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UPSC ENGLISH
PREVIOUS YEAR
QUESTION
PAPERS

FROM 2018 TO 2022

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TOPICS INCLUDED
Sr. No. Topic Page No.

1. UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2022 (QUESTION SET I) 4

2. UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2022 (QUESTION SET II) 7

3. UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2021 (QUESTION SET I) 9

4. UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2021 (QUESTION SET II) 13

5. UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2020 (QUESTION SET I) 16

6. UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2020 (QUESTION SET II) 19

7. UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2019 (QUESTION SET I) 22

8. UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2019 (QUESTION SET II) 25

9. UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2018 (QUESTION SET I) 28

10. UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2018 (QUESTION SET II) 31

.
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UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2022 (QUESTION SET I)

Questions Paper Specific Instructions:

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions:
• There are EIGHT questions divided in Two Sections.
• Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all
• Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be
attempted choosing at least ONE question from each Section.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in ENGLISH
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.
SECTION-A

Q.1) Critically comment in about 150 words each on the passages, focussing on the context:
(a) Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
(W. B. Yeats)
(b) I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
(T. S. Eliot)
(c) But someone told me
he got two lines
in an inside column
of a Madras newspaper
(A. K. Ramanujan)
(d) About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its
human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along;
(W. H. Auden)
(e) Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
(Philip Larkin)
4

Q.2) Answer all of the following:

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(a) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has been interpreted in multiple ways; but it still
remains an elusive poem. Discuss.
(b) John Osborne brought authenticity into contemporary English theatre through the
effective use of the vernacular and naturalistic characterization. Comment. 15 (c) A. K.
Ramanujan has earned praise for his craftsmanship. What features of his writing style mark
him out as one of the most talented in Indo-Anglican poetry? 20

Q.3) Answer all of the following:

(a) Analyse the major themes discussed in the play Look Back in Anger.
(b) Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is often mentioned as a play that falls into both the
modern and post-modern genres. Evaluate.
(c) Nostalgia for earlier Britain and its pastoral ways of life dominate the spirit of Movement
Poetry. Substantiate with reference to the poetic collection of Philip Larkin.

Q.4) Answer all of the following:

(a) W. H. Auden’s poems deal with a wide variety of themes that enrich his poetic style.
Discuss with reference to the poems prescribed in the syllabus.
(b) Does the play Waiting for Godot create hope or hopelessness in the readers? Substantiate
your answer with suitable examples from the play.
(c) In the poem The Second Coming, W. B. Yeats integrates history and mythology into an
organic whole. Substantiate your answer with suitable examples from the poem.
SECTION-B

Q.5) Answer the following in about 150 words each:

(a) Evaluate how Sons and Lovers is a suitable title for D. H. Lawrence’s novel.
(b) The theme of innocence and experience is central to the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man. Discuss.
(c) “How terrible it would have been…to have lived and died as one had been born,
unnecessary and unaccommodated.” How does this sentence throw light upon the troubled
mind of the protagonist in A House for Mr. Biswas?
(d) One of the striking features of Lord Jim is its narrative style. Analyse. (e) Shakespeare is
a central motif in the novel Mrs. Dalloway. Elaborate.

Q.6) Answer all of the following:

(a) In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the author makes extensive use of the stream
5

of consciousness technique to represent the fluid and turbulent nature of the human mind.
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Elaborate.

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(b) Comment on how V. S. Naipaul in his A House for Mr. Biswas views the colonial world
with post-colonial views.
(c) Achakka, in the novel Kanthapura, is not an individual; she is the voice of the entire group
of Brahmin women she represents. Elucidate.

Q.7) Answer all of the following:

(a) Sons and Lovers examines the emotional dynamics of the Morel family. Analyse.
(b) Discuss how Joseph Conrad narrates the saga of Jim’s lifelong search to regain his
honour.
(c) Bring out the dynamics of relationship between Dr. Aziz and Fielding in A Passage to
India.

Q.8) Answer all of the following:

(a) In the novel A Passage to India, E. M. Forster analyses the possibility of Indians and
Englishmen becoming friends in the colonial context. Discuss.
(b) In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa and Septimus never meet; but the connection between them
plays an important role in the novel. Do you agree?
(c) Kanthapura is a reminder of the effect of British colonialism in India and why Gandhism
was so appealing. Substantiate.

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UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2022 (QUESTION SET II)

Questions Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions:

• There are EIGHT questions divided in Two Sections.

• Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all
• Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be
attempted choosing at least ONE question from each Section.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in ENGLISH
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.

SECTION ‘A’

Q.1) Write short notes on the following. Each question should be answered in about 150
words.
(a) The flowering of Renaissance values in Elizabethan theatre.
(b) The moral dilemmas of the Victorian age.
(c) The ideological preoccupations of the Romantic movement.
(d) Factors that contributed to the rise of the English novel as a genre.
(e) Imagery in Metaphysical Poetry.

