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IGCSE · Cambridge (CIE) · 0408

George Silverman’s Explanation · need, shame and being misunderstood

Read the nine-chapter account as retrospective first-person narration · Trace the repeated accusation of worldliness · Distinguish reported actions from George’s judgement of himself

Cambridge IGCSE World Literature 0408 · SET-2026-6 / SET-2027-6 / SET-2028-4 / 2025-P3-A / 2025-P3-B / 2028-P3-A / 2028-P3-B
Exam scope and assessment notes

0408 preparation for exam year(s) 2026, 2027, 2028. The assessment changes in 2028; follow the component and selected texts for your year. Original StudyForA teaching and practice for the 2026, 2027 and 2028 Stories of Ourselves Volume 2 Paper 3 option. Read all ten prescribed stories in your centre-selected anthology. Teaching is available for all ten stories: twenty named reading and writing lessons plus four full-selection workshops. Complete reading and independently supported writing are still required. The protected anthology is not reproduced in full. Public-domain texts and selected extracts are primary transcriptions; Wodehouse and Woolf use brief quotations and original commentary with linked complete reading sources. These are not Cambridge examination passages; punctuation and spelling may differ from the anthology. Models do not award Cambridge marks or grades. Other supported interpretations can be valid. Qualified teacher assessment and calibrated full papers remain unfinished. This is not the different 2025 Volume 2 selection or the 2029–2030 Volume 3 selection. Listed stories are not eligible for 2026–2027 coursework, and the revised 2028 coursework requires drama.

Before you begin

  • Confirm your exam year is 2026, 2027 or 2028 and your centre selected this ten-story option. Read the complete story before the analysis and writing lesson. All ten members need preparation; 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

  • Read the nine-chapter account as retrospective first-person narration
  • Trace the repeated accusation of worldliness
  • Distinguish reported actions from George’s judgement of himself

Dickens · three actual passages in whole-story context

  • Read the complete story before analysing. Use the linked primary source for any portions not printed here.
  • Write your response before opening the model. Explain the effect of your textual evidence.
  • Bracketed paragraph numbers are navigation aids, not original line numbers. Check quotations against your centre’s anthology.

Original self-check practice, not Cambridge examination passages, marked examination scripts or coursework submissions. Models illustrate an argument; they are not the only valid interpretation. Read all ten selected stories. Teacher judgement and full timed assessment remain unfinished.

Chapters One and Two · beginning an explanation

These are the complete two opening chapters. They precede the cellar account and the longer chronology.

George Silverman’s Explanation · Chapters One and Two

[1] FIRST CHAPTER

[2] IT happened in this wise—

[3] But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again, without descrying any hint in them of the words that should follow, it comes into my mind that they have an abrupt appearance. They may serve, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very difficult I find it to begin to explain my explanation. An uncouth phrase: and yet I do not see my way to a better.

[4] SECOND CHAPTER

[5] IT happened in this wise—

[6] But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former opening, I find they are the self-same words repeated. This is the more surprising to me, because I employ them in quite a new connection. For indeed I declare that my intention was to discard the commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give the preference to another of an entirely different nature, dating my explanation from an anterior period of my life. I will make a third trial, without erasing this second failure, protesting that it is not my design to conceal any of my infirmities, whether they be of head or heart.

  1. 1. How do the repeated opening and the narrator’s corrections shape your first response to George?

    Compare after trying

    The repeated start stalls progress even though George claims to have intended a different beginning. By preserving the failed attempts, he makes the act of writing visible and lets us hear his uncertainty before learning the events he needs to explain. His awkwardness contrasts with the confidence of people who later pronounce judgement on him.

    This does not prove that he lies. The promise not to conceal infirmities instead invites us to read a self-conscious account whose narrator fears inadequate expression. We can respond sympathetically while continuing to distinguish events, interpretations and self-judgements.

    Why this response fits

    • The reading explains the effect of repetition and self-correction.
    • It treats narrative uncertainty as evidence to examine, not automatic proof of deception.

Chapter Five · Sylvia’s invitation

George has been avoiding contact because he fears passing on the fever. This continuous extract follows that decision; it is not evidence that he has no wish for company.

George Silverman’s Explanation · Chapter Five · the refused invitation

[1] One night when I lifted the kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia (that was her pretty name) had but just gone out of the room. Seeing her ascending the opposite stairs, I stood still at the door. She had heard the clink of the latch, and looked round.

[2] ‘George,’ she called to me in a pleased voice, ‘to-morrow is my birthday; and we are to have a fiddler, and there’s a party of boys and girls coming in a cart, and we shall dance. I invite you. Be sociable for once, George.’

[3] ‘I am very sorry, miss,’ I answered; ‘but I—but, no; I can’t come.’

[4] ‘You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad,’ she returned disdainfully; ‘and I ought not to have asked you. I shall never speak to you again.’

