The Extended Written Texts paper asks you to write an essay in response to a play or novel you have read this year. You may choose between Macbeth and Lord of the Flies as your source text or this – though I would encourage you to prepare and consider Macbeth as your preferred option.
Practise Paper
Excellence Exemplar
Marking Rubric
Practice Introduction:
QUESTION: “Describe at least one important character in the written text(s). Explain how the character changes throughout the text(s).”
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a play that plots the inexorable decline in his main character Macbeth’s state of mind. This degeneration is accelerated in the play through a range of external forces, and internal flaws in Macbeth – all of which leads us to the unavoidable conclusion that ambition is not wholly a virtue. The external forces that amplify our main character’s decline include the supernatural, embodied by the witches and their “mischief”: manifestations of predictions of Macbeth’s “glorious” future, and the influence of his ambitious wife, Lady Macbeth. Macbeth then succumbs to his weakening mind through a series of hallucinations, all of which lead to his ultimate despair and destruction.
