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IGCSE · Cambridge (CIE) · 0408

The Interlopers · inherited hatred, changed intentions and approaching wolves

Distinguish the court’s ruling from the characters’ hostile claims · Trace the tree fall, threatened revenge and developing friendship · Explain the final correction of hoped-for rescue without inventing an aftermath

Cambridge IGCSE World Literature 0408 · 2029-P3-STORIES / 2028-P3-A / 2028-P3-B
Exam scope and assessment notes

0408 preparation for exam year(s) 2029, 2030. The assessment changes in 2028; follow the component and selected texts for your year. Original StudyForA reading and writing practice for the 2029–2030 Stories of Ourselves Volume 3 prose option. Teaching and practice are available for 7 of the ten prescribed stories. The remaining 3 members and full-selection workshops need substantive teaching. Both complete 2029 and 2030 selection entries remain content gaps. Prepare all ten members if your centre selects this anthology option; not every prose alternative is compulsory. The pathway links complete primary readings and prints selected older public-domain excerpts. Achebe’s, Desai’s and Danticat’s protected stories are not reproduced; use the linked reading and centre anthology beside the original commentary and tasks. These are not Cambridge examination passages or a reproduction of the protected anthology. Translation, spelling, punctuation and paragraph layout may differ from the prescribed edition. Bracketed block counters are navigation aids, not original line numbers. Models illustrate supported arguments and do not award Cambridge marks or grades. Alternative supported interpretations can be valid. Qualified literature-teacher review and calibrated full papers remain unfinished. This is not the different 2025 or 2026–2028 Volume 2 selection. Revised coursework requires complete drama works, not these stories. Paper 3 is closed book: 90 minutes, one extract response and one whole-text essay, 25 marks each.

Before you begin

  • Confirm your examination year is 2029 or 2030 and your centre has selected the complete ten-story Volume 3 option. Read the complete story in the centre’s anthology before analysing an extract. Private candidates cannot enter 0408.

Work on paper. Try each question before revealing help, and explain why your method works.

Quick readiness check

What should support a claim about a literary text?

What you will learn

  • Distinguish the court’s ruling from the characters’ hostile claims
  • Trace the tree fall, threatened revenge and developing friendship
  • Explain the final correction of hoped-for rescue without inventing an aftermath

The Interlopers · actual passages and changing expectations

  • Read the complete story. For passage work, locate the specified scene in your centre’s anthology and connect it with earlier and later events.
  • Write before opening the model. Explain the effect of precise evidence on the question.
  • Bracketed block counters are StudyForA aids. Use your centre’s anthology for exact wording, translation and paragraph layout.

Original self-review practice, not official Cambridge questions, marked scripts, coursework or calibrated full timed papers. The linked reading edition is not certified identical to the prescribed anthology. Prepare all ten stories if selecting this option; models are not the only valid interpretations.

A meeting, a tree and a changed proposal

The first extract follows Ulrich’s patrol; the second occurs after the trapped men have exchanged threats and Georg has refused the wine. Read the intervening events in the complete story.

Saki · meeting and the falling tree

[1] He strayed away by himself from the watchers whom he had placed in ambush on the crest of the hill, and wandered far down the steep slopes amid the wild tangle of undergrowth, peering through the tree trunks and listening through the whistling and skirling of the wind and the restless beating of the branches for sight and sound of the marauders. If only on this wild night, in this dark, lone spot, he might come across Georg Znaeym, man to man, with none to witness—that was the wish that was uppermost in his thoughts. And as he stepped round the trunk of a huge beech he came face to face with the man he sought.

