Unit 1: Drama Sample Questions and Answers on an Unseen Extract
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When answering questions based on an extract, use the PQE method as indicated in the sample answer to Q.1. This will give your answer a clear structure.
1. What impression of Lucy do you form from reading this extract? Support your answer with reference to the extract. From reading this extract, I get the impression that Lucy is a bit of a scatterbrain who resents the fact that she is taken for granted by her colleagues. She seems to be completely overwhelmed by her many and varied duties. [P] I can tell that Lucy is disorganised [P] because John sarcastically remarks that it is ‘A miracle she hasn’t lost the first-aid box’ and also points out that Lucy has ‘lost the key’. Lucy herself acknowledges she is a bit scattered and inefficient by admitting that looking after the box was her ‘one bit of efficiency’. [Q + E] It is clear from the extract that Lucy resents being taken for granted by others. [P] She complains that she always gets ‘landed’ with the ‘rotten jobs that no one else wants’. She becomes self-pitying and sulky when listing all the jobs she undertakes. This makes me wonder why she accepts these responsibilities in the first place. Perhaps she is just trying to be ‘nice’ and has now become ‘sick of being nice’. Her resentment sounds slightly childish when she says ‘Well you look after it! I don’t want to do it!‘ [Q + E]
There is no doubt that Lucy feels overwhelmed. [P] She appears to become hysterical when she uses phrases like ‘I’m sick of...’ ‘I’m fed up of...’, ‘I’m worn out...’ and ends up by telling Wally that she has ‘
...come over all to pieces! I don’t know what I’m doing!’ Her tendency to be melodramatic is obvious when she thinks she has to ‘watch Wally bleed to death’. [Q + E] Overall, I get the impression that Lucy has taken on too many responsibilities for such an inefficient, highly strung person. [Conclusion]
2. There are many elements that help to make this passage an entertaining piece of drama. In your opinion, what are these elements? There are several elements which help to make this an entertaining piece of drama. In my opinion, comedy is created in the situation, in the dialogue and in the characterisation. The lost key results in an entertaining reaction from Lucy, who blows the situation out of all proportion to its real importance. Wally is certainly not ‘bleeding to death‘ and if he were, they would need much more than a ‘first-aid box’! The situation has many elements of slapstick comedy. Wally’s dramatic whipping away of the handkerchief to reveal his cut hand and the frantic search for the key are funny. The problem is resolved in typical slapstick fashion when the box is broken open with the leg of the
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