List of A05 critics to use in A Level English Literature OCR exam, question 2, comparative study - Dystopia

English Literature Paper 2 - comparative study on the topic of Dystopia using Atwood’s ‘A Handmaid’s Tale’ and Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The paper will have two questions. You will be expected to spend 1hr and 15mins on each 30 mark question. Question one is a critical appreciation of an unseen passage and Question two is a comparison between the two texts. Below are the Assessment Objectives for each question:

  • Question One:

    • AO2 - Language, structure, form, voice analysis.

    • AO3 - Contextual knowledge of other typically dystopian texts.

    • AO1 - argument and writing fluency, does your answer refer to the question?

  • Question Two:

    • AO3 - worth 15 marks, you must refer to the context of the time when the authors were writing or a specific event that they were inspired by.

    • AO4 - Comparison between texts.

    • AO1 - fluency of writing again and textual knowledge.

    • AO5 - Critical voices and perspectives on the text, must be well-incorporated into your answer; not just dumped at the beginning of a paragraph.

1984 by George Orwell critics to use:

*short explanations will provide insight into how each critical perspective can be applied to a specific category of question i.e. ‘love and relationships’ or ‘control of narrative’.

“Orwell imagines a totalitarian society which wants to eradicate the concept of the individual.”

- Robert Brown

“A panoptic society leads people to internalise the values of the ideology which has trapped them.”

- Madeleine Davies

“The body is a contested site in 1984, the Party tries to seize control of it.”

- Rook

“During Winston’s ordeal in Room 101, his body is politicised.”

- Rook

“All national movements revolve around some all-powerful Fuhrer.

- Orwell

“The most terrifying aspect about Winston’s rebellion is that it was predicted and controlled from the very beginning.”

- Steven Conor

“Orwell has imagined nothing new in the novel that hasn’t happened already.”

- Hopkins

“[1984] is addressed to anyone concerned with the question of human freedom and the dangers of totalitarianism.”

- Steven Conor

‘A Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood critics to use:

“Women’s bodies become ‘disputed territories’.”

- Davies

“Atwood provides a dissident account by a Handmaid who has been relegated to the margins of political power.”

- Carol Ann Howards

"[A Handmaid’s tale is] speculative fiction, nothing in the novel has not happened already.”

- Atwood

“Atwood’s novel is full of distorted and oppressive misrepresentation of the Bible.”

- Kevin Killeen