[2] The two enemies stood glaring at one another for a long silent moment. Each had a rifle in his hand, each had hate in his heart and murder uppermost in his mind. The chance had come to give full play to the passions of a lifetime. But a man who has been brought up under the code of a restraining civilisation cannot easily nerve himself to shoot down his neighbour in cold blood and without word spoken, except for an offence against his hearth and honour. And before the moment of hesitation had given way to action a deed of Nature’s own violence overwhelmed them both. A fierce shriek of the storm had been answered by a splitting crash over their heads, and ere they could leap aside a mass of falling beech tree had thundered down on them. Ulrich von Gradwitz found himself stretched on the ground, one arm numb beneath him and the other held almost as helplessly in a tight tangle of forked branches, while both legs were pinned beneath the fallen mass. His heavy shooting-boots had saved his feet from being crushed to pieces, but if his fractures were not as serious as they might have been, at least it was evident that he could not move from his present position till some one came to release him. The descending twig had slashed the skin of his face, and he had to wink away some drops of blood from his eyelashes before he could take in a general view of the disaster. At his side, so near that under ordinary circumstances he could almost have touched him, lay Georg Znaeym, alive and struggling, but obviously as helplessly pinioned down as himself. All round them lay a thick-strewn wreckage of splintered branches and broken twigs.

Saki · a change of mind and its imagined future

[1] Ulrich was silent for a few minutes, and lay listening to the weary screeching of the wind. An idea was slowly forming and growing in his brain, an idea that gained strength every time that he looked across at the man who was fighting so grimly against pain and exhaustion. In the pain and languor that Ulrich himself was feeling the old fierce hatred seemed to be dying down.

[2] “Neighbour,” he said presently, “do as you please if your men come first. It was a fair compact. But as for me, I’ve changed my mind. If my men are the first to come you shall be the first to be helped, as though you were my guest. We have quarrelled like devils all our lives over this stupid strip of forest, where the trees can’t even stand upright in a breath of wind. Lying here to-night thinking I’ve come to think we’ve been rather fools; there are better things in life than getting the better of a boundary dispute. Neighbour, if you will help me to bury the old quarrel I—I will ask you to be my friend.”

[3] Georg Znaeym was silent for so long that Ulrich thought, perhaps, he had fainted with the pain of his injuries. Then he spoke slowly and in jerks.

[4] “How the whole region would stare and gabble if we rode into the market-square together. No one living can remember seeing a Znaeym and a von Gradwitz talking to one another in friendship. And what peace there would be among the forester folk if we ended our feud to-night. And if we choose to make peace among our people there is none other to interfere, no interlopers from outside . . . You would come and keep the Sylvester night beneath my roof, and I would come and feast on some high day at your castle . . . I would never fire a shot on your land, save when you invited me as a guest; and you should come and shoot with me down in the marshes where the wildfowl are. In all the countryside there are none that could hinder if we willed to make peace. I never thought to have wanted to do other than hate you all my life, but I think I have changed my mind about things too, this last half-hour. And you offered me your wine-flask . . . Ulrich von Gradwitz, I will be your friend.”

[5] For a space both men were silent, turning over in their minds the wonderful changes that this dramatic reconciliation would bring about. In the cold, gloomy forest, with the wind tearing in fitful gusts through the naked branches and whistling round the tree-trunks, they lay and waited for the help that would now bring release and succour to both parties. And each prayed a private prayer that his men might be the first to arrive, so that he might be the first to show honourable attention to the enemy that had become a friend.

  1. 1. How does Saki make the change from hatred to friendship convincing within the scene?

    Compare after trying

    The meeting gives both men their wished-for opportunity, but hesitation and the falling tree replace that apparent power with bodily helplessness. Their later threats initially preserve the quarrel even in captivity, so the storm does not mechanically make them kind.

    The friendship passage then shows thought and attention to shared pain. Ulrich’s promise to help Georg first alters the competition, and Georg’s long pause leads to a detailed imagined future of visits and public peace. I find the change persuasive because it develops through response and specific commitments, while recognising that the future they describe has not yet occurred.

    Why this response fits

    • Place the extracts within the continuing threats and refused wine.
    • Explain the developing intention without inventing a shared drink or accomplished public reconciliation.

The figures that appear to be help

This is the complete final approach and identification after the new friends have called together.

Saki · hoped-for help and the last word

[1] There was silence again for some minutes, and then Ulrich gave a joyful cry.

[2] “I can see figures coming through the wood. They are following in the way I came down the hillside.”

[3] Both men raised their voices in as loud a shout as they could muster.