[5] As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she was gone, I felt that the farmer bent his brows upon me.

[6] ‘Eh, lad!’ said he; ‘Sylvy’s right. You’re as moody and broody a lad as never I set eyes on yet.’

[7] I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he only said coldly, ‘Maybe not, maybe not! There, get thy supper, get thy supper; and then thou canst sulk to thy heart’s content again.’

[8] Ah! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin, watching for the arrival of the cart full of merry young guests; if they could have seen me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly statue, listening to the music and the fall of dancing feet, and watching the lighted farm-house windows from the quadrangle when all the ruin was dark; if they could have read my heart, as I crept up to bed by the back way, comforting myself with the reflection, ‘They will take no hurt from me,’—they would not have thought mine a morose or an unsocial nature.

  1. 1. How does Dickens make George’s isolation painful in this passage?

    Compare after trying

    Sylvia’s pleased invitation briefly offers a way into the household’s shared enjoyment. George’s interrupted reply cannot convey his protective purpose, and her immediate insult turns an act he considers considerate into apparent rudeness. The farmer’s cold instruction reinforces that social reading rather than asking why he refuses.

    The retrospective appeal to what they could have seen or read gives the reader the knowledge the household lacks. Lighted windows, music and dancing feet make the pleasure tangible while George watches from the darkness. The contrast positions him close enough to desire belonging but unable to claim it without fearing harm.

    Why this response fits

    • The answer uses the dialogue’s change in tone and George’s interrupted speech.
    • It explains how sensory detail and spatial separation present feeling, with motive grounded in the supplied context.

Chapter Nine · a charge of worldliness

George has just told Lady Fareway that he married Adelina and Granville. The passage includes his resignation and precedes the later recovery of his reputation.

George Silverman’s Explanation · Chapter Nine · Lady Fareway’s accusation

[1] She set her lips, looked more intently at me than ever, raised her right hand, and smote me hard upon the cheek.

[2] ‘Give me back those papers! give me back those papers!’ She tore them out of my hands, and tossed them on her table. Then seating herself defiantly in her great chair, and folding her arms, she stabbed me to the heart with the unlooked-for reproach, ‘You worldly wretch!’

[3] ‘Worldly?’ I cried. ‘Worldly?’

[4] ‘This, if you please,’—she went on with supreme scorn, pointing me out as if there were some one there to see,—‘this, if you please, is the disinterested scholar, with not a design beyond his books! This, if you please, is the simple creature whom any one could overreach in a bargain! This, if you please, is Mr. Silverman! Not of this world; not he! He has too much simplicity for this world’s cunning. He has too much singleness of purpose to be a match for this world’s double-dealing. What did he give you for it?’

[5] ‘For what? And who?’

[6] ‘How much,’ she asked, bending forward in her great chair, and insultingly tapping the fingers of her right hand on the palm of her left,—‘how much does Mr. Granville Wharton pay you for getting him Adelina’s money? What is the amount of your percentage upon Adelina’s fortune? What were the terms of the agreement that you proposed to this boy when you, the Rev. George Silverman, licensed to marry, engaged to put him in possession of this girl? You made good terms for yourself, whatever they were. He would stand a poor chance against your keenness.’

[7] Bewildered, horrified, stunned by this cruel perversion, I could not speak. But I trust that I looked innocent, being so.

[8] ‘Listen to me, shrewd hypocrite,’ said my lady, whose anger increased as she gave it utterance; ‘attend to my words, you cunning schemer, who have carried this plot through with such a practised double face that I have never suspected you. I had my projects for my daughter; projects for family connection; projects for fortune. You have thwarted them, and overreached me; but I am not one to be thwarted and overreached without retaliation. Do you mean to hold this living another month?’

[9] ‘Do you deem it possible, Lady Fareway, that I can hold it another hour, under your injurious words?’

[10] ‘Is it resigned, then?’

[11] ‘It was mentally resigned, my lady, some minutes ago.’

[12] Don’t equivocate, sir. Is it resigned?’

[13] ‘Unconditionally and entirely; and I would that I had never, never come near it!’

[14] ‘A cordial response from me to that wish, Mr. Silverman! But take this with you, sir. If you had not resigned it, I would have had you deprived of it. And though you have resigned it, you will not get quit of me as easily as you think for. I will pursue you with this story. I will make this nefarious conspiracy of yours, for money, known. You have made money by it, but you have at the same time made an enemy by it. You will take good care that the money sticks to you; I will take good care that the enemy sticks to you.’

  1. 1. How does Lady Fareway’s speech turn George’s effort to act disinterestedly against him?

    Compare after trying

    The accusation attacks precisely the character George has struggled to preserve. Her repeated ironic descriptions of a simple, disinterested scholar make his vulnerability appear calculated. Questions about payment and a percentage assume a corrupt bargain before allowing him to explain, converting her interpretation into an apparent fact.

