Paper 1 Question 4: evaluation

Judging success, not just spotting methods

Question 4 asks you to evaluate how successfully a writer achieves an aim named in the question. It is worth 15 marks and assesses AO4: making critical judgements about a text and supporting them with appropriate textual references.

Evaluation goes beyond explaining an effect. ‘The writer creates uncertainty’ identifies an effect; ‘The writer creates uncertainty particularly effectively because each new clue raises another unanswered question’ begins to judge its success. Your answer must then demonstrate that judgement through details from the passage.

You can discuss language and structure, but methods matter here only when they support your judgement. Naming a rhetorical question or counting dashes is not, by itself, evaluation. Ask what the choice contributes to the named aim and why it works well, less well or differently from another part of the passage.

Paper 1 lasts 1 hour 45 minutes, with about an hour recommended for Section A. Question 4 carries 15 of the section’s 24 marks, so it deserves the largest share of your answer-writing time. A suggested working target is about 30 minutes, including planning and checking, after your initial reading of the extract. This leaves time within the hour for reading and the shorter questions.

The task and the passage

The June 2023 task asks you to judge how successfully the whole extract creates a sense of mystery, supporting your views with detailed references. It gives no restricted line range, so evidence from the opening setting through to the final sentence is relevant. Always check the boundaries of the question you are answering: if it specifies particular lines, keep your discussion and evidence within those lines.

Mystery involves unanswered questions; suspense is the anxious anticipation of what might happen next. These effects can work together, but your judgement must remain focused on the aim named in the question.

The passage below is from Wilkie Collins’s nineteenth-century story The Dream Woman, using the original story’s wording rather than the adapted examination insert. Percy Fairbank and his wife arrive on horseback at a quiet village inn, looking for someone to care for their horses. A ‘hostler’ looks after horses at an inn. The reference to the railway explains why an inn once serving stage-coach travellers has declined. ‘Obliterated’ means erased or made unreadable; ‘grizzled’ describes hair streaked with grey.

Arriving at the town, we had no difficulty in finding the inn. The town is composed of one desolate street; and midway in that street stands the inn--an ancient stone building sadly out of repair. The painting on the sign-board is obliterated. The shutters over the long range of front windows are all closed. A cock and his hens are the only living creatures at the door. Plainly, this is one of the old inns of the stage-coach period, ruined by the railway. We pass through the open arched doorway, and find no one to welcome us. We advance into the stable yard behind; I assist my wife to dismount--and there we are in the position already disclosed to view at the opening of this narrative. No bell to ring. No human creature to answer when I call. I stand helpless, with the bridles of the horses in my hand. Mrs. Fairbank saunters gracefully down the length of the yard and does--what all women do, when they find themselves in a strange place. She opens every door as she passes it, and peeps in. On my side, I have just recovered my breath, I am on the point of shouting for the hostler for the third and last time, when I hear Mrs. Fairbank suddenly call to me:

"Percy! come here!"

Her voice is eager and agitated. She has opened a last door at the end of the yard, and has started back from some sight which has suddenly met her view. I hitch the horses' bridles on a rusty nail in the wall near me, and join my wife. She has turned pale, and catches me nervously by the arm.

"Good heavens!" she cries; "look at that!"

I look--and what do I see? I see a dingy little stable, containing two stalls. In one stall a horse is munching his corn. In the other a man is lying asleep on the litter.

A worn, withered, woebegone man in a hostler's dress. His hollow wrinkled cheeks, his scanty grizzled hair, his dry yellow skin, tell their own tale of past sorrow or suffering. There is an ominous frown on his eyebrows--there is a painful nervous contraction on the side of his mouth. I hear him breathing convulsively when I first look in; he shudders and sighs in his sleep. It is not a pleasant sight to see, and I turn round instinctively to the bright sunlight in the yard. My wife turns me back again in the direction of the stable door.

"Wait!" she says. "Wait! he may do it again."

"Do what again?"

"He was talking in his sleep, Percy, when I first looked in. He was dreaming some dreadful dream. Hush! he's beginning again."

I look and listen. The man stirs on his miserable bed. The man speaks in a quick, fierce whisper through his clinched teeth. "Wake up! Wake up, there! Murder!"

There is an interval of silence. He moves one lean arm slowly until it rests over his throat; he shudders, and turns on his straw; he raises his arm from his throat, and feebly stretches it out; his hand clutches at the straw on the side toward which he has turned; he seems to fancy that he is grasping at the edge of something. I see his lips begin to move again; I step softly into the stable; my wife follows me, with her hand fast clasped in mine. We both bend over him. He is talking once more in his sleep--strange talk, mad talk, this time.

Building a judgement from the evidence

Start by following what changes across the passage. The opening makes an ordinary arrival feel unsettling; Mrs Fairbank’s reaction introduces a puzzle; the sleeping man’s words then suggest violence without explaining it. His eyes open at the end, but the extract stops before he can explain anything. This gives you an overall judgement: Collins successfully develops mystery by providing clues while delaying understanding.

