Year 10 – English Literature Baseline Assessment

2020 – Term 1

Q1) 1. The ship was quite big since it had a main deck
2. It was listing/sinking
3. There were loud noises coming from inside the ship
4. There was a noticeable incline from the bow to the stern

Q2) The author has used personification to describe the narrator’s fright and
confusion. The “monstrous metallic burp” of the ship lets the reader know that
the real conflict has started. The ship is a non-living thing, of course, and the
writer has given human qualities to it by saying it had a “monstrous metallic
burp”. In this quote, the narrator is referring to the ship sinking faster and
harder as the seconds went by. He is confused as to what the “monstrous
metallic burp” can be – the animals and people on the ship or the ship’s
material. Both, maybe. The adjective “monstrous” tells the reader how brutal
the sound was and how horrible the situation is. The writer’s intent here is to
make the reader feel the narrator’s pain.

Secondly, the author utilizes rhetorical questions to describe the narrator’s

fright and confusion. Questions like “Where were the officers and the crew?”
and “Was it the collective scream of humans and animals protesting their
incoming death?” cannot be answered by answered by the audience because
even they are as confused as the narrator. When you’re in this type of
situation, where you don’t know if you would live or die, if your family would
make it out safe or drown in the middle of the ocean, you certainly have a lot
of questions. Your entire focus is on saving yourself and your loved ones and
the narrator here is trying to do just that, the only thing is he’s very confused
about what is happening. He has hope and he refuses to believe that his family
is dead/has drowned. The writer wants the reader to sympathize with the
narrator. By the end of the extract, when the narrator finds people who he
thinks would help him, the audience feels relieved and happy for him.
However, when he’s thrown out of the ship into the water, the audience is
caught off guard and wants to know what happens next – if he’s safe, if his
family’s safe, etc.

Q3) The author has used a pretty standard way of listing the events of these
types of situations. Firstly, the narrator tries to investigate what’s happening.
This is where the reader knows there’s some type of conflict going on.
Secondly, he finds the interior of the ship flooded with water. Here, the
audience comes to know that the ship is sinking. Next, he hears sounds, loud,
disturbing sounds coming from all around the ship. He doesn’t know what the
sound is though because it could be anything. The series of events that occur is
exactly what happens when a ship full of people is sinking.