[4] “They hear us! They’ve stopped. Now they see us. They’re running down the hill towards us,” cried Ulrich.

[5] “How many of them are there?” asked Georg.

[6] “I can’t see distinctly,” said Ulrich; “nine or ten,”

[7] “Then they are yours,” said Georg; “I had only seven out with me.”

[8] “They are making all the speed they can, brave lads,” said Ulrich gladly.

[9] “Are they your men?” asked Georg. “Are they your men?” he repeated impatiently as Ulrich did not answer.

[10] “No,” said Ulrich with a laugh, the idiotic chattering laugh of a man unstrung with hideous fear.

[11] “Who are they?” asked Georg quickly, straining his eyes to see what the other would gladly not have seen.

[12] “Wolves.”

  1. 1. How does the ending turn relief into fear?

    Compare after trying

    The approach is first interpreted through hopeful speech and a rough count. Because Georg’s party is smaller, the figures seem to belong to Ulrich, and their movement is praised as brave assistance. That interpretation gives the reader a temporary position beside the men’s relief.

    Repeated questions, the absent answer and the altered laugh then interrupt the certainty. The single final identification of wolves sharply revises the meaning of the same movement. The ending creates severe danger by correcting knowledge, rather than by describing a completed attack. Its brevity leaves the expected rescue overturned at the point of recognition.

    Why this response fits

    • Trace the actual changes in speech, inference and response.
    • Explain the force of the final word without adding a narrated death or escape.

A human enemy is introduced as quarry

Ulrich patrols a narrow disputed woodland on a winter night. The opening initially suggests a hunter waiting for an animal, then reveals a human target. A court ruling had awarded the strip to his family in his grandfather’s time, but Georg’s family never accepted it; personal hatred sustains an inherited quarrel. Georg’s description of a stolen forest is a partisan claim, not the court’s finding. The narrator also notes that the strip is not especially valuable for game, making the intensity of the rivalry striking beside what is contested.

The opportunity for murder becomes shared helplessness

The men meet with rifles, hatred and intentions of killing. The account gives a moment of hesitation under a code of civilisation before the storm breaks a beech over them. Neither has fired before the fall. Both are alive but pinned, and each threatens to have his own followers kill the other when help arrives. Their confident calculations coexist with uncertainty about whose men will find them first. Nature’s force changes the situation, but the text does not identify it as a conscious moral judge assigning guilt to one owner.

Pity develops into a reciprocal commitment

Ulrich manages to drink wine and offers the flask across. Georg declines, citing his injured sight and enmity. Ulrich then thinks, watches the other’s pain and lets the hatred weaken; the offered aid is part of a developing change rather than a drink that Georg accepts and instantly makes them friends. Ulrich promises to have Georg helped first and asks for friendship. After a long pause, Georg imagines public meetings, visits and peace among their people, and accepts. These are genuine stated changes of intention, not a reconciliation already enacted throughout the countryside.

The rescue assumption is corrected at the last word

The pair shout together. Ulrich sees indistinct figures and counts nine or ten; because Georg brought only seven men, they take these to be Ulrich’s followers. Their expectation makes the approach hopeful before Ulrich’s silence and frightened laughter alter it. The final answer identifies wolves. Fatal danger is strongly suggested, but the story stops before narrating an attack, death or later rescue. A reading can take the ending as bleak without supplying a witnessed event the narrative withholds.

Sources for this lesson

Pause and explain

Who are the approaching figures identified by the last word?

Put the idea to work

Worked example

Why should “they are saved because they have forgiven each other” be corrected?

Show the worked solution
  1. The men make peace and call for assistance.
  2. The approaching figures are initially mistaken for human rescuers.
  3. The final word corrects that expectation to wolves.

Answer A changed relationship does not produce a reported rescue; the reversal separates moral intention from control over the outcome.

Try a topic test

Choose Easy, Normal or Difficult. Save your answers and open worked review after finishing.

Test this topic →

From guided practice to a new situation

Write your answer and reasoning first. Use a hint only if you are stuck. The model solution is for self-checking; your written work is not automatically marked.

1 · Guided

How does the first paragraph change the meaning of a hunting scene?

