1-2: Research the contexts of production: for 'Journey's End', the 1928 West End success and the post-war mood; for 'Regeneration', the 1990s interest in trauma and the real-life figures of Sassoon and Rivers.
- 3Week 2: Practise writing integrated comparative paragraphs. Use the PEE+CL (Point, Evidence, Explanation, Comparison, Link) structure to ensure you compare methods and meanings.
- 4Week 2: Complete at least two timed essays (25 marks in 45 minutes) under exam conditions. Self-assess or peer-assess using the AQA mark scheme, focusing on AO4 integration.
- 5Ongoing: Memorise 5-6 key quotations per text that can be used flexibly across themes. Create flashcards for context and critical interpretations.
Exam Question Types
- 📋Comparative essay question: 'Compare how [writer A] and [writer B] present [theme] in [text A] and [text B].' You must integrate comparison and analyse methods. Spend 45 minutes on this 25-mark question.
- 📋Extract-based question: You may be given a short extract from one text and asked to compare it with the whole of the other text. Use the extract as a springboard for wider analysis.
- 📋Context-focused question: 'Explore the significance of [contextual factor] in shaping the presentation of [theme] in both texts.' You must weave context into your analysis, not bolt it on.
Command Word Expectations (AQA)
Compare
You must identify similarities and differences in how writers use methods to present themes, and analyse the effects. Integrated comparison throughout is required for top band.
Explore
You should investigate a range of possible meanings and interpretations, using close textual reference and contextual knowledge. Avoid a single, simplistic reading.
Analyse
You must break down how language, form, and structure create meaning, using precise terminology and explaining the effects on the reader/audience.
How Students Lose Marks (Examiner Pitfalls)
Pitfall: Students often treat comparison as separate paragraphs about each text rather than integrated analysis, losing AO4 marks for 'comparison'.
❌ Weak Answer (Loses Marks):In 'Birdsong', Faulks uses vivid imagery of the tunnels. In 'Journey's End', Sherriff uses stage directions to show the dugout. Both show the war was bad.
Example improved answer:Both Faulks and Sherriff exploit the claustrophobic setting of the tunnels and dugout to explore psychological entrapment, yet where Faulks uses the visceral, present-tense sensory overload of the tunnel collapse to convey trauma as an immediate physical assault on the body, Sherriff relies on the static, claustrophobic stage space and the off-stage sound of shellfire to dramatise a more insidious, cumulative psychological erosion.
Examiner Tip: Use comparative discourse markers ('whereas', 'similarly', 'conversely') within every paragraph and ensure each point discusses both texts in relation to the same theme or technique.
Pitfall: Context is often bolted on as biographical information about the author rather than integrated into analysis of the text's production or reception.
❌ Weak Answer (Loses Marks):Sebastian Faulks was born in 1953, so he didn't fight in the war. This means he is imagining it.
Example improved answer:Faulks's post-memory position, writing in 1993 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and during renewed Balkan conflict, informs his depiction of the Battle of the Somme as a site of almost archaeological recovery, reflecting late-twentieth-century anxieties about how to transmit traumatic history to a generation with no direct experience of it.
Examiner Tip: Link context to specific textual details: consider how the time of writing (1990s for Faulks, 1928 for Sherriff) shapes the representation of memory, masculinity, and mourning.
Step-by-Step Worked Solutions
Question: Compare how Faulks in 'Birdsong' and Sherriff in 'Journey's End' present the psychological effects of trench warfare on soldiers. (25 marks)
- 1.Step 1: Identify the key focus: psychological effects, not just physical. Choose two or three specific moments from each text (e.g. Stephen's claustrophobia in the tunnel, Stanhope's drinking and tremor).
- 2.Step 2: Analyse the methods used: Faulks's use of present tense and sensory imagery to create immediacy; Sherriff's use of stage directions, dialogue, and off-stage sound to create tension and reveal character.
- 3.Step 3: Integrate comparison: show how both writers explore the erosion of identity, but Faulks focuses on the internal, stream-of-consciousness experience while Sherriff externalises it through dramatic interaction and setting.
- 4.Step 4: Embed relevant context: the shift from Victorian notions of heroic masculinity to the 'shell-shock' diagnosis; the 1928 context of Sherriff's play as a post-war reflection; Faulks's 1990s exploration of inherited trauma.
- 5.Step 5: Conclude by evaluating which text offers a more effective portrayal, supported by close reference to language, form, and structure.
Final Answer: Both texts present psychological damage as a central consequence of war, but Faulks uses novelistic interiority to immerse the reader in trauma, while Sherriff uses dramatic tension and dialogue to reveal the fragile masks soldiers wear. Full marks require integrated comparison, precise textual evidence, and contextual understanding of how each text's form and era shape its message.
