Form 4A English
English Paper 2
“Night’ by Alice Munro.
Reading Comprehension Questions
Read the story and answer the following questions BRIEFLY.
1. How do you know the story is set just after the second world war?
“The war and gas rationing had changed all that” refers the Second World War.
2. What details does she include about when the pain struck her?
The weather at that time(there was a snow blizzard outside), the neighbours brought her to
hospital, shows that the hospital is really far away 11 o clock at night.
3. How does she describe the snow in lines 13-14? What technique is this?
sibilance, auditory imagery-brings to life the atmosphere of falling snow, pathetic fallacy
4. What was a taboo for Alice and her family?
Cancer, the removal of her growth and the possibility of it being cancer.
5. Describe the sleeping arrangements of Alice and her sister Catherine?
Alice slept in the top bunk, her sister: low bunk
6. How did Alice tease and anger her sister?
To spit or successfully pretend to spit on her bared face
7. How was the relationship between the sisters “unsettled”? What did Alice do to her
sister?
Tormenting her, teasing her, being a sophisticated counsellor or hair-raising
storyteller
8. What feelings does Alice describe as “inward”? (Line 61)
The freedom has made her feel useless and strange(uselessness and strangeness)
9. What struggle does Alice face?
She was unsure with her mental state, she struggles with insomnia,
10. How does she view this problem at first?
Meant lying awake maybe till around midnight
11. What short sentences does she use to convey her feelings?
“I was not myself”- she is disturbed and she feels isolated
12. What thought dominates and hangs in her mind?
The thought that she could strangle her little sister
13. What reason does she give for carrying out her thought? How does she personify this
reason?
Madness, “lying right beside me” shows that the thought haunts her. Calling it lazy and
teasing
14. Where does she go to stop her haunting thought?
Far from town
15. How are the trees described at night? (line 124)
“intensely black”
16. What adverbs does she use to return the chair (so as no one will know that she was up
and outside? (Use of a triplet).
“Properly, carefully, silently”
17. What adjective does Alice repeat three times to dismiss the thought?
“Absurd” 140,141, 144
18. Explain “the demons got hold of me again” (line 151)
Metaphor to show she is very helpless against the maddening thoughts about her sister
19. What did she sense one night?
Somebody around the corner.
20. Who does it turn out to be?’
Her father.
21. What can Alice now not unsay? (line 216)
“Strangle her”
22. How does her father respond?
He told her no to worry and told her that sometimes people will have the same
thoughts.
23. What does Alice think she would do for a child nowadays. (Look at her thoughts in
parenthesis) Line 231
Question further about her attitude towards her little sister and her dissatisfactions
with her life, make an appointment to see the psychiatrist.
24. Explain the line: “it happens in life” (236)
Sometime people will have some thoughts but later they won’t do it and this actually
happens in reality
25. What does she reflect on?
26. In the last paragraph what does Alice try to work out?
27. How does the passage end? Why is it an anti-climax?
2 short sentences. The ending is boring, she simply tells the readers that she could
sleep.
28. Why is the story called “Night”?
She struggles with insomnia which she cannot sleep at night.
“night” Impactful title
“I” Makes the story very personal
Line 2: “drastic…snowstorm” Mirrors the negative emotions that she
will feel in the later story
“snowstorm”- negative emotions
(pathetic fallacy)
Linec9- “blizzard” Emphasize the negative atmosphere-
unpleasant, chaotic, unpredictable
Line 14-15: “days looking…snow sifting Sibilance- conveys sad sound
in a somber way”
Line 15-17: Actively reflecting her childhood as an
adult
Line 23: “the size of a turkey’s egg” Use of dark humor, relate to cancer
tumor, metaphor for cancer tumor
29: “a cloud around that word…” “word”-cancer
Give people that feeling
Metaphor: “cloud”- Bad connotation to
that word
ellipsis
34-35 Describe how normal she is
Triplet shows normality
36-39 Descriptive part about what her
bedroom looks like, understand the
scene.
“spit on my little sister lying helpless in They have normal behavior of normal
the bunk below” sisters, tell the background of the
relationship of her and her sister.
45-48 Unpropermatic but unsettled.
49-50
“as I have said” Conversational tone
61 She felt so awk after the operations and
convey her inner feelings
62-63 Sense of reflection, thinking about why.
64 answering
71-75 Describe how the house at night
The freedom. The strangeness Short sentences highlights her various
feelings
Line 78“I became more and more Inability to sleep has stressed her out a
disturbed by it” lot
She is feeling negative feelings
“I was not myself”, “So who do you She is talking to herself
think you are, then”, ‘Think again” The madness is starting to rise
Feelings getting more intense
1st
2nd Rhetorical questions
3rd imperatives
Repetition of pronoun “my” to show
she is trying to take control over the
situation and personification- something
is controlling her, struggle
Anaphora-
Single sentence paragraph: emphasize
horrifying thought
Triplet, shows that it will be a senseless
killing as she does not feeling anything
madness Losing her rationality, personification
Lazy, teasing , half-sluggish Show the act is senseless
Why not try the worst This shows that she is losing control
over her rationality which makes
readers panic
The worst Superlative
114-115: “Then quietly down…my way
without a light”
122-125 Trees: to describe the outside
environment
Use of color: contrast the trees at night
and during the day “lilac”, “black”,
“white”
Line 131:“the bird began…to sing” Auditory imagery shows the night has
ended, the day has begun
“there got to be a little whitening in the Visual image for a new day
sky”
Line 144: “Absurd” Single word paragraph emphasise the
ridiculousness
Line 151: “demons” Something sinful, evil
Negative word
Personifies all her sinful, evil thoughts
dripful (?)
158-159 Sensory imagery shows how normal it
is during the day which contrast to
nighttime
160-163 Emphasize the normality, how sane
Due to the normality, it sues her a lot
during the terrifying night.
Use of long sentence.
This normal thing comforts her
165-166 Introduces the presence of her father
and her father is the ? figure to calm her
down
172: “cigarette smoke” Sense of smell
p.50 Use of dialogue to drive the story
199-204 Very resistant to tell her father
Felt so conflicted
Reluctant
211-222 The struggle has broken
215 See the element here that she could not
control herself(saying something or
strangle her sister)
220 The father’s reaction is calm and
normal
The writer expects him to be shocked,
out of the narrator’s expectations
225 He is so rational
232-233 Referring to what she would have done
as an adult if her child told her they
want to kill her siblings
Show that she was so surprised
Reflecting her incident from the
perspective as an adult
236 Echo what her father said
She is a lot more calm now
Sums up her father explanation and she
hold up on it
237-240 Reflect again
She is thinking as an adult
Contrast to raising children now,
So Her father will not question her, will
just punish her
lift up the corner of my thin mattress and threaten to spit on my little sister lying helpless in
the bunk below.
