What the concept asks

Identity explores the changing relationship between a writer, the voices or perspectives used in a work, the people represented and the reader interpreting them. A literary voice may draw on the author's identity, but it does not necessarily express the author's personal views.

Approach identity on two connected levels. Inside the work, look at how characters or groups define themselves—and how others define them. Around the work, consider how the author's identity may shape it, then ask how each reader's experiences, assumptions and values affect interpretation.

Keep the author, voice and character separate. Reader identity also helps produce meaning rather than simply receiving it. The figure shows how these relationships connect.

Possible lines of inquiry include divided or developing identities, public and private selves, group membership, imposed labels, self-narration and the relationship between a work and its writer. Form plays a part here. First-person narration can make identity seem self-authored; shifting viewpoints may instead present it as unstable or contested.

Paper 2 method and criteria

A Paper 2 question might ask how identity is created, challenged or concealed. Select two works that share a meaningful point of contact while differing enough to support comparison—for example, two constrained protagonists whose identities are shaped through different narrative forms.

• Criterion A—knowledge, understanding and interpretation: define what identity means in each work, supporting your interpretation with precise references to characters, scenes and developments.
• Criterion B1—analysis and evaluation: analyse how narration, characterization, imagery, structure or dramatic contrast constructs identity, then judge the significance of those choices.
• Criterion B2—comparative analysis: compare methods and implications throughout every paragraph; avoid discussing one work before simply attaching the other.
• Criterion C—focus and organization: organize the argument around aspects of the question, such as imposed identity, private identity and resistance.
• Criterion D—language: distinguish precisely between author, narrator, speaker, character and reader instead of treating these terms as interchangeable.

A strong comparative claim could argue that both works present identity as socially produced. One, however, uses fluid interior narration to preserve private multiplicity, while the other relies on restricted testimony to dramatize the struggle to retain a name and memory.

Worked example

Virginia Woolf writes, “She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown” (Mrs Dalloway).

Woolf's three-part accumulation—“invisible; unseen; unknown”—moves from physical absence towards a loss of social recognition. Clarissa's public role alone cannot secure her identity. Free indirect discourse holds the observation close to Clarissa while maintaining narratorial distance, making the self appear both experienced from within and viewed from outside. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Offred's patronymic similarly shows authority replacing individual identity with social function. Yet her retrospective storytelling preserves memories and alternative versions of herself. Both works separate assigned identity from inward consciousness: Woolf presents that division through mobile interior narration, whereas Atwood turns narration itself into an act of resistance.

What the concept asks

Culture examines how a text engages with the values, beliefs, attitudes and literary practices linked to the contexts of its production and reception. Rather than simply reflecting its culture, a work may embody, question or reshape it.

Start with three relationships: the text and its context of production; the text and its context of reception; the text and the writing tradition that came before it. For production, consider the assumptions and practices surrounding the writing. Reception focuses on how readers from a different place or period might respond. Writing tradition concerns the ways a work adopts, resists or reshapes established genres, stories and conventions.

The figure connects these relationships without treating the text as little more than background history.

Cultural analysis must stay rooted in the text. When a work challenges a social value, pinpoint the narrative contrast, stage action, image pattern or structural choice that carries the challenge. Context is useful when it helps explain a choice or supports an interpretation.

Paper 2 method and criteria

A Paper 2 question might ask how works present cultural conflict, inherited values, social conventions or tensions between individuals and communities. Choose works that let you compare their cultural concerns as well as their literary treatment. Contrasting literary forms can work especially well. A novel, for example, may represent a community through narration, while a play turns cultural conflict into public confrontation.

• Criterion A—knowledge, understanding and interpretation: demonstrate secure knowledge of each work and interpret how cultural values or conflicts shape its meaning.
• Criterion B1—analysis and evaluation: link cultural interpretation to authorial choices, including form, symbolism, setting, dialogue and structure.
• Criterion B2—comparative analysis: compare how the works negotiate culture rather than simply identifying the societies they depict.
• Criterion C—focus and organization: structure the response around shared issues such as inherited authority, competing value systems or cultural change.
• Criterion D—language: don’t make sweeping claims about a whole culture; qualify arguments with terms such as dominant value, contested convention or communal expectation.