Q.2) Answer all of the following:

(a) Critically analyse the discourse of colonialism in The Tempest.
(b) Discuss the conflict of revolutionary politics in Paradise Lost as delineated in the books
prescribed for study.
(c) Explicate on the use of irony, epigrams, anti-climax, parody, and allusion, alongside the
vivid pictures of courtly life depicted in The Rape of the Lock.
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Q.3) Answer all of the following:

(a) John Donne reinvented love by rescuing it from its social and feudal moorings, to place it
in the realms of the private and the modern. Discuss.
(b) What is the role of hamartia in the tragedy of King Lear?
(c) Wordsworth constitutes a sublimity out of his own overbearing subjectivity. Discuss with
reference to the poems prescribed for study.

Q.4) Answer all of the following:

(a) Attempt a gendered critique of A Doll’s House.
(b) “In Memorium” is a dramatization of sorrow. Discuss.
(c) Critically assess Milton’s Satan as one of the most dynamic and complicated characters in
literature.

SECTION ‘B’

Q.5) Study the following poem and answer all the questions which follow:
To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.
To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.
To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.
To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness, such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.
Sometimes at evening there’s a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.
They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
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wept with love on seeing Ithaca,

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humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,

a green eternity, not wonders.
Art is endless like a river flowing.
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another like the river flowing.
(a) Recurrent motifs and persistent images in this poem reveal a central theme. What is it?
(b) How does the poet play with the paradox of transience and eternity?
(c) What is the function of art foregrounded by the poem?
(d) What does the river signify?
(e) Comment on the poetic diction and style that makes the poem so singular in its appeal.

Q.6) Answer all of the following:

(a) Attempt an exposition of the character of Tom Jones.
(b) Analyse the philosophical and political background of Gulliver’s Travels.
(c) Examine the late eighteenth century English class system as revealed in Pride and
Prejudice.

Q.7) Answer all of the following:

(a) Consider The Mill on the Floss as a subversion of the traditional bildungsroman.
(b) Hard Times lingers around questions of Utilitarianism, education and industrialization in
the Victorian era. Discuss with illustrations from the novel.
(c) Elaborate upon the conflicting moral values and confusions of a changing society in Tess
of the D’Urbervilles.

Q.8) Answer all of the following:

(a) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not about the American Dream but its paradoxes.
Illustrate.
(b) How does Pride and Prejudice satirise women’s education, employment and marital status
during the time of Jane Austen?
(c) Jonathan Swift pitches Lemuel Gulliver as an unreliable narrator. Discuss with examples
from Gulliver’s Travels.
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UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2021 (QUESTION SET I)

Questions Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions:

• There are EIGHT questions divided in Two Sections.

• Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all
• Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be
attempted choosing at least ONE question from each Section.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in ENGLISH
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.
SECTION-A

Q.1) Write short answers of the following. Each question should be answered in about 150
words:
(a) Explain how the theatre in the Elizabethan period was the focal point of the age.
(b) What is the historical and critical value of referring to a disparate group as the
Metaphysical Poets?
(c) What is the difference between epic and mock epic?
(d) Discuss Romanticism as a broad movement of thought in philosophy and literature.
(e) How did the Industrial Revolution affect literature in the Eighteenth Century?

Q.2) Answer all of the following:

(a) Nature and society are frequently contrasted in The Tempest. Trace this theme throughout
the course of the play.
(b) John Donne’s poetical works are noted for their metaphorical and sensual style. Explain
this with reference to the poems prescribed in the syllabus.
10

(c) Examine Milton’s treatment of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, particularly his opinions
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concerning marriage and gender roles appropriate to each sex.

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Q.3) Answer all of the following:

(a) Comment on the role of epic machinery in The Rape of the Lock.
(b) Explain how through his poetry Wordsworth is overtly exploring an intimate correlation
between mankind and nature.
(c) Does the speaker in Tennyson’s In Memoriam accept the fact that memory is a selective,
filtering experience? What is the role of filtering in the poem?

Q.4) Answer all of the following:

(a) By considering the dramatic effects of King Lear, evaluate the view that despite the
appalling suffering, the world of the play is not without hope.
(b) Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is generally considered a feminist work. Do you agree
with this view? Why or why not?
(c) Discuss Wordsworth as a sonneteer with special reference to the sonnets prescribed in the
syllabus.

