Symbol Without Evidence: Marking a Four-Mark Poetry Answer
An internal poetry test gives students eight lines and asks, for four marks: 'What does the lamp stand for, and how does the poet's language make that meaning clear?' The lines are: 'The lamp my grandmother lit / at dusk still burns, though / the wick is a cheaper one now / and the oil is rationed. / She called it a promise, not a lamp. / We keep it because / nobody has found the words / to put it out.' A student answers: 'The lamp is the lamp which the poet's grandmother lit in the evening. It stands for light and hope. The poet uses the words lamp, wick and oil to describe it. The lamp is still burning which shows that hope is still there.' The student earned 3/4 on a prescribed poem last month and argues that 'light and hope' is the standard symbol and should be enough for full marks here.
1. Award the four marks and show what a full-mark answer would have contained.
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2/4. The claim ('light and hope') is a stock answer that could be written without reading these lines, and it is unanchored; the rest paraphrases lines 1–4 and stops.
A 4-mark answer needs three things: a claim, at least two details that could only come from this poem, and a statement of effect. The details are available and specific:
- 'the wick is a cheaper one now / and the oil is rationed' - the ritual continues, but on reduced means, so the lamp carries maintenance and thrift, not only radiance.
- 'She called it a promise, not a lamp' - the object is renamed as an obligation, which is where the inheritance idea lives.
- 'nobody has found the words / to put it out' - the keeping is partly inertia, which complicates 'hope is still there'.
A candidate who notices that complication and still argues for hope earns the top band; one who ignores it cannot.
2. The question has two verbs. Show how an answer that satisfies only the first is structurally capped, and say what happens if the quotation is slightly misremembered.
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The second verb - how does the poet's language make that clear - converts identification into analysis. An answer supplying only a symbol is answering half the question, so it is capped at half marks however defensible the symbol is. Structurally, the first sentence may carry the symbol; every later sentence must quote and then say what the quoting does. An answer with no quotation at all cannot pass the halfway line.
The exception: if a candidate misquotes slightly but analyses accurately, credit the analysis and ignore the small misquotation. Poetry answers are written from memory, and the skill being tested is the linking of language to meaning, not transcription. A marker who deducts for 'cheaper wick' instead of 'a cheaper one now' is marking memory.
3. A second student argues the lamp stands for grief, not hope. Rule on whether an alternative reading can earn full marks, and state the condition.
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Yes, provided it is argued from the text. 'We keep it because nobody has found the words to put it out' supports unresolved mourning as readily as duty: the family maintains the flame not out of conviction but for want of a way to end it. That reading accounts for at least two details without contradicting the lines.
The condition is evidence plus consistency. The reading must cite textual detail and must not simply replace the poem with the candidate's feelings. What earns marks is the argument, never the symbol chosen - so a grief reading with two quotations outranks a hope reading with none, and a marker who awards the familiar symbol automatically is marking the syllabus, not the script.