Worked example

Chinua Achebe writes, “The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others” (Things Fall Apart).

By balancing “good” against “abomination,” Achebe rejects the idea that any one cultural system holds universal authority. The proverb-like syntax places cultural relativity within the community’s own verbal tradition. Later conflicts in the novel reveal the damage caused by both internal rigidity and colonial intrusion. Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House also stages a clash between accepted values and individual judgment, though it locates that conflict within marriage and the conventions of realist drama. Both works present social values as constructed rather than natural. Achebe sets cultural systems against each other through communal narration, whereas Ibsen uses domestic dialogue and the final rupture of stage action to challenge a dominant convention.

What the concept asks

Creativity deals with imagination in both writing and reading. It includes the production of possible meanings and debates about the value of originality. The concept applies to what writers create, but also to the imaginative role readers take on when interpreting a work.

When considering the writer, ask how existing materials—forms, myths, genres, conventions or experiences—have been recombined to make a distinctive work. For the reader, look at where ambiguity, gaps, symbolism or unusual form allow more than one defensible meaning. Creativity doesn't make every interpretation equally valid; each reading still needs to be grounded in textual detail.

Originality, then, is a question rather than a simple measure. A work may be creative because it transforms inherited material. Equally, a reader can offer a fresh interpretation by spotting a pattern that established readings have overlooked. The figure presents writing and reading as connected creative acts.

A work may represent creativity through invention, storytelling, artistic production or their absence. Here, separate the creativity of a character from the creativity shown in the writer's construction of that character.

Paper 2 method and criteria

A Paper 2 question might focus on imagination, originality, invention or the power and danger of creation. Pair works whose forms allow you to compare different kinds of creativity: individual and collective, liberating and destructive, or innovative and convention-bound.

• Criterion A—knowledge, understanding and interpretation: build a clear interpretation of what creativity enables or threatens in each work.
• Criterion B1—analysis and evaluation: analyse how form, genre, imagery, allusion or structure gives imaginative creation its meaning.
• Criterion B2—comparative analysis: compare how creativity is represented, as well as the creative methods used by the authors.
• Criterion C—focus and organization: organize the argument around conceptual stages such as impulse, process and consequence, rather than retelling what a creator-character does.
• Criterion D—language: distinguish imagination, invention, originality, adaptation and interpretation instead of treating creativity as a vague compliment.

Worked example

Mary Shelley writes, “I collected bones from charnel-houses; and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame” (Frankenstein).

The active verbs “collected” and “disturbed” make Victor's creativity seem like a deliberate intrusion. At the same time, the religiously charged “profane” links invention with violation. Victor's retrospective first-person account also allows him to reshape the act into a warning, so narrative becomes a second form of creation. By contrast, the impossible transformation in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis appears without an inventor or explanation. Both works use imagination to violate ordinary reality. Shelley, however, explores a character's will to create, whereas Kafka's unexplained premise makes the reader create possible meanings. One work therefore presents creativity as dangerous agency; the other presents it as interpretive uncertainty.

What the concept asks

Communication concerns the relationship a text establishes between writer and reader. That relationship depends on stylistic and structural choices, which may enable, complicate or obstruct communication. Literary meaning doesn't pass to the reader intact; the text requires the reader to help construct it.

Ask what knowledge or attitudes the implied audience is expected to possess. A chronological, explanatory narrative may make understanding easier. By contrast, an unreliable narrator, an unresolved symbol or a fragmented structure may require more interpretive work. Even a cooperative reader won't necessarily arrive at a single meaning.

Communication also takes place within a work. Look closely at speech, silence, gesture, letters, storytelling, misunderstanding and the refusal to listen. Keep the two levels separate. Characters may fail to communicate, while the author communicates that failure effectively to the reader. The figure separates these levels.

