Q28
1 markFill in the BlankSection C

Fill in the blank with the correct word from the bracket :

Mandela's speech swings between references to the past and a __ (bleak/promising) future.

Long Walk to Freedom — First Flight (Nelson Mandela)
Vocabulary in context — Long Walk to Freedom
Official Answer

promising — the future-facing lines speak of hope, glory and permanence ('never again', 'so glorious a human achievement'), the opposite of a bleak, gloomy outlook.

promisingfuturehopeMandela's toneoptimism

Marking Scheme

  • 11 mark for correctly filling the blank with 'promising'.

Hint

Look at the tone of the sentence describing the future — is it hopeful or hopeless?

Quick Oral Answer

The correct word is 'promising' — Mandela's speech moves from the pain of the past to a hopeful, glorious vision of the future.

Analysis & Explanation

The extract mentions past suffering but pivots to a hopeful vision of the future.


Key points

  • Past references: 'continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering'; 'the oppression of one by another'.
  • Future references: the pledge that oppression will 'never, never, and never again' occur, and the celebratory 'sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement'.

Common mistakes (exam caution)

  • Being distracted by the past suffering and wrongly labelling the whole extract's tone as negative, instead of noticing that suffering is framed as something now being left behind — the correct word is 'promising', not 'bleak'.

Common Mistakes

  1. 1Choosing 'bleak' by focusing only on the past suffering mentioned, without noting the hopeful shift when Mandela speaks of the future.
  2. 2Not connecting the blank to the celebratory final line about the 'glorious human achievement'.

Interesting Facts

The contrast between a painful past and a hopeful future is a recurring rhetorical structure in many freedom-movement speeches, including those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is 'promising' correct instead of 'bleak'?

Because Mandela's references to the future are hopeful and celebratory ('the sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement'), not dark or hopeless, so 'promising' fits the context.