Literature-In-English Exam Past Questions and Answers | JAMB, WAEC and NECO

Literature in English is the study of works written in the English language. It includes all forms of writing, such as novels, plays, short stories, and poetry. This subject involves exploring and analyzing these texts to understand their themes and meanings.

• Question 1:

  'When the district Commissioner arrived at Okonkwo's compound at the head of an armed band of Soldiers and court messengers he found a small crowd of men sitting wearily in the "obi" He commanded them to come outside, and they obeyed without a murmur'

  This passage from Things Fall Apart suggests that one of the reasons why traditional African society disintegrated was that Africans are

  Options:
  A) weary lazy people
  B) very docile people
  C) peace-loving people
  D) military weak people
  E) inferior beings compare to white people.h
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is D .
• Question 2:

  Much madness is divinest sense

  To a discerning eye;

  Much sense is starkest madness.

  'This the majority

  In this, as all, prevails.

  Assent, and you are sane;

  Demur,-you're straightway dangerous,

  And handled with a chain.

  This poem reflects the

  Options:
  A) tyranny of the majority
  B) approval of the majority factor
  C) unhappiness that might is right
  D) great love for mad poeple.
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is A .
• Question 3:

  This question is based on General Literature Principles and Literary Appreciation

  'America! there it lay, handy and tantalizing, allheat and scurry. All morning they had kept catching glimpses of it beyond the potholes as they stood in long lines, waiting to reach the tables where the immigration men in dacrion shirts checked their visas, inspected the X-ray pictures of their lungs that they held in their hands, decided whether to admit them or not. Getting into America was, it seemed, quite as hard as getting into heaven; and the trouble was... that as with heaven one couldn't know whether one would like it when one got there'.

  The picture of America presented in this passage is that of a place

  Options:
  A) of unknown and uncertain qualities
  B) choked with red tape
  C) as inviting as heaven itself
  D) off-putting on account of the heat
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is A .
• Question 4: Characterization in a novel means the Options:
  A) list of characters featuring in it
  B) mode of presenting the fictional individuals
  C) peculiar mannerisms of the narrator
  D) resolution of the conflict between the characters.
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is B .
• Question 5:

  This question is based on George Orwell's Animal Farm,

  The overthrow of Jones happens sooner than expected because the animals

  Options:
  A) experience acute suffering
  B) are milked by Jones
  C) are better schemers
  D) receive assistance from Foxwood
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is A .
• Question 6:

  Analogy is the arrangement of two ideas that are_________

  Options:
  A) opposite
  B) similar
  C) symbolic
  D) repetitive
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is B .
• Question 7: The tone used in the poem Owusu is that of Options:
  A) admiration
  B) fear
  C) cowardice
  D) self-doubt
  E) condemnation
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is A .
• Question 8:

  This question is based on Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel.

  '...He risked his life that you may boast

  A warrior-hunter for your lord...But you-

  You sell him to the rhyming rabble

  Gloating in your disloyalty...

  In these lines the 'rhyming rabble' refers to

  Options:
  A) clowns who wait on the Bale
  B) children in Lakunle's school
  C) professional singers
  D) the mummers who dance in mockery of the Bale's rumoured impotence
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is D .
• Question 9:

  'I shall sleep under the roof of other heads of hair in shelter from storms'.

  In Leopold Senghor's poem 'Long long you have held between your hands', the word 'storms' in the above line refers to

  Options:
  A) sea storms
  B) rain storms
  C) storming raids by the racist police
  D) storms of passion.
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is D .
• Question 10:

  This question is based on Literary Principles.

  'Otto's wife was a potter. Nessa remembered Sandra Davis telling her this. Not just a wife, not just a mother - as Nessa's own mother had been, as all the women in her childhood were and were expected to be; cooks and floor scrubbers, fanatical table polishers and chairback starchers, nest builders.

  Georgina Hammick, 'Habits'

  In the passage above, it can be inferred that Otto's wife

  Options:
  A) scrubbed floors and polished tables like the other women
  B) was a potter and was thereforespared other domestic jobs
  C) was a potter like Nessa's mother
  D) was a potter in addition to being a wife andmother
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is D .