Text - Girl on an Altar

Course Structure and the Shakespeare Requirement

For the 2027 Leaving Certificate examination, you can study Girl on an Altar in one of two places on Paper II:

• Single Text (Section I): An in-depth 60-mark question focusing on Carr's dramatic methods, characterisation, themes, and staging.
• Comparative Study (Section II): One of three texts evaluated together across prescribed comparative modes for 70 marks.

A single text cannot also serve as one of your comparative texts. In addition, the Department of Education requires every Higher Level candidate to complete the study of a Shakespeare play. For 2027, the prescribed Shakespeare texts are Othello and Macbeth. Note that only Othello appears on the Single Text list; Macbeth is available for comparative study only. Consequently, you can arrange your course in one of three ways:

When writing by hand in the examination, remember to underline play and book titles (Girl on an Altar) rather than using quotation marks, and introduce the playwright's full name upon first mention.

Dramatic Premise and the Shape of the Play

You do not need to study Greek literature, but you do need the bare bones of the story Carr is retelling, because the audience's knowledge of how it ends is what gives her quiet scenes their tension. In classical myth, King Agamemnon gathered the Greek fleet at Aulis to attack Troy. Stalled by dead calms, he consulted the seer Calchas, who declared that the goddess Artemis demanded the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia. Agamemnon lured his daughter to the camp under the pretext of a royal marriage to Achilles, only to slaughter her upon an altar.

Carr's play opens ten years later, with Troy fallen and Agamemnon coming home. The title itself refuses the language of heroes: not a king, not a war, but a girl on an altar. During his decade away, Clytemnestra has ruled the kingdom alongside Agamemnon's cousin, Aegisthus. Instead of presenting Clytemnestra as an irredeemable villain, Carr anchors the play in her unresolved maternal agony.

The Two Layers of Action

To understand Carr's structure, keep two distinct narrative layers in mind:

1. The Present-Tense Action: Agamemnon's return to Argos, bringing the captive prophetess Cassandra into the palace; the bitter, sexually charged reunion between husband and wife; the deepening political conspiracy with Aegisthus; and the final execution.
2. The Remembered Action: The horrific details of Aulis, the deception, the physical sacrifice, and the ten brutal years of war, which reach the audience through characters stepping forward to narrate directly.

The audience who knows the older versions of the story arrives expecting Agamemnon's death, and Carr plays on that expectation. The dramatic tension does not come from wondering what will happen, but from watching two damaged figures collide as remembered horror infects every domestic encounter.

Characterisation and Power Dynamics

Carr constructs an intimate, volatile dynamic between central and supporting figures:

Clytemnestra

A queen shattered by the killing of her own child. Her scenes with Agamemnon swing between hatred and a lingering physical intimacy, showing how love and revulsion stay tangled together. Carr complicates her character: she is an extraordinarily capable ruler who governed Argos successfully for ten years, yet her profound maternal grief hardens into an appetite for retributive slaughter.

Agamemnon

The victorious commander whose public swagger masks acute domestic guilt. He defends Iphigenia's slaughter as an unavoidable religious necessity demanded by the army and the gods. Carr exposes the gulf between his lofty political rhetoric and the stark reality of a father who bartered his daughter's life for military prestige.

Cassandra

The captive Trojan princess shows the human cost of war for the defeated. Treated as a prize of war, her physical vulnerability exposes how conquest commodifies women, while her visionary foresight deepens the play's claustrophobic sense of doom.

Aegisthus

Clytemnestra's lover and political ally, motivated by ancestral blood feuds. While he assists her rule and aids the conspiracy, Clytemnestra establishes that her rebellion is powered by a mother's vengeance, not romantic subservience to another man.

Cilissa

Clytemnestra's loyal domestic servant. Observing the royal house from below, her presence grounds the drama in domestic reality, providing crucial evidence for social class, labour, and servitude.

The Children (Iphigenia, Electra, and Orestes)

Though killed a decade prior, Iphigenia is the play's defining presence, haunting every exchange. Meanwhile, the surviving children, Electra and Orestes, remain caught in the wings of this familial catastrophe, ensuring that violence threatens to perpetuate itself into the next generation.

Key Moments and Quotation Evidence Bank

Every Section I and Section II answer requires close reference to the text. Use this sequence of key moments to build an evidence bank of concise, accurate quotations from your copy of the text:

Theatrical Perspective and Aesthetic Techniques

Drama is written to be performed, so write about the play as something happening in front of an audience. These are the techniques to look for:

Direct Address versus Soliloquy and Monologue

It is vital to distinguish these three theatrical terms:

• Monologue: An extended speech by one character with other characters listening on stage.
• Soliloquy: A character alone on stage, speaking their inner thoughts aloud as if overheard by the audience.
• Direct address: A character explicitly speaks to the audience, breaking the fourth wall. Carr relies heavily on direct address, turning the theatre audience into a jury that must evaluate competing personal accounts.

Space, Staging, and Physicality

Carr restricts the sweeping geographic scale of the Trojan War to oppressive domestic quarters: bedrooms, dining tables, and palace thresholds. Confining political leaders to private domestic spaces emphasises how geopolitical decisions poison intimate human relationships.

Register and Dialect

Carr alternates between elevated, mythic cadence and sharp, colloquial Irish idiom. Characters shift abruptly from formal declarations of royal duty to raw, earthy domestic speech, stripping the myth of classical detachment and making the characters feel immediately recognisable.