SECTION-B

Q.5) Study the following poem and answer all the questions which follow :
See it, the beautiful ball
Poised in the toyshop window,
Rounder than sun or moon.
Is it red? is it blue? is it violet? It is everything we desire, And it does not exist at all.
Non-existent and beautiful? Quite. In the rounding leap of our hands, In the longing hush of
air,
We know what that ball could be,
How its blues and reds could spin To a headier violet.
Beautiful in the mind,
Like a word we are waiting to hear, That ball is construed, but lives
Only in flash of flight,
From the instant of release
To the catch in another’s hand.
And the toy withheld is the token Of all who refrain from play- The shopkeepers, the
collectors Like Queen Victoria,
In whose adorable doll’s house
Nothing was ever broken.
(a) What are the two toys mentioned in the poem? What do they represent?
(b) How do alliteration, consonance and assonance create movement in the poem?
(c) What is the tone of the poem?
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(d) How is the idea of waiting expressed in the poem?

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(e) Explain what the poet wants to convey through the allusion to Queen Victoria in the final
stanza.

Q.6) Answer all of the following:

(a) Through Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift comments on England’s growing power.
Justify.
(b) Elaborate how Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice depicted a world in all its narrow pride
and prejudice with unswerving accuracy and satire.
(c) Discuss Tom Jones as a bildungsroman and a picaresque novel.

Q.7) Answer all of the following:

(a) Explain Dickens’ criticism of the Gradgrind Theory of Education in Hard Times. 15
(b) The conclusion of The Mill on the Floss reiterates the nature-nurture debate in a subtle
way. Elaborate.
(c) Hardy makes coincidence an integral part of the structure of his novels and Tess of the
d’Urbervilles is no exception to this rule. Elaborate the statement with illustrations from the
novel.

Q.8) Answer all of the following:

(a) How does Mark Twain’s use of the Mississippi River as the setting for The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn help define the theme of freedom versus slavery?
(b) How may one apply the pattern of ‘retributive justice’ to the principal characters in Hard
Times? Illustrate.
(c) In what ways might knowledge of the social context in which Tess of the d’Urbervilles
was written and first published contribute to an understanding of the novel?
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UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2021 (QUESTION SET II)

Questions Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions:

• There are EIGHT questions divided in Two Sections.

• Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all
• Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be
attempted choosing at least ONE question from each Section.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in ENGLISH
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.
SECTION ‘A’

Q.1) Critically comment in about 150 words each on the following passages focussing on the
context:
(a) Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
(W.B. Yeats)
(b) At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
(T.S. Eliot)
(c) The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect Contested areas.
(W.H. Auden)
(d) Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare
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Console you if I could.

(Philip Larkin)
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(e) with every lunge of the swing

she felt him
in the lunging pits
of her feeling;
(A.K. Ramanujan)

Q.2) Answer all of the following:

(a) Eliot’s references to time and space in his poetry reflect more a mental association than an
image of conscious reality. Discuss with illustrations from some of the poems in the syllabus.
(b) How was the socio-political development of the thirties reflected in the works of the poets
of the age? Discuss with textual references.
(c) Post-war literature not only reflected disillusionment, social injustice and negation of life
but, at the same time, portrayed dissent and protest also. Analyse John Osborne’s Look Back
in Anger in the light of the above statement.

Q.3) Answer all of the following:

(a) W.H. Auden’s “Mundus et Infans” is a treatise on love. Do you agree? Give reasons for
your answer.
(b) “Larkin is the poet of the emotionally underprivileged, of the vast majority of mankind for
whom life is a progressive disillusionment.” In the light of this statement, examine the poems
of Philip Larkin that are part of the syllabus.
(c) With special reference to the prescribed texts, discuss the portrayal of human relationships
in post-World War II English drama.

Q.4) Answer all of the following:

(a) How are “Sailing to Byzantium” and “Byzantium” associated with each other? Show how
this relatedness contributes to establishing W.B. Yeats as a myth-maker.
(b) Critically evaluate the poems of A.K. Ramanujan as a conflict between tradition and
modernity and rootedness and rootlessness.
(c) Absurd theatre reflects the existential dilemma and the irrationality of life. Examine this
statement with a critical analysis of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
SECTION ‘B’

Q.5) Write short critical notes on the following in about 150 words each:
(a) Discuss James Joyce’s novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a Künstlerroman.
14

(b) Comment on D.H. Lawrence’s narrative technique in Sons and Lovers.

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(c) Examine the significance of women characters in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.

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(d) Analyse the motif of courage in Conrad’s Lord Jim.

(e) Discuss Raja Rao’s Kanthapura as a rewriting of Gandhian ideology.

Q.6) Answer all of the following:

(a) Lord Jim is characterised as a romantic idealist with a lack of self-knowledge, stubborn,
egoistical and self-deceptive. Would you agree? Elucidate with an analysis of Conrad’s
novel.
(b) “Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway seems to be based on an irreconcilable opposition between
individuality and universality.” Elucidate.
(c) The ideological indeterminacy in Forster’s A Passage to India is rooted in the humanist
perception of cultural identities thereby providing a platform for colonial expansion. Discuss.