Give me a hint

Locate the correction from expected animal to actual target.

Compare my reasoning
  1. The opening resembles a watch for quarry.
  2. The target is revealed as a human enemy.

The delayed correction makes the patrol’s violence and the rivalry disturbing; this is not an ordinary lawful hunt.

Look for these in your work

  • Use the initial expectation
  • Explain its correction
2 · Independent

Trace the change from the flask offer to the promise of friendship.

Give me a hint

Retain Georg’s refusal and both men’s pauses.

Compare my reasoning
  1. Georg refuses wine with an enemy.
  2. Ulrich’s pity develops into an offer of priority help; Georg later accepts friendship.

The reconciliation develops through physical vulnerability, thought and reciprocal commitment rather than follows an immediately shared drink.

Look for these in your work

  • Use the actual order
  • Distinguish offer and acceptance
3 · Transfer

Revise “The figures prove that peace controls the forest”.

Give me a hint

Compare the counting with the final identification.

Compare my reasoning
  1. The men interpret the figures through their followers’ numbers.
  2. The wolves overturn this human expectation.

Peace changes their intentions, but the ending exposes limits to their knowledge and control of the surrounding world.

Look for these in your work

  • Use the counting and correction
  • Avoid an invented aftermath

Common mistakes

  • Do not present Georg’s claim of theft as the narrator’s account of the legal ruling.
  • Do not turn a strongly suggested fatal outcome into a described attack or invent a rescue.
Recall without your notes

What can you explain now?

Who are the approaching figures identified by the last word?

Compare with the explanation

Wolves; the story then stops before narrating an attack or rescue.

The final identification overturns the men’s assumption that their followers are coming.

After trying it yourself, choose your next review. This is your self-assessment.

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Make it stick

Who are the approaching figures identified by the last word?

If you needed the solution, close it and solve the problem again from a blank page. A correct answer is stronger when you can explain the reason for each step.

