Component 1 Question 3: analysing a longer section

What Question 3 rewards

Question 3 asks you to explore how a writer presents something in a specified section of fiction. In the summer 2025 Eduqas Component 1 paper, it asks how the writer shows Clive’s thoughts and feelings about growing older in lines 14–30. It is worth 10 marks and assesses AO2: explaining and analysing how language creates effects and influences readers, with relevant terminology where appropriate.

The important connection is between what is shown and how it is shown. Saying that a character feels frightened identifies a feeling. Explaining how a particular word makes that fear seem sudden, overwhelming or physically painful begins to analyse the writing.

Thoughts and feelings are not always stated directly. A narrator may tell us what a character thinks, but dialogue, movements and reactions can also reveal an inner state. A character who repeatedly checks a mirror, for example, may be seeking reassurance. The explanation must grow out of the actual detail, not from a technique you hoped to find.

Make time for a developed answer

Component 1 lasts 1 hour 45 minutes. The paper advises about 10 minutes reading and 50 minutes answering Section A. The five reading questions carry 5, 5, 10, 10 and 10 marks.

For Question 3, a workable target is about 12 minutes, including a brief reread and plan. Use roughly two minutes to identify the focus and select evidence, then write and check your response. This leaves time for the other questions within the 50-minute answering period. Eduqas also advises using the marks as a rough guide to time: the opening 5-mark answers should not consume the time needed for developed analysis later.

Read the story before analysing the section

Our worked example uses Saki’s short story ‘The Open Window’, published in Beasts and Super-Beasts in 1914. Framton Nuttel is visiting people in the countryside while undergoing a ‘nerve cure’. Letters of introduction allow him to call on people he does not know. Vera, his hostess’s niece, uses his lack of local knowledge to tell him an invented tragedy.

Some vocabulary may be unfamiliar: a French window is a glazed opening that can function as a door; snipe are birds hunted by the returning men; a mackintosh is a waterproof coat. At the end, ‘romance’ means imaginative storytelling rather than a love affair.

Here is the complete story.

“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.”

Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.

“I know how it will be,” his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; “you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.”

Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division.

“Do you know many of the people round here?” asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.

“Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here.”

He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

“Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?” pursued the self-possessed young lady.

“Only her name and address,” admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.

“Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,” said the child; “that would be since your sister’s time.”

“Her tragedy?” asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.

“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

“It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?”

“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.” Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. “Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing ‘Bertie, why do you bound?’ as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window—”

Define the task and its boundaries

For this practice question, use the section beginning ‘She rattled on cheerfully’ and ending ‘avoid an imminent collision.’

Practice task: How does Saki show Framton’s thoughts and feelings during this part of his visit? [10]

Consider what Framton thinks and feels, and how the writer’s language reveals it. Support your answer with references to the section and relevant terminology where appropriate.

The whole story helps you understand the deception, but the answer should analyse the specified section. Framton’s belief that the men are dead is not the same as the truth about them. That distinction is central to explaining his reactions accurately.

Track what changes, then examine how it is expressed

A useful plan follows the character through the section:

Tracking is not simply retelling each event. At each stage, ask what the detail reveals and why its expression matters.

Take ‘desperate’. First, identify the action: Framton tries to change the subject. Next, explain the word: ‘desperate’ makes the attempt sound urgent rather than casually conversational. Finally, connect it to the question: he finds the supposedly bereaved woman’s cheerful talk so disturbing that he urgently wants to escape it. The reader understands how completely Vera’s story controls his interpretation.

Now consider ‘nameless fear’. ‘Fear’ states the emotion, but ‘nameless’ suggests something he cannot clearly explain or put into words. Coupled with ‘chill shock’, it makes his response seem immediate and physically overwhelming. This is more precise than saying that the phrase ‘makes the reader want to read on’.

The narrator also moves between Framton’s viewpoint and a more detached judgement of him. Calling his assumption a ‘delusion’ exposes the gap between his belief that his medical details are interesting and Mrs. Sappleton’s near-yawn. That can make him seem socially unaware as well as vulnerable. Analysis can explore more than one effect when both arise from the detail.

Turn a straightforward comment into analysis

These two answers address the same practice task.

An examiner would award the weaker response 3/10, in the 3–4 band. Its overall quality best fits straightforward comment: it identifies relevant feelings and supports them, but mostly paraphrases events or repeats the meaning of the quotation.

An examiner would award the stronger response 5/10, in the 5–6 band. Its best fit is the beginning of detailed exploration and explanation of language effects. It develops the meanings of particular choices, but is too limited to explore Framton’s changing responses thoroughly.