Paper 2 method and criteria

A Paper 2 question may focus on communication, silence, misunderstanding or the relationship between writer and audience. Choose works in which communication shapes both subject and form—for instance, a restrained first-person narrative and a play built around interrupted family dialogue.

• Criterion A—knowledge, understanding and interpretation: explain what is or isn't communicated, then show what this reveals about relationships or values.
• Criterion B1—analysis and evaluation: analyse choices such as narration, dialogue, silence, dramatic irony, withheld information and structure.
• Criterion B2—comparative analysis: compare who can speak, who gets heard and what each work asks its audience to infer.
• Criterion C—focus and organization: structure the response around communicative conditions such as concealment, misunderstanding and belated recognition.
• Criterion D—language: name the agent and audience precisely: a narrator addresses a narratee, a character speaks to another character, and an author constructs the whole exchange for readers.

Worked example

Kazuo Ishiguro writes, “Indeed—why should I not admit it?—at that moment, my heart was breaking” (The Remains of the Day).

The self-directed question makes admission feel like a struggle. Stevens can communicate feeling only after presenting openness as something that requires permission. The interrupting dashes briefly break his controlled style, allowing form to reveal the emotion suppressed by his habitual restraint. In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Willy's broken conversations and movement into remembered scenes likewise expose what direct speech cannot resolve. Both works present failed communication as a defence against painful knowledge. Ishiguro asks the reader to detect feeling beneath polished narration, while Miller lets an audience witness the collapse of coherent dialogue and time.

What the concept asks

Perspective refers to the position from which writers, textual voices, characters and readers perceive and interpret experience. The perspective a work presents doesn’t necessarily match the author's own view.

Ask whose perspective controls access to events. Whose is excluded, challenged or set alongside another? Relevant choices include focalization and narrative person, as well as dramatic viewpoint, shifts of speaker, chronology and access to thought. Even when a text contains multiple voices, it doesn’t automatically give them equal authority.

Readers bring perspectives shaped by their own contexts. The context of production may also influence the viewpoints available to a writer and the assumptions made by a character. Later contexts of reception can lead readers to notice different implications. The figure links textual perspectives to production and reception, without treating context as destiny.

Paper 2 method and criteria

A Paper 2 question may ask how viewpoint shapes truth, sympathy, conflict or judgment. Choose two works in which perspective is central to interpretation, rather than merely a technical label. For example, the works might restrict knowledge in different ways or shift attention among competing voices.

• Criterion A—knowledge, understanding and interpretation: explain how perspective shapes the meaning and implications of important events.
• Criterion B1—analysis and evaluation: analyse focalization, narrative distance and voice. Consider dramatic irony, sequencing and omissions, then evaluate why the chosen perspective matters.
• Criterion B2—comparative analysis: compare access and authority in both works: what each audience can know, through whom, and with what degree of trust.
• Criterion C—focus and organization: organize the essay around effects such as restricted knowledge, competing testimony and altered judgment.
• Criterion D—language: use narrator, focalizer, speaker and author accurately. Viewpoint isn’t proof of authorial belief.

Worked example

Toni Morrison writes, “Definitions belonged to the definers—not the defined” (Beloved).

The aphoristic antithesis gives power a linguistic form. Those who name others control the terms through which those people are understood. Morrison resists that control by shifting among voices, allowing traumatic experience to emerge through conflicting, incomplete consciousnesses. Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go also restricts knowledge through a retrospective narrator. Kathy's calm recollection, however, normalizes the system that has shaped her. Both works show perspective taking form under oppressive conditions. Morrison multiplies voices to contest imposed definitions, whereas Ishiguro uses one restrained viewpoint to reveal how deeply those definitions can be internalized.

What the concept asks

Transformation looks at how texts borrow elements from other texts and reshape them for new aesthetic or communicative purposes. It also covers changes within a work and those produced through reading. Source material may be transformed, as may characters, readers and their understanding of reality.