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Course scope and assessment

238 original lessons provide 714 guided, independent and transfer tasks, plus 431 reading-tracker and long-response prompts. Twenty skill and route entries, three year-specific Cherry Orchard entries, two Anowa entries, three Crocodiles entries, one 2027 Little Foxes entry, two year-specific Volume 1 poetry entries, one historical 2025 Volume 2 poetry entry and three year-specific Volume 2 story entries link teaching. Anowa has ten lessons through the Prologue and all three phases, with thirty staged tasks and ten original developed responses. Complete primary reading locators support analysis of the contested community frame, partnership, enslavement, the children, remembered dream, separation and ending. The protected play is linked rather than reproduced; editorial BECE material is not reused. Both eligible 2025–2026 Anowa rows link the whole-play pathway. Twenty-eight lessons teach the Author’s Note and all six country chapters of In the Sea There Are Crocodiles, with eighty-four staged tasks and sixty original developed responses. Four workshops teach passage analysis, whole-book argument, layered voice and retrieval/revision. All three complete 2025–2027 book entries link the whole-book pathway; the existing supplemental route remains available without adding another counted requirement. The public reflowed reading is linked rather than reproduced, with edition limits explicit. Twenty-two Little Foxes lessons teach all three acts for 2027, with sixty-six staged tasks and forty-eight original developed responses. Hospitality, silenced voices, the mill, financial negotiation, the proposed marriage, Horace’s return and refusal, the bonds, Birdie’s disclosure, withheld help, the final bargain and Alexandra’s decision are taught through actual stage directions and dialogue locators. Four workshops develop passage analysis, whole-play argument, stagecraft and corrective retrieval. SET-2027-2 links the full sequence; the existing supplemental route remains available without inflating counted requirements. The protected acting script is linked rather than reproduced; exact centre-edition wording and revisions must be checked. The Cherry Orchard has an 18-lesson whole-text sequence with five actual Julius West excerpts and three argument models. The 2026–2027 poetry option has teaching for all fourteen members, three complete public-domain poems and close-reading, comparison and retrieval workshops. Twenty-four lessons teach all ten 2026–2028 Stories of Ourselves Volume 2 members, with named reading and writing sequences and evidence, passage-context, essay and ten-member retrieval workshops. Two complete public-domain narratives, nineteen actual prose extracts and Katie’s complete twenty-line poem within Besant’s prose story support close reading and whole-story writing. The Shrinking Shoe follows the original 1895 prose and its five sections; the embedded poem is not a Paper 2 set poem. All three eligible ten-story selection rows link the complete pathway. Wodehouse and Woolf use brief quotations and original commentary with complete reading sources; their full texts are not reproduced here. Twelve lessons teach twelve compulsory 2028–2030 Volume 3 poems, with thirty-six staged tasks and twenty-four developed-response prompts. The Dutt and Kingsley excerpts and Cissoko’s exact translation still need verified reading and teaching; full-selection workshops remain unfinished, so all three complete poetry rows remain unlinked. Fourteen lessons teach seven 2029–2030 Volume 3 stories with thirty-five developed-response prompts. Twelve actual older primary excerpts support four stories; Achebe, Desai and Danticat use original commentary with complete primary reading links rather than reproducing their protected texts. A separate partial-member pathway supports The Necklace, The Model Millionaire, Sultana’s Dream, The Interlopers, The Sacrificial Egg, Sale and New York Day Women without linking either complete ten-story row. The three other members and full-selection workshops remain unfinished. Read the full centre-selected works and protected anthology; check edition differences, including Weissenhorn’s older Necklace translation. The historical 2025 poetry pathway teaches all fourteen members through eighteen lessons, fifty-four staged tasks and fifty-one developed-response models. Three complete public-domain poems remain printed with line breaks; eleven protected poems use complete primary reading links and original commentary. Four workshops teach close analysis, whole-poem argument, preparation comparisons and specific retrieval of all fourteen members. The complete SET-2025-5 option links this sequence; the historical supplemental route remains without increasing counted requirements. Archival Cambridge and WJEC papers supply primary poems, not reused questions or later-year assessment rules. Centre-edition differences remain explicit. Forty-six lessons provide original teaching and practice for nine historical 2025 story members: The Doll’s House, The Gold Watch, A Visit, A Walk to the Jetty, In the Mountains, Mrs. Sen’s, Promenade, The Plantation and The Paper Menagerie. Together they provide one hundred and thirty-eight staged tasks and one hundred and one developed-response models. A Visit uses complete primary reading visually checked across printed pages 306–310. Promenade follows the complete seven-page narrative on printed pages 416–422; its four lessons trace bodily control, wordless meetings, the interrupted circuit and changed final walk. Mrs. Sen’s has six lessons through the complete story, with eighteen staged tasks and thirteen developed-response models. Teaching follows the collection scan from its unnumbered opening through printed p.135, with food, letters, recordings, separate journeys and the changed final care arrangement. The Plantation has five lessons, fifteen staged tasks and eleven developed-response models through all four numbered sections, visually checked against printed pages 423–429 through the final dawn bird-call. In the Mountains has seven lessons, twenty-one staged tasks and fifteen developed-response models through the final invitation to eat. The complete publisher transcription supports scene-based reading; automated-text errors and subscription access remain explicit, and original printed pages were not visually verified. A Walk to the Jetty has seven lessons, twenty-one staged tasks and fifteen developed-response models through the complete six-page retype’s final berth. Reader annotations and the appended question are separate; the complete publisher version has wording differences, so exact quotations require the approved edition. The centre edition remains required for exact quotations. The protected stories are linked, not reproduced. The partial member pathway is supplemental; Words and full-selection workshops remain unfinished, so SET-2025-6 stays unlinked. Fifteen year-specific prescribed-work entries remain unfinished; complete centre-selected coursework reading also needs substantive text-specific teaching. The 51-entry map is a StudyForA preparation map, not official numbered syllabus sections or a percentage of student mastery. Written practice is self-checked and is not officially marked. Full timed papers and qualified literature-teacher assessment remain unfinished. Fictional exercises are labelled separately from actual excerpts; alternative well-supported readings can be valid. Centre-authenticated coursework and Cambridge moderation are separate from self-check practice.

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