Now test that judgement against particular details.

First, consider the setting. ‘No human creature to answer when I call’ makes the inn seem strangely empty. However, the railway provides a reasonable explanation for its decline. A careful judgement acknowledges this: the setting establishes unease, but it does not prove that anything supernatural has happened. Its strongest contribution is preparing us to encounter a place whose occupants and activities remain hidden.

Next, compare the characters’ knowledge. Mrs Fairbank has heard something Percy has not. She ‘has turned pale’, yet Percy initially sees only a horse eating and a man asleep. Because he narrates in the first person, the reader discovers the explanation alongside him. The gap between her alarm and his apparently ordinary observations makes the delay effective: we want to know what justifies her reaction.

Then, examine what the revelation resolves—and what it leaves unresolved. ‘Murder!’ explains why she is frightened, but it raises a larger mystery. Is the man recalling something he witnessed, something done to him or something he did? The cry and his movement towards his throat support possible connections with violence, but they do not establish his role.

The description of the woman supplies unusually precise details without identifying her. The ‘reddish look round the fingernails’ may suggest blood, while ‘cursed’ and ‘she-devil’ introduce threatening associations. These are possibilities suggested by the language, not proof of a supernatural explanation. The narrator’s phrase ‘mad talk’ also leaves open whether the dream is a reliable account of anything that happened.

Finally, judge the ending of the extract. ‘His eyes open suddenly’ promises a change: the man may now be able to speak directly to the visitors. Ending at that instant is effective because it offers the possibility of answers without supplying them. The abrupt final sentence leaves the reader wanting the explanation that Percy still lacks.

Notice how each stage moves from judgement → evidence → explanation → judgement about success. You are not merely retelling the events: you are showing how the writer controls our understanding.

Testing interpretations rather than assuming facts

A critical answer distinguishes what the text establishes from what it suggests. The man says ‘Murder!’, but the extract does not establish that he committed a murder. Calling him definitely guilty would turn a possible interpretation into an unsupported fact. A more convincing judgement explains why the uncertainty about his role strengthens the mystery.

Different readers may also judge the same choice differently. One might find the detailed description of the woman convincing because it sounds like a memory of a particular person; another might emphasise that it occurs in a dream and is called ‘mad talk’. Both readings can contribute to evaluation if they are supported by evidence and connected to the named aim. You do not need to manufacture a criticism to appear balanced.

Percy’s claim about ‘what all women do’ is a gender stereotype, not something proved by his wife’s actions or automatically Collins’s own belief. For this task, its relevance is the change from Percy’s apparently casual presentation of her curiosity to the serious discovery it produces, which helps mystery emerge from an ordinary activity.

What separates the five levels

Examiners use best fit: they judge the answer’s overall quality, choose the level that most closely describes it, then select a mark within that level. A response does not earn its level by collecting a set number of quotations or techniques.

At the highest level, a detached judgement means stepping back to consider the text as something deliberately constructed by a writer. It does not mean avoiding opinions. Instead of only reporting ‘I felt scared’, explain why the arrangement of events is effective in creating uncertainty.

Moving from a comment to an explanation

These two responses address the same part of the mystery task:

The weaker response has a valid reference and a straightforward opinion. Its qualities are characteristic of Level 2. The stronger response explains the contrast between reaction and observation, then uses it to justify an informed judgement: that is the movement towards Level 3 and beyond. These are paragraph comparisons, not marks for complete answers.

The improvement is not simply adding ‘particularly effective’. It is supplying the reasoning that makes that phrase convincing.

A complete answer with clear explanation

This response shows how a manageable answer can develop relevant evidence into informed judgements:

Collins successfully creates mystery because the reader is given several clues but does not receive a full explanation of what has happened.

At the start, the inn seems unusually empty. Percy finds ‘no one to welcome us’ and there is ‘No human creature to answer when I call’. An inn would normally have people to welcome travellers, so their absence makes the reader wonder where everyone is. This is an effective beginning because it makes the visit feel strange before the man is discovered.

Mrs Fairbank’s reaction also creates mystery. She ‘has turned pale’, which shows that something has frightened her. However, Percy sees a horse eating and a man asleep. These things do not explain her fear, so the reader wants to know what she has noticed. This successfully makes us share Percy’s confusion until she explains that the man was talking in his sleep.

The man’s cry of ‘Murder!’ makes the mystery more serious. It suggests that his dream concerns violence, but we do not know whether he has seen a murder or been involved in one. The mention of ‘the cursed knife’ adds to the threat without explaining who used it. These clues are effective because they make the reader want to discover the man’s story.

Finally, ‘His eyes open suddenly’ suggests that he might explain his dream, but the extract ends before he speaks. Overall, Collins successfully maintains mystery by leaving important questions unanswered even when the reader seems close to receiving answers.

