2
© UCLES 2007 0500/02/M/J/07
Part 1
Read Passage A carefully, and then answer Questions 1 and 2.
Passage A
This is a description of a most peculiar public speaker and the ways in which he attempts to influence
his audience.
Dr. Zinc
My friends had advised me, if I was at a loose end and required entertainment, to wander down to the
public gardens to see Dr. Zinc in action. When I got there I saw a bizarre, cadaverous figure,
gesticulating wildly at a small audience that had gathered around him. He behaved in a theatrical
manner, intoning some well-prepared soliloquy and throwing himself around like a tree in a gale. He
wore a melancholy expression and his straggly hair hung down untidily. I joined the crowd to hear
what this eccentric fellow had to say.
‘Be sure, that at half past three on some day in the near future, the world will come to a sorry end.
The sun will burn us up and behold, at this very moment, oh, horrible to relate, a fiery asteroid is
bearing down upon us. In the great continents there will be interminable droughts, and the people will
perish for lack of water. We can do nothing, for this process has already started.’
At this point, Dr. Zinc paused and gasped noisily, before gulping down some of the earth’s last water
supply. When he started again, he seemed to have lost his thread as well as his voice as, with some
hoarseness, he described the deadly illnesses that would cover the earth, and he treated his
audience to lurid descriptions of new and peculiar diseases. He shed several tears to communicate
his great love for the animals which were the origin of these frightening diseases, and which would, no
doubt, be experimented upon and tortured by scientists in white coats.
‘But worst of all, oh terrible, terrible,’ he resumed, ‘will be the wars that will consume us all with
nuclear destruction. In the hands of evil people, whole nations will be eradicated and the lands
rendered infertile and inhospitable.’
I was beginning to find this man the very opposite of entertaining, and certainly his audience was not
laughing. I suddenly realised that they believed what he said. Most of them were deathly pale and
some clasped their hands together. The woman next to me twitched uncontrollably. So this was the
magic of rhetoric, and I saw how easily one person could influence a group of gullible citizens. As he
continued to describe the activities of unspeakable criminals, his audience appeared to lean towards
him as if he might be their protector. Every now and again they moaned and sobbed like pet dogs left
at home too long by their owners. It seemed that their predicament might be eased by making a
handsome contribution to Dr. Zinc’s funds. Cheerful givers were always loved by those who controlled
things like the rainstorms and thunderbolts which, he observed, were likely to happen over the public
gardens later that afternoon. At this point, some untidy and threatening individuals appeared with
plastic buckets and started to demand donations.
‘Friends,’ he continued, ‘it is with a heavy heart that I make these predictions. I am a lover of green
fields and the happy, innocent families that pass through them.’ Here he paused to shed more tears
and to mumble something incomprehensible about the subversive evils of the media that poisoned all
honest minds. His picture of ultimate destruction was, as he had hoped, too much for the audience
who wailed and lifted their hands to the not-so-blue skies. Some clasped their cell phones to their
ears and made final calls to their loved ones.
An elderly woman in the crowd suddenly jumped up in anger and shouted at the top of her voice,
‘Rubbish, you are talking absolute nonsense!’ But it was a waste of breath. In the panic that ensued,
no one could hear a word she said.