Question: How does Pat Barker in 'Regeneration' and R.C. Sherriff in 'Journey's End' use setting to explore the theme of confinement? (25 marks)
- 1.Step 1: Define 'setting' broadly: physical locations (Craiglockhart hospital, the dugout), and the wider psychological and social 'setting' of wartime Britain.
- 2.Step 2: Select evidence: Barker's descriptions of the hospital's locked doors, the 'silence' of the corridors, and the patients' dreams; Sherriff's detailed stage directions for the cramped, dimly lit dugout and the constant threat above.
- 3.Step 3: Analyse how setting reflects character: Sassoon's voluntary confinement versus Stanhope's trapped duty; the hospital as a place of healing and surveillance; the dugout as a microcosm of the front line.
- 4.Step 4: Compare the writers' purposes: Barker critiques the military-medical establishment's treatment of 'shell-shock' as a form of social control; Sherriff dramatises the claustrophobia and inevitability of death for the men in the trenches.
- 5.Step 5: Use contextual knowledge: the real Craiglockhart hospital and the work of W.H.R. Rivers; the stage limitations of 1928 and how Sherriff uses them to heighten tension.
Final Answer: Both texts use confined settings to explore the physical and psychological entrapment of soldiers, but Barker's hospital setting allows for a critique of the authorities who police trauma, while Sherriff's dugout setting creates a pressure-cooker of imminent danger. Top-band answers will analyse how form (novel vs. drama) shapes the presentation of confinement and link to the contexts of shell-shock treatment and post-war remembrance.
Active Recall Memory Test
What is the significance of the title 'Journey's End'?
Key Fact: It refers both to the literal journey to the front line and the metaphorical journey towards death, as well as the psychological journey of the characters. It also plays on the idea of the end of the day and the end of life.
How does Faulks use the present tense in 'Birdsong'?
Key Fact: Faulks uses the present tense in the 1916 sections to create immediacy and immerse the reader in the sensory experience of the trenches, making the trauma more visceral and immediate for a modern reader.
What is 'shell-shock' and how is it treated in 'Regeneration'?
Key Fact: Shell-shock was a term used for psychological trauma suffered by soldiers. In 'Regeneration', it is treated at Craiglockhart War Hospital by psychiatrists like W.H.R. Rivers, using techniques such as talking therapy and dream analysis, though Barker critiques the military's desire to return men to the front.
Name two key contextual differences between 'Journey's End' and 'Regeneration'.
Key Fact: 1) 'Journey's End' was written in 1928, a decade after the war, reflecting a period of remembrance and disillusionment; 'Regeneration' was published in 1991, influenced by late-20th-century interest in trauma and memory. 2) 'Journey's End' is a play, constrained by stage conventions; 'Regeneration' is a novel, allowing for deeper interiority and multiple perspectives.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best way to revise for the WW1 comparative essay?
Create a comparative revision grid with themes (e.g. trauma, masculinity, class) down one side and your two texts across the top. Fill in key quotations, methods, and contextual points for each. Practise writing integrated paragraphs that compare both texts in every paragraph. Also, memorise short, flexible quotations that can be used for multiple themes.
How many quotations do I need to memorise for the exam?
Aim for 6-8 key quotations per text that cover a range of themes and characters. Quality over quantity: you need to know them precisely and be able to analyse specific words. Short quotations (3-5 words) are often more effective than long ones because you can embed them smoothly.
What does 'integrated comparison' actually mean?
Integrated comparison means discussing both texts together within the same paragraph or even the same sentence, rather than writing one paragraph on text A and then one on text B. For example: 'Both writers use silence to convey trauma, but where Barker's narrative voice describes it as an echoing void, Sherriff's stage directions create a tense pause that the audience must fill.' This shows you are comparing methods and meanings directly.
How important is context in this unit?
Context is worth 50% of the marks (AO3) alongside comparison (AO4), so it is crucial. However, it must be integrated into your analysis, not just stated as facts. For example, link the 1928 context of 'Journey's End' to its portrayal of duty and camaraderie, or the 1990s context of 'Regeneration' to its exploration of trauma and memory. Avoid biographical trivia.
Can I write about the film adaptation of 'Journey's End' in the exam?
No, you should focus on the text as a play. The exam is about the written text and its dramatic methods. Referring to film adaptations can distract from the analysis of stagecraft and may not be credited. Stick to the play script and its stage directions.
What are the most common themes in WW1 literature that I should revise?
Key themes include: the psychological and physical trauma of war (shell-shock, injury), the erosion of identity, masculinity and duty, class tensions, the role of women and the Home Front, memory and remembrance, and the contrast between the horror of the trenches and the ignorance or propaganda at home. Revise these with specific examples from both texts.