When analysing intertextual transformation, trace both continuity and change. A later work might keep a character, plot pattern, image or genre, yet alter its viewpoint, setting, form or values. Simply identifying the reference isn’t enough; what matters is the purpose behind the alteration.

Reading can also produce transformation. Readers interpret a text through different experiences and, in doing so, may transform it. A text can change a reader's identity, relationships, aims, values or beliefs, and may even prompt action. Within the work itself, change may be physical, psychological, social or relational.

The figure maps these connected routes: source text to later text, character before to character after, and reader before to reader after.

Paper 2 method and criteria

A Paper 2 question might ask how change is represented, whether transformation is possible, or how works reshape earlier writing or reality. Choose works that present comparable transformations but differ in their agents, forms or consequences.

• Criterion A—knowledge, understanding and interpretation: explain what changes, what resists change and why the transformation matters.
• Criterion B1—analysis and evaluation: analyse how form conveys change through structural turning points, altered voice, recurring imagery or intertextual revision.
• Criterion B2—comparative analysis: compare the process, not just the outcome: who causes the transformation, how it develops and whether it liberates or confines.
• Criterion C—focus and organization: organize the essay around stages or dimensions of transformation instead of retelling each plot.
• Criterion D—language: state precisely whether the change is intertextual, physical, psychological, social or interpretive.

Worked example

Jean Rhys writes, “There is always the other side, always” (Wide Sargasso Sea).

Repeating “always” makes alternative perspective a structural principle: an inherited story cannot be complete if it is heard from only one side. Rhys relocates and renames the figure known as Bertha in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. In doing so, she transforms a marginal Gothic obstacle into Antoinette, a focal consciousness shaped by cultural displacement and coercion. Brontë's novel uses the concealed wife to complicate Jane's progress. Rhys, by contrast, reorganizes the same material around the silenced figure herself. This transformation is both intertextual and ethical because the altered viewpoint changes which life the reader sees as central.

What the concept asks

Representation explores the contested relationship between language, literature and reality, especially the ways form and structure shape what a work treats as meaningful. Literature doesn't simply reproduce reality. Through selection, arrangement and language, it constructs a version of that reality.

The debate stretches from one position—the idea that literature should portray reality as accurately as possible—to another, which holds that art has no obligation to do so. Instead of settling this debate in abstract terms, look closely at what a particular work selects, omits, emphasizes or distorts.

Ask what the work represents, whose position shapes that representation and what form it takes. Next, consider what becomes visible and what remains outside the frame. A fragmented structure, for example, may present reality as discontinuous. A tightly controlled narrative might reveal how official versions of reality are manufactured. The figure traces the movement from reality through selection, language, form and structure to literary representation and reader interpretation.

Paper 2 method and criteria

A Paper 2 question may ask how literature represents reality, a social group, an attitude or a human concern. Select works that address a comparable subject while constructing it through significantly different forms or structures.

• Criterion A—knowledge, understanding and interpretation: develop an interpretation of what each representation suggests, including its implications and limits.
• Criterion B1—analysis and evaluation: explain how language, form and structure produce the representation; simply naming the subject isn't analysis.
• Criterion B2—comparative analysis: compare how the works select and construct material, rather than merely comparing the realities they depict.
• Criterion C—focus and organization: organize each paragraph around a representational problem, such as visibility, distortion, authority or credibility.
• Criterion D—language: use precise verbs—constructs, frames, filters, idealizes, marginalizes or contests—instead of vaguely claiming that a work “shows” reality.

Worked example

George Orwell writes, “If all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth” (Nineteen Eighty-Four).

The conditional sentence presents reality as vulnerable to textual control. Once competing records disappear, repetition can turn fabrication into accepted “truth.” The sentence's structure destabilizes Orwell's opposition between “lie” and “truth” by showing one become the other. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale also presents historical knowledge through incomplete testimony and later scholarly framing. Both works question whether records preserve reality transparently. Orwell depicts centralized power enforcing a single representation, whereas Atwood's layered structure leaves later interpreters to reconstruct—and potentially diminish—a woman's account.