An examiner would award this answer Level 3, 9/15. Its best fit is Level 3 because it consistently explains relevant details and uses them to make informed judgements about mystery. It reaches the top of that level through its clear development and coverage of the extract, but it does not yet explore the relationships between clues, perspective and uncertainty closely enough for Level 4.

To develop it further, examine why a revelation can increase mystery rather than resolve it. For example, ‘Murder!’ explains Mrs Fairbank’s alarm while opening a larger question about the man’s role. That connection makes the evaluation more searching.

A complete model with sustained evaluation

Collins successfully creates a growing sense of mystery by giving the reader clues without allowing those clues to become a complete explanation. The passage moves from an unsettling setting to a disturbing individual, so the mystery becomes increasingly specific rather than remaining a vague atmosphere.

The opening is effective preparation for the encounter. The ‘desolate street’ and closed shutters make a place intended to receive travellers seem inaccessible, while ‘No human creature to answer when I call’ emphasises the absence of normal human contact. Collins does provide a practical explanation for the inn’s decline: it has been ‘ruined by the railway’. This prevents the setting from being straightforward evidence of anything supernatural, but its emptiness still encourages uncertainty about what Percy and his wife will discover there.

More powerfully, Collins makes Mrs Fairbank’s knowledge different from Percy’s. Her earlier movement is relaxed—she ‘saunters gracefully’—but she then ‘has turned pale’ and catches his arm ‘nervously’. This change promises something alarming. Yet Percy initially observes a horse eating and a man sleeping, neither of which explains such fear. The first-person narration therefore works particularly well: the reader shares his incomplete understanding and must wait for her reaction to make sense.

The sleeping man deepens the puzzle because his appearance offers signs of suffering without explaining their cause. His ‘dry yellow skin’ and ‘ominous frown’ suggest a troubled history, but ‘past sorrow or suffering’ remains general. Collins gives us enough to suspect that something is wrong while withholding the story behind it. Percy’s instinctive turn towards the ‘bright sunlight’ also contrasts the reassuring yard with the disturbing encounter inside the stable.

The cry ‘Murder!’ is especially successful because it seems to reveal the answer but actually enlarges the mystery. We understand Mrs Fairbank’s alarm, yet we cannot tell whether the man is a victim, a witness or someone recalling his own crime. The following ‘interval of silence’ gives this unexplained word time to dominate the encounter. His arm moving over his throat suggests a connection with violence, but still does not settle his role.

The description of ‘Light gray eyes’ and ‘a droop in the left eyelid’ sounds precise enough to refer to a particular woman, yet she remains unidentified. The ‘reddish look round the fingernails’ may imply blood, and the repeated ‘knife’ makes the threat more concrete. However, these details come through a sleeping man’s ‘mad talk’, so their reliability remains uncertain. This combination of vivid clues and doubtful meaning is Collins’s strongest achievement: the passage reveals the possible shape of a violent event while leaving its truth and participants unresolved.

The ending of the extract preserves that uncertainty rather than resolving it. ‘His eyes open suddenly’ suggests that the man might now explain his disturbing words, but the extract stops before any explanation arrives. This abrupt ending is effective because the reader has accumulated questions and is left at precisely the moment when answers seem possible. Overall, the mystery grows through partial revelations, each of which creates a further reason to read on.

An examiner would award this answer Level 5, 14/15. Its overall judgement is sustained across setting, perspective, character, revelation and ending. Carefully selected references support a convincing explanation of how clues create uncertainty. It also qualifies its interpretations rather than treating suggestions as established facts. The answer fits Level 5 overall; some discussion of the man’s appearance is less searching than its strongest evaluation of perspective and revelation, placing it just below full marks.

Useful starting points and a final check

Sentence starters can help you begin the reasoning, but the evidence and explanation must complete it:

• ‘The writer is particularly successful in creating … because …’
• ‘This detail is effective because, although we learn …, we still do not know …’
• ‘The contrast between … and … strengthens … by …’
• ‘This could suggest …; however, … leaves another possibility open.’
• ‘Overall, the strongest contribution to … is … because …’

Before finishing, check that you have:

1. Identified the named aim and the text boundaries.
2. Made an overall judgement about success.
3. Selected precise evidence from different stages of the relevant passage.
4. Explained why that evidence supports your judgements.
5. Distinguished supported inferences from established facts.

A convincing conclusion brings your views together; it need not repeat every paragraph.

Question 4 at a glance

• 15 marks; AO4: critical evaluation supported by textual references.
• Judge how successfully the writer achieves the named aim.
• Check the text boundaries: June 2023 covers the whole extract; obey any line range given in another task.
• Suggested working target: about 30 minutes, after initial reading, within Section A’s hour.

Recall the response sequence

Judgement → precise evidence → explanation → why it succeeds.

Consider the passage’s development, not just isolated techniques. Methods earn credit when they support your critical judgement.