Q.7) Answer all of the following:

(a) In A Passage to India, Forster uses Nature as a trope to bring out the nuances of human
relationships as they unfold before us. Do you agree? Give a reasoned response.
(b) “The past could not be ignored; it was never counterfeit; he carried it within himself.”
Discuss with reference to the novel, A House for Mr. Biswas.
(c) In Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence depicts the Oedipus complex and reveals the working
of the unconscious mind. Elucidate.

Q.8) Answer all of the following:

(a) “The values and traditions comprising the social milieu tend to condition and reduce the
family to little more than moral automatons.” Do you agree? State your opinion with an
analysis of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers.
(b) Postcolonial writing conflates history and myth to create new centers. Examine how this
is achieved in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura.
(c) Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man challenges social institutions such as
family and religion thereby reflecting aspects of modernism. Evaluate by a critical analysis of
the novel.
15
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UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2020 (QUESTION SET I)

Questions Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions:
• There are EIGHT questions divided in Two Sections.
• Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all
• Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be
attempted choosing at least ONE question from each Section.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in ENGLISH
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.
SECTION-A

Q.1) Write short notes on the following. Each question should be answered in about 150
words:
(a) The Jacobean Drama
(b) The English Novel in 18th Century
(c) The Salient Features of Neo-classical Poetry
(d) The Precursors of Romantic Poetry
(e) The Victorian Society and Thought

Q.2) Answer all of the following:

(a) Discuss the ways in which King Lear explores the theme of power.
(b) Which elements of the epic form does Milton include in Paradise Lost to align it with
epics from earlier eras?
(c) Critically evaluate Pope’s The Rape of the Lock as a social satire.

Q.3) Answer all of the following:

(a) Account for the contemporary relevance of Wordsworth’s poetry with special reference to
16

the prescribed poems.

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(b) The metaphysical conceit helps John Donne in fusing both profane and divine love into
one great whole. Illustrate.
(c) In Paradise Lost, how does Milton succeed in making Satan a sympathetic character while
at the same time condemning his actions?

Q.4) Answer all of the following:

(a) How does Ibsen externalize inner problems by using effective symbols in A Doll’s
House? Give a reasoned answer.
(b) How do images of darkness and light work throughout Tennyson’s In Memoriam to
represent grief, death, knowledge and life? How are they developed by the poet throughout
the poem?
(c) Discuss The Tempest as an allegory of European discovery and colonization.

SECTION-B

Q.5) Study the following poem and answer all the questions which follow:
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan
Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them
happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
(a) The word ‘balance’ occurs many times in the poem. What is its significance and what
does it contribute to the whole meaning?
(b) What is the effect of the contrasts in the poem?
(c) Does the mood of the poem change at any point? If so, what is the contribution of these
changes to the poem as a whole?
(d) The poem is about coming to a decision. Trace various stages of this decision by
examining the changes in mood and argument.
(e) Identify the metre of the poem. How does it suggest repetition and progression?

Q.6) Answer all of the following:

17

(a) Tom Jones is the story of the protagonist’s journey from innocence, via experience, to
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wisdom. Elaborate the statement with events from the novel.

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(b) How does Swift address the ‘ancients versus moderns’ controversy in Gulliver’s Travels?
(c) Pride and Prejudice opens up with the ironic narrative voice and it is the one the reader
hears throughout the novel. Illustrate.

Q.7) Answer all of the following:

(a) Comment on the significance of the epigraph “In their death they were not divided”. How
does George Eliot portray the relationship of the siblings in The Mill on the Floss?
(b) Hard Times is built on the opposition between fact and fancy-a contrast which gives it both
tension and unity. Elaborate.

(c) What attitudes to marriage can be discerned in Jane Austen’s account of Mr. and Mrs.
Bennet, Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins, and Lydia Bennet and Mr. Wickham in Pride and
Prejudice?

Q.8) Answer all of the following:

(a) “A sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience.” How far is this comment
applicable in the context of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?
(b) Discuss Hard Times as a critique of industrial society.
(c) Hardy subtitled Tess of the d’Urbervilles as ‘A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented’ to
express his rejection of the conventional heroine of Victorian fiction. Substantiate your
answer with reference to the novel.

18
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UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2020 (QUESTION SET II)

Questions Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions:

• There are EIGHT questions divided in Two Sections.

• Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all
• Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be
attempted choosing at least ONE question from each Section.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in ENGLISH
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.
SECTION-A

Q.1) Critically comment in about 150 words each on the following passages:
(a) Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
(Yeats)
(b) All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?
(Eliot)
(c) Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
(Auden)
(d) Their beauty has thickened.
19

Something is pushing them

To the side of their own lives.
Page

(Larkin)

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(e) The new poets still quoted

the old poets, but no one spoke in verse
drowned, with perhaps twins in her,
kicking at blank walls
even before birth.
(Ramanujan)

Q.2) Answer all of the following:

(a) Discuss W.B. Yeats as a symbolist and romantic poet with specific reference to the poems
in the syllabus.
(b) T.S. Eliot’s renditions of the “mind of Europe” are profoundly problematic insofar as they
retrieve selective pasts. Would you agree? Give examples from the poems in the syllabus.
(c) Discuss how “the close connection between modernism and difficulty made it
(modernism) appear increasingly isolated, elitist, and apolitical.”

Q.3) Answer all of the following:

(a) “I should repeat that neither the private person of the poet, his psychology, nor his so-
called social viewpoint are to come into question here: what matters is the poem itself as a
philosophical sundial of history.” Analyse the poetry of W.H. Auden in the context of this
statement.
(b) Philip Larkin’s poetry tentatively explores the possibility of positive meaning in life.
Elucidate the statement with a few illustrations from the prescribed poems.
(c) The poets of the Thirties are critical of their present and nostalgic for irretrievable pasts.
Argue for or against this statement with specific examples from the poets of the period.

Q.4) Answer all of the following:

(a) While Look Back in Anger represents the problems of working-class life, it is
conservative in its representation of women within that milieu. Would you agree? Give
reasons.
(b) A.K. Ramanujan’s poems are perfectly balanced between critique and nostalgia for lost
pasts and homelands. Discuss with reference to the poems in the syllabus.
(c) Waiting for Godot is a profound meditation on the triad of arrival, waiting, and death,
with emphasis on the despair yet necessity of waiting. Discuss.
SECTION-B

Q.5) Answer all of the following:

20

(a) In Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad presents the theme of isolation and search for identity.
Page

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(c) The conflict between Gertrude and Walter in Sons and Lovers is often compared to the
social conflict between the middle class and the working class. Elaborate.
(d) “For the next thirty-five years he was to be a wanderer with no place he could call his
own, with no family except that which he was to attempt to create out of the engulfing world
of the Tulsis.” Discuss the significance of the statement with reference to the novel A House
for Mr Biswas.
(e) Discuss the social and political contexts of human behaviour in A Passage to India.

Q.6) Answer all of the following:

(a) Lord Jim is “predicated on dramatizing the process of Marlowe’s discovering the
subtleties of another character, … the epistemological problem of how we can possibly
understand and empathize with another character.” Discuss.
(b) Stephen Dedalus articulates an aesthetic framework that is problematic; at the same time,
it seems to promise him freedom from Ireland. Would you agree? Give reasons for your
arguments.
(c) Critically analyse representations of the colonial and the post-colonial with reference to
the novel Kanthapura.

Q.7) Answer all of the following:

(a) The representation of women in Sons and Lovers, especially Paul Morel’s two love
interests, Miriam and Clara, is problematic insofar as they exist primarily to help Paul work
out his existential angst. Argue for or against this statement with examples from the novel.
(b) E.M. Forster’s characterization of India and Indians in A Passage to India is well-
(c) Mrs Dalloway is a complex rendition of modernist desires and anxieties in its portrayal of
life impacted by World War I. Discuss.

Q.8) Answer all of the following:

(a) “Indians can write in English, but they ‘cannot write like the English’ – rather, Indian
English must become a ‘distinctive and colourful’ dialect of the language, which time alone
will justify”.” Analyse Kanthapura as an Indian English novel in the context of Raja Rao’s
statement.
(b) “Realities such as poverty and degradation are made to seem grotesque: their social and
ideological contexts are quite removed.” Discuss A House for Mr Biswas in the context of
Naipaul’s failure to deal with ‘social and ideological contexts.’
(c) “Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged, but a luminous halo, a formless,
shapeless something….” Elucidate the statement with textual references from the novel Mrs
21

Dalloway.
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UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2019 (QUESTION SET I)

Questions Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions:

• There are EIGHT questions divided in Two Sections.

• Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all
• Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be
attempted choosing at least ONE question from each Section.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in ENGLISH
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.
SECTION-A

Q.1) Write short notes on the following. Each question should be answered in about 150
words:
(a) The English Renaissance and its impact.
(b) The characteristics of the Victorian Age.
(c) The unique features of Metaphysical Poetry.
(d) The difference between a Burlesque and a Mock-epic.
(e) Novel as a moral fable.

Q.2) Answer all of the following:

(a) Discuss the significance of the storm scene in King Lear.
(b) Comment on the diction of Wordsworth’s poetry making a reference to the
(c) poems prescribed in the syllabus.
(d) Show that Pope’s use of the machinery of the sylphs in The Rape of the Lock heightens
22

both satire and poetry.