Sensory Imagery and Props

Rather than relying on abstract philosophical musings, Carr's language is tactile and visceral. Recurring references to blood, ocean water, sacrificial knives, bridal silks, and sheared hair anchor the characters' memories in raw physical experience.

Section I: Method for the 60-Mark Single Text Answer

Single Text questions are marked using the PCLM criteria: Clarity of Purpose (P, 30%), Coherence of Delivery (C, 30%), Efficiency of Language (L, 30%), and Accuracy of Mechanics (M, 10%). To score in the top band, your answer must be an argument built on textual evidence, not an unfocused plot summary.

Step-by-Step Writing Method

1. Underline every key word in the prompt: If a question asks about 'a morally ambiguous protagonist whose suffering evokes compassion and horror', you must explicitly address ambiguity, suffering, compassion, and horror throughout.
2. Formulate a definite thesis: State your central argument in your opening lines using the prompt's terms. Never write 'In this essay I will discuss...'
3. Draft 4–5 core paragraphs: Each paragraph should open with a clear claim, anchor itself in a specific key moment, incorporate short embedded quotations, and provide 2–3 sentences evaluating Carr's dramatic choices (such as theatrical perspective, register, or silence).
4. Conclude analytically: Address the prompt directly in a decisive final paragraph, showing what Carr's staging achieves.
5. Manage examination timing: Allocate approximately 50 minutes to Section I. Reserve the final 3–5 minutes to edit syntax, punctuation, and spelling to protect your Mechanics marks.

Question Types Beyond Character Profiles

Examiners set varied question styles on Paper II. Prepare to write on:

• Character Duality: Figures who act simultaneously as victims and persecutors.
• Dramatic Technique: How Carr manipulates pacing, lighting, or direct address to generate tension.
• Key Relationships: The fraught dynamic between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, or the tragic kinship between Clytemnestra and Cassandra.
• Lesser Characters: The thematic function of figures like Cilissa in revealing social structures.
• Specific Format Prompts: Delivering an address to a drama society or composing a critical review. When a specific genre is set, adopt its conventions immediately while sustaining rigorous textual evidence.

Section II: Comparative Modes and Methods (2027)

In Paper II Section II (70 marks), candidates answer on one question. The examination paper offers questions on two of the three prescribed modes for 2027. You do not know which two will appear, so you must prepare all three:

• Theme or issue
• Cultural Context
• General Vision and Viewpoint

Questions appear either as a single 70-mark question comparing three texts, or as a two-part question: part (a) on one text (30 marks) and part (b) comparing the other two texts (40 marks). Remember: you cannot reuse the text examined in part (a) in part (b).

1. Theme or Issue

Name your chosen theme with identical phrasing across your comparative texts (e.g. 'retribution and justice' or 'the destructive cost of ambition'). Track how Carr introduces the theme through Aulis, deepens it through domestic confrontation, and highlights its complexity through Clytemnestra's psychological mindset.

2. Cultural Context

Cultural Context examines the rules, structures, and values of the world characters inhabit. Examine six central aspects:

• The status of women and men; who holds sovereign and domestic authority.
• Family structures, marriage expectations, and the valuation of children.
• Social class, domestic servitude (exemplified by Cilissa), and economic power.
• Religion, rituals, and how divine will is manipulated to justify political violence.
• Legal codes, retribution, and whether institutions exist to hold the powerful to account.
• Individual agency: whether a character can alter their world or must endure it.

Girl on an Altar depicts a warrior aristocracy where authority rests openly on the threat of violence, in contrast to texts where social control is subtle or financial.

3. General Vision and Viewpoint

General Vision and Viewpoint assesses the overall outlook on human life that the text communicates. Rather than merely labelling Carr's play 'bleak', examine four structural areas: the ominous opening, the tragic fate of the protagonists, the breakdown of core relationships, and the final stage picture. A sophisticated answer achieves balance by acknowledging moments of light: Clytemnestra's effective political rule, flashes of genuine human tenderness, and Carr's insistence on giving voice to previously silenced women.

Key terms

PCLM Criteria

The SEC marking matrix: Clarity of Purpose (30%), Coherence of Delivery (30%), Efficiency of Language (30%), and Accuracy of Mechanics (10%).

Single Text

Paper II, Section I examination requirement involving an in-depth, standalone study of one prescribed text.

Theme or issue

A 2027 comparative mode exploring an author's investigation of a central human idea, conflict, or value across texts.

Cultural Context

A 2027 comparative mode analysing the social conventions, power hierarchies, gender roles, and values governing a text's world.

General Vision and Viewpoint

A 2027 comparative mode assessing the overarching perspective on life, human nature, and hope shaped by an author's text.

theatrical perspective

Reading and analysing drama as an embodied performance involving staging, physical space, lighting, silence, and actor-audience dynamics.

direct address

A theatrical convention where a character speaks directly to the audience, breaking naturalistic illusion to share unfiltered psychological insight.

dramatic irony

A dramatic condition where the audience knows historical or narrative outcomes of which the characters on stage remain uncertain or in denial.

key moments

Crucial narrative, dramatic, or thematic scenes selected to anchor an argument and provide precise textual evidence.

ambivalence

The coexistence of opposing feelings, evident in Clytemnestra's simultaneous sexual desire for and moral revulsion toward Agamemnon.