    The blow and seizure of the papers give her power a physical form. George’s broken questions and temporary inability to speak contrast with her expanding certainty. Because the earlier narrative has shown his painful surrender of love, the reader can recognise the cruelty of a judgement that recasts sacrifice as profit.

    Why this response fits

    • It analyses irony, assumed premises, physical actions and contrasting voices.
    • It locates the extract after the marriage and before the later consequences without inventing an actual fee.

Begin with the failed beginnings

The first two miniature chapters repeat an opening that George cannot make work. He preserves the failures instead of presenting a confident account. The third begins his deprived childhood in a Preston cellar, then follows the deaths of his parents, Hawkyard’s intervention, Hoghton Towers, schooling and college, the Fareway household and his later explanation. He is over sixty as he recalls loving Adelina at thirty. This retrospective form combines remembered events with a present effort to justify and understand them; first person does not automatically mean either falsehood or complete self-knowledge.

Follow an accusation as it becomes a habit

His mother calls his hunger and wish for warmth worldly, and George adopts her judgement of basic need. At Hoghton Towers he begins to feel protective affection for Sylvia, keeping away because he fears transmitting the fever. The family reads his avoidance as sullenness. The refused invitation makes the gap especially painful: he wants to join, but remains outside to protect the guests. This pattern teaches him to stay silent when misunderstood and to suspect his own desires. Analyse the repeated term as a pressure that shapes choices, not a diagnosis supplied by the author.

Compare professions of virtue with actions

Hawkyard boasts of service to God and claims credit for George’s education even after George’s scholarship costs him nothing. Gimblet’s prayer hints at suppressed inheritance; the brothers’ subsequent partnership and Hawkyard’s will strengthen suspicion, but the narrative does not supply a legal finding. Lady Fareway likewise uses the fear of being mercenary to secure unpaid help and tuition. George remains religious and becomes a clergyman: the satire of these characters’ self-interest does not justify saying that the story condemns every believer.

Keep the final reversal and survival

George believes Adelina loves him but fears taking advantage of her trust and fortune. He makes himself appear older and less engaging while bringing her together with Granville Wharton, his other pupil. When both are of age, he marries them. Lady Fareway strikes him and interprets the marriage as a paid conspiracy. He resigns the living, receives a reprimand and narrowly avoids suspension. Adelina, her husband and college acquaintances support him; belief in his innocence gradually widens and he receives a college living. The churchyard at the final writing scene is nearby, not proof that the narrator is already dead.

Sources for this lesson

Pause and explain

Why does George keep away from Sylvia at Hoghton Towers?

Put the idea to work

Worked example

How can the refused invitation be read differently by George and the family?

Show the worked solution
  1. In context, George fears transmitting infection and sacrifices the pleasure of joining.
  2. The family sees only the refusal and his absence, and calls him ill-tempered.
  3. His retrospective explanation reveals the concealed motive to the reader.

Answer The scene makes a protective act socially illegible; readers can understand the loneliness that the family misreads as hostility.

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

Explain the difference between George’s hunger and the label his mother gives it.

Give me a hint

Separate a physical need from a moral accusation.

Compare my reasoning
  1. He needs food, warmth and shelter.
  2. Calling these wants worldly teaches him to experience them as shameful.

The repeated label moralises deprivation and becomes a judgement he carries into later choices.

Look for these in your work

  • Distinguish need and judgement
  • Track the repeated word
2 · Independent

What does the party scene reveal that Sylvia’s insult does not?

Give me a hint

Use the motive in the preceding context and the later watching.

Compare my reasoning
  1. He longs to join the pleasure but fears causing harm.
  2. His absence hides this intention from the household.

The scene reveals affection and self-denial behind behaviour the family calls disagreeable.

Look for these in your work

  • Use both viewpoints
  • Explain the loneliness
3 · Transfer

Test “Lady Fareway’s charge proves George receives money for the marriage”.

Give me a hint

Identify whose claim it is and what evidence the account gives.

Compare my reasoning
  1. She accuses him of a percentage on Adelina’s fortune.
  2. He denies acting for profit; the narrative shows costly sacrifice, resignation and eventual support for his innocence.

The charge is Lady Fareway’s accusation, not an established payment; evaluate it against the actions and the retrospective account.

Look for these in your work

  • Attribute the accusation
  • Do not invent a transaction

Common mistakes

  • Do not treat George’s self-condemnation as an unquestioned authorial verdict.
  • Do not call him dead merely because he writes beside a churchyard.
Recall without your notes

What can you explain now?

Why does George keep away from Sylvia at Hoghton Towers?

Compare with the explanation

He fears infecting her and tries to protect her.

His protective motive is disclosed to the reader, while the family misreads his absence as an unsocial temper.

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Make it stick

Why does George keep away from Sylvia at Hoghton Towers?

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.

Keep learning World Literature

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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