Page

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Q.3) Answer all of the following:

(a) In celebrating love as the supreme, the only thing in the world, Donne went to a new,
twisted kind of hyperbole. Discuss.
(b) To what extent Milton justified ‘the ways of God to man’ in his Paradise Lost?
(c) Do you agree with the view that for Wordsworth poetry was a philosophic exercise?

Q.4) Answer all of the following:

(a) In Memoriam is not merely an elegy but a philosophical poem too. Do you agree with this
statement?
(b) Discuss Ibsen as a dramatist of realism,
(c) Comment on forgiveness and freedom as the two keynotes of the Tempest.
SECTION-B

Q.5) Study the following poem and answer all the questions which follow:
Yes! In the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour
Oh! Then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain
Oh, might our marges meet again!
Who ordered that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire?
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
23

The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

Page

(a) What is the theme of the poem?

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(b) What is the mood of the poem-one of hope or despair?

(c) Give a critical estimate of the imagery used in the poem.
(d) What does the poet mean by saying the following?
“Now round us spreads the watery plain
Oh, might our marges meet again!”
(e) What is the attitude of the poet towards God?

Q.6) Answer all of the following:

(a) Man is utterly wicked, desperate, and imbecile as portrayed in the fourth voyage of
Gulliver. Do you agree?
(b) Most of our amusement in reading Pride and Prejudice comes from our being aware of
differences between appearance and reality that go unperceived by the characters themselves.
Discuss and illustrate this statement.
(c) Fielding is not as sympathetic towards women as he is towards men. Do you agree? Give
a reasoned answer.

Q.7) Answer all of the following:

(a) Comment on the socio-economic and political issues that Dickens takes up in Hard Times.
(b) Discuss the predicament of the self in conflict with the social milieu in The Mill on the
Floss.
(c) Do you find any similarity between Tess of the D’Urbervilles and a Greek Tragedy?

Q.8) Answer all of the following:

(a) Critically examine The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an attack on the institution of
slavery.
(b) Examine the role of determinism in Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
(c) Do you agree with the view that Gulliver suffers from a sense of identity crisis?
24
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UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2019 (QUESTION SET II)

Questions Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions:

• There are EIGHT questions divided in Two Sections.

• Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all
• Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be
attempted choosing at least ONE question from each Section.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in ENGLISH
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.
SECTION-A

Q.1) Critically comment in about 150 words each on the following passages:
(a) A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.(Yeats)
(b) Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
(Eliot)
(c) Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
(Auden)
(d) Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
(Larkin)
(e) Only the Egyptians had it right:
25

their kings had sisters for queens

Page

to continue the incests

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of childhood into marriage.

(Ramanujan)

Q.2) Answer all of the following:

(a) Discuss the paradox in Yeats’ idea, expressed in his ‘Last Poems’, that world history was
spiralling out of control towards an apocalyptic close, yet it is not a matter for despair, but
one for rejoicing.
(b) “Personification of nature, allusions to Greek mythology and the imagery of death these
devices dominate Eliot’s poetry.” Elucidate.
(c) How do the best plays of the Theatre of the Absurd show in telling images the alienation,
bewilderment and frustrations of the Modern Man?

Q.3) Answer all of the following:

(a) Even while depicting the modern man suffering from negation and despair due to
totalitarian rulers and war-mongering governments, Auden speaks about an affirming flame
of human connectedness and concern. Elaborate.
(b) Did Larkin deserve the tag The Times gave him as Britain’s greatest post-war writer?
Evaluate his merits and demerits as a poet.
(c) Do you think marriage as an institution is critiqued in Osborne’s Look Back in Anger?

Q.4) Answer all of the following:

(a) “It would be wrong to seek Look Back in Anger’s politics in the content of Jimmy’s
monologues. Instead, the politics is in their form: specifically, in their passionate articulacy.”
Justify this claim.
(b) “Waiting for Godot is essentially a joke on the whole theatrical experience, an extended
invitation to the audience to get up and leave. Nothing is going to happen, the play keeps
telling us.” Discuss.
(c) Though Ramanujan, as an emigré poet, wrote about the home left behind with a remote
passion and irony, how relevant are his experiences to a contemporary Indian in a globalized
and hyperconnected world?
SECTION-B

Q.5) Answer all of the following:

(a) Is it valid to say that Lord Jim is all about coping with guilt, shame and remorse felt by
Jim?
26

(b) Discuss the significance of the scene in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, when
Page

Stephen sees a beautiful young girl by the river at the end of Chapter Four.

