Jamb Literature in English 1999 Past Questions and Answers

Question 36:

• JAMB 1999

This question is based on General Literary Principles.
A metaphor in which objects, persons and events in a story are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself is

A. Fable
B. Personification
C. Allegory
D. Symbolism

Question 37:

• JAMB 1999

This question is based on Literary Principles.
The commissioner, who was also the local magistrate, peered at the two men. He did not go near because fastidiously he too wished to avoid the odour of travel that clung to them. Except for the alpaca jacket which he wore in the office, he was a model of starched and expensive neatness from his lean skull to the gleaming toes of his formal shoes'.Alex La Guma, 'Time of the Butcherbird'
From the italicized lines above, the writer condemns the Commissioner by employing a

A. Convenient setting
B. Contemptuous tone
C. Stark metaphor
D. Graphic description

Question 38:

• JAMB 1999

This question is based on Literary Principles.
'Standing on the veranda, I see my sons Alioune and Malick arriving in tears. They are in a pitiable state; torn clothes, bodies covered in dust from a fall, knees bleeding beneath the shorts. There is a larg hole in the right sleeve of Malick's sweater; the arm on the same side hangs down limply. One of the boys supporting him explained to me:
'A motorcyclist knocked down Malick and Alioune.
We were playing football'''
Mariama Ba, 'So Long a Letter'
The use of the present tense in the passage

A. Makes it dramatic
B. Heightens its objectivity
C. Captures the narrator's anger
D. Makes it farcical

Question 39:

• JAMB 1999

This question is based on Literary Principles.
'At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains piled to the vault overhead. In the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down , and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size',
E. Pope, 'Cask of Amontillado'
In the passage above, the author evokes the atmosphere of

A. Cannibalism
B. Monstrosity
C. Evil
D. Doom

Question 40:

• JAMB 1999

This question is based on Literary Principles.
'He always thought of the sea as a la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman'.
Hemingway, 'The Old Man and the Sea'
In the passage above, the sea is

A. Romanticised
B. Personified
C. Criticised
D. Praised