To lift the weaker answer into the 5–6 band, develop its comments in this way and retain evidence from across the section. To move further, explore the changing feelings and subtleties more fully: his initial attempt to show sympathy, the narrator’s amused judgement, and how apparently ordinary details become terrifying through his mistaken viewpoint.

A developed model answer

Saki shows Framton’s discomfort developing into uncontrolled panic. Mrs. Sappleton’s conversation is ‘purely horrible’ to him. The contrast with her speaking ‘cheerfully’ reveals how Vera’s story shapes his response: ordinary talk about shooting seems appalling because he believes the men drowned. His ‘desperate’ attempt to find a ‘less ghastly topic’ suggests an urgent need to escape distress, not merely polite conversation.

He notices that his hostess gives him only a ‘fragment’ of her attention. The noun suggests how little interest she takes in him, while her eyes ‘constantly straying’ towards the window reinforce his discomfort. Calling the day a ‘tragic anniversary’ shows that he accepts Vera’s account completely. Saki gives access to his mistaken interpretation, making his unease understandable.

Framton’s demand for ‘complete rest’ and ‘an absence of mental excitement’ reveals his desire for protection from disturbance. However, the narrator calls his assumption that strangers welcome medical details a ‘delusion’. This amused judgement exposes his social unawareness, confirmed by Mrs. Sappleton’s suppressed yawn. Readers can understand his vulnerability while recognising that his understanding of others is unreliable.

When the men are announced, he initially offers Vera ‘sympathetic comprehension’, believing he understands her grief. Her apparent ‘dazed horror’ then triggers a ‘chill shock of nameless fear’. ‘Chill’ gives his terror a physical quality, while ‘nameless’ suggests that he cannot articulate it. The verb ‘swung’ makes his movement abrupt: fear is taking control of his body.

The men approach ‘Noiselessly’ in ‘deepening twilight’, making their arrival seem eerie through his frightened perspective. Their white coat, brown spaniel and song match Vera’s details. Ordinary features therefore appear to confirm something supernatural, allowing readers to see why his mistaken belief becomes overwhelming.

Finally, ‘grabbed wildly’ shows that his earlier social restraint has vanished. The adverb conveys uncontrolled movements, while the door, drive and gate become ‘dimly-noted stages’: he barely registers his surroundings because escape dominates his attention. His ‘headlong retreat’ forces a cyclist into a hedge. Saki shows panic through its consequences as well as emotional vocabulary, revealing how completely fear has displaced his awareness of other people.

An examiner would award this answer 9/10, in the highest, 9–10 band. Its overall quality best fits that band: it explores the changing feelings thoroughly, analyses precise language and explains subtleties such as the difference between Framton’s interpretation and the narrator’s judgement. It enters the highest band securely, though some points, such as the returning party’s description, are more compressed than others. Terminology supports the discussion rather than replacing it. The answer’s strength is the connected analysis, not a particular number of quotations or techniques.

Understand the marking bands

Eduqas marks this question by best fit: the examiner decides which band most closely describes the quality of the whole response, then chooses the mark within it. It is not a checklist in which each quotation earns a fixed mark.

An answer with nothing relevant to reward receives 0. Accurate terminology is useful where it supports explanation, but technical labels cannot substitute for understanding.

Build an answer you can sustain

These sentence openings can help you make the connection between meaning and method:

• ‘At first, the writer shows that … through the phrase “…”’
• ‘The word “…” suggests … because …’
• ‘His action of … reveals …’
• ‘Later, his response changes when …’
• ‘This allows the reader to understand …’

For example, the opening ‘The word “…” suggests …’ needs an explanation tied to the character’s feeling, not just a replacement adjective. ‘Wildly suggests panic’ is a start; explaining that his movements have lost their earlier social control develops the point.

Before writing, check the character and exact section. During your brief plan, select details from the beginning, middle and end. As you write, connect each feeling to evidence and explain the significant wording. Finish by checking that you have answered how the writer shows it, not only what happens.

Question 3 at a glance

10 marks · AO2 · about 12 minutes within Section A’s 50-minute answering period, following about 10 minutes reading.

Explain what is shown + how the writing shows it + its effect on the reader. Follow the exact focus and section named in the question.

Recall the method

1. Identify the character, feeling or situation being asked about.
2. Track the section from beginning to end.
3. Select short, relevant quotations and actions.
4. Explain significant wording, rather than merely naming techniques.
5. Show changes and subtleties in the presentation.

Identification: the character is frightened.

Analysis: a particular word makes that fear seem sudden, physically overwhelming or beyond explanation.

Recall the bands

• 1–2: identifies feelings and begins to comment.
• 3–4: straightforward comments.
• 5–6: detailed exploration; beginnings of explanation of language effects.
• 7–8: insight and developed analysis.