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(c) What differences do you find between Mrs. Gertrude Morel and Miss Gertrude as a
maiden?
(d) How does Forster depict the British colonial bureaucrats in A Passage to India?
(e) Analyze the presentation of the caste problem and untouchability as part of the
Varnashrama system in the novel Kanthapura.

Q.6) Answer all of the following:

(a) Critically examine the significance of the motifs used in Mrs. Dalloway -the Big Ben,
Shakespeare’s quotes, trees and flowers, etc. and their contribution to your understanding of
the novel.
(b) Note the features of Künstlerroman you can find in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, which justify its categorization as a novel about the development of an artist.
(c) Explain the cryptic comment on A House for Mr. Biswas as “Great in macrocosm, the
novel is also flawless in microcosm.”

Q.7) Answer all of the following:

(a) In A Passage to India, what portrait of India does Forster present India as a “muddle” (as
perceived by Fielding and Adela) or a “mystery” (as realized by Mrs. Moore and Godbole)?
Explicate.
(b) “As Paul Morel struggles in his relationships with Clara and Miriam, he realizes in his
sub-conscious mind that the shadow of his mother’s possessive love for him is the basic
reason for his unstable emotional state.” Discuss this statement about Sons and Lovers.
(c) Even though Kanthapura, a small village, is the setting for Raja Rao’s novel, he has
successfully projected the whole gamut of India, its politics, its caste system, its religious and
social traditions in it. Do you agree?

Q.8) Answer all of the following:

(a) “Mrs. Dalloway explores the fragmented yet fluid nature of time and the inter-
connectedness of perception and reality, across individuals and social spheres, through its
depiction of Clarissa and Septimus.” Discuss.
(b) Examine the view that A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was innovatively daring
for its time-it’s challenging attitude to family, homeland and the Catholic Church which made
it a classic of Modernism.
(c) What role do the memories of the past, haunting Jim, Marlow, Jewel and Stein play in
making Lord Jim an unforgettable tale of human nature?
27
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UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2018 (QUESTION SET I)

Questions Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions:

• There are EIGHT questions divided in Two Sections.

• Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all
• Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be
attempted choosing at least ONE question from each Section.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in ENGLISH
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.

SECTION-A

Q.1) Answer/Write short notes on the following. Each question should be answered in about
150 words:
(a) How do post-colonial critics view Prospero’s use of magic and exploitation of Caliban?
(b) Adam as a Christian hero in Paradise Lost, Book IX
(c) Satirical writing in the Augustan Age, with special reference to The Rape of the Lock
(d) “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.” Explain this line from Wordsworth’s Ode on
Intimations of Immortality, and comment on its significance in the poem.
(e) The imagery of light and darkness in Tennyson’s In Memoriam

Q.2) Answer all of the following:

(a) Show how Wordsworth reinvents the traditional Renaissance pastoral in Michael’ and
‘Resolution and Independence’.
(b) Analyze the thematic opposition between the natural and the unnatural in King Lear.
Answer with reference to the text.
28

(c) “The incidents, characters and dialogues in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House are contrived in such a
Page

way that they conceal as much as they reveal.” Discuss.

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Q.3) Answer all of the following:

(a) Considering the representation of Satan in Paradise Lost, Books I, II, IV and IX, would
you agree with Blake that “In writing Paradise Lost Milton was of the Devil’s party without
knowing it”?
(b) Discuss the salient features of metaphysical conceits used by Donne and elucidate your
answer citing examples from the poems prescribed for study.
(c) What picture of eighteenth-century aristocratic London life do you gain from Pope’s The
Rape of the lock in terms both of its material and moral aspects?

Q.4) Answer all of the following:

(a) In his ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth describes poetry both as ‘a spontaneous,
overflow of powerful feelings and as ’emotion recollected in tranquility’. Show how he
resolves this apparent contradiction in “Tintern Abbey’.
(b) “In In Memoriam, Tennyson mourns the passing of many other aspects of life over and
above the death of Arthur Henry Hallam.” Elucidate this comment with reference to the
poem.
(c) Analyze the ways in which the trope of the storm is a key to our understanding of The
Tempest.

SECTION-B

Q.5) Study the following poem and answer all the questions which follow:
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under they window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. –.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog. …
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them,
Between my finger and my thumb, The squat pen rests.
29

I’ll dig with it.

Page

(a) What is the theme of this poem?

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(b) What kind of person is the speaker?

(c) What is the speaker’s purpose in celebrating men like them?
(d) Comment on the language of the poem and the use of figures of speech. What effect is
gained by the use of this kind of language?
(e) What is the meaning of the final line 111 dig with it”?

Q.6) Answer all of the following:

(a) Assess the role of the narrator in Tom Jones.
(b) Show how Dickens represents the impact of the Industrial Revolution in Hard Times, not
only from the material, but also from the moral and philosophical perspectives.
(c) The Mississippi river is a striking metaphor for Huck Finn’s journey, his great escape and
quest for freedom. Do you think the river is the main structural principle of the novel?

Q.7) Answer all of the following:

(a) In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen combines the essence of conservative as well as
reformist issues concerning rights, education, marriage, authority and gender discourse.
Discuss.
(b) Would you agree that Tess of the D’Urbervilles portrays the decadence of late Victorian
England? Substantiate your answer with reference to the novel.
(c) “Maggie Tulliver’s intelligence, scholarly competence and wide-ranging imagination
become liabilities for a woman.” Discuss this statement with reference to social determinism.

Q.8) Answer all of the following:

(a) Hardy uses several symbols skillfully in Tess of the D’Urbervilles and they are too deep
to be missed at first reading. Discuss.
(b) The apparently superficial concern with marriage in Pride and Prejudice masks a deeper
social critique. Discuss with reference to the novel.
(c) What are the objects of Swift’s satire in Gulliver’s journey to Laputa in Part III of
Culliver’s Travels?
30
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UPSC EXAMINATION ENGLISH 2018 (QUESTION SET II)

Questions Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions:

• There are EIGHT questions divided in Two Sections.

• Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all
• Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be
attempted choosing at least ONE question from each Section.
• The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
• Answers must be written in ENGLISH
• Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
• Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.

SECTION-A

Q.1) Critically comment on the following in about 150 words each, focusing on the context:
(a) In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark.
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate.
(W.H. Auden)
(b) With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
(T.S. Eliot)
(c) The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(W.B Yeats)
(d) Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked
Each rope distinct.
(Philip Larkin)
31

(d) And he left us

Page

A changed mother

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And more than

One annual ritual.
(A.K. Ramanujan)

Q.2) Answer the following:

(a) Auden’s The Shield of Achilles is a critique of contemporary culture. Elucidate.
(b) Comment on the ending of Look Back in Anger. Does it look like being where we started
or, is there indeed a hopeful note?
(c) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock epitomizes the frustrations and inertia of the modern
era, Justify the statement.

Q.3) Answer the following:

(a) Explicate the significance of symbols used by Yeats with reference to the poems, Easter
1976, The Second Coming and Byzantium.
(b) “Larkin combines wistful sadness, amusement, respect for the commonplace and a deep
compassion.” Discuss with reference to some of his poems.
(c) “The central weakness of Modernism is that in its pursuit of a more complex sense of
reality it fails in coherence.” Do you agree? Justify your answer with some illustrations from
twentieth century poetry and drama.

Q.4) Answer the following:

(a) Beckett called Waiting for Godot a ‘tragicomedy. Do you agree with this classification? If
not, how would you classify the play?
(b) “It is the synthesis of Ramanujan’s perception of the external world with the world of his
inner imaginative response which lends an extraordinary meaning to his poems.” Discuss
with reference to the poems prescribed for study.
(c) Do you find the angry young man, Jimmy Porter’s attitude towards the society credible?
Is it fully worked out and resolved in the drama? Give reasons for your answer.
SECTION-B

Q.5) Write short critical notes on the following in about 150 words each:
(a) The repetition and evolution of the symbol of ‘echo” in A Passage to India
(b) The significance of dreams in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
(c) The relationship between Paul Morel and his father in Sons and Lovers.
32

(d) The theme of alienation and isolation in Lord Jim.

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(e) The significance of the different ‘houses in A House for Mr. Biswas.

Q.6) Answer the following:

(a) Examine the relationship between war and madness as represented in Virginia Woolf’s
Mrs. Dalloway.
(b) How far is it correct to claim that the theme of Sons and Lovers is the growth of
individual beings in a working-class environment?
(c) Is Kanthapura more concerned with reform in our dominant religion and culture than with
political protest against colonial domination? Explain from the perspective of colonialism and
post-colonialism.

Q.7) Answer the following:

(a) “A House for Mr. Biswas is a bildungsroman with a difference.” Discuss.
(b) What are the ways in which Stephen prepares himself for life as an artist? How is the
process related to Joyce’s view of the role of the artist in society?
(c) “A man that is born, falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.” To what extent
could Stein’s comment in Lord Jim be taken as a final assessment of the character of Jim?

Q.8) Answer the following:

(a) “Generally, the Indian characters in A Passage to India are less convincingly portrayed
than the English characters.” Do you agree?
Give reasons for your answer.
(b) Raja Rao was greatly influenced by what the Irish politician, Daniel O’Connell said,
“Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong” and this was supported by Gandhi. How
far is it correct to read Kanthapura in the light of this statement?
(c) “Mrs. Dalloway has no conventional plot or action. It conveys to us only some moments
of psychological illumination.” Discuss.
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