English 23, Section 4                          Final Examination                            May 2, 2005

Part One: Identification

Select 15 out of the following 20.  For each, identify the text, author and context of the excerpt, and discuss the selection’s significance to the author’s themes, the work as a whole, and any other pertinent information.  Your answer should be 4-5 sentences long.

1.         Does the thing have to be carried through, in the end, partly for the effect, to prove to the audience of one – who won’t be able to report, only register, the lesson – that such a thing can happen, that there is nothing that can’t happen, that the most dreadful antic is justified, feelings can be found to match it?

2.         She went up to sit in her wicker chair.  But it was not the same.  Her husband had searched her out.  (The world had searched her out.)  The pressures were on her.  She was here with his connivance.  He might walk in at any moment, here, into Room 19.

3.         “She put out her arms as if after a retreating figure, stretching them black and with clasped pal hands across the fading and narrow sheen of the window.  Never see him!  I saw him clearly enough then.  I shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I live, and I shall see her, too, a tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness.  She said suddenly very low, ‘He died as he lived.’”

4.         She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead.  But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.  And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. 

5.         It seemed to them that they must, as it were, raise a rampart of their dignity as spouses between them and this shameless creature who made a traffic of herself; for legalized love always takes a high hand with her unlicensed sister.

6.         She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more.  But he had flung it away.  They went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming).  They (all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old.  A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter.  This he had preserved.  Death was defiance.  Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone.  There was an embrace in death.

7.         “I admire all my three sons-in-law highly,” said he.  “Wickham, perhaps, is my favourite; but I think I shall like your husband quite as well as Jane’s.”

8.         “Tell your aunt,” he said, “that you met a poet, who was looking for the Belle Dame Sans Merci, and who met you instead, and who sends her his compliments, and will not disturb her, and is on his way to fresh woods and pastures new.”

9.         The gates are painted blue.  Over the top it says, ‘All These Were Honoured In Their Generations And Were The Glory Of Their Times.’

10.       He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence.  It wouldn’t help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would comport himself as a soldier.

11.       I had the Smith and Wesson in my pocket and I kept fingering it and wondering what I’d do if they put up a fight for it or ran, and wishing to God they’d do one or the other.  I knew if they did run for it, that I’d never fire on them.

12.       …this is how you smile to someone you don’t like very much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely…

13.       Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

14.       She sat down suddenly on the edge of the desk; and after a moment of silence, both laughed shortly, a strange, secret, complicit laugh.  “Why, do you think?”  “Can’t say.  He certainly charged, if you wanted a decent cut.  But meat’s so hard to get, now; I thought it was worth it – justified.”

15.       An accolade, one side a white cheek, the other a black.  The white one she kissed on the left cheek, the black one on the right cheek, as if these were two sides of one face.  That vision, version, was like a poster; the sort of thing that was soon peeling off dirty shopfronts and bus shelters while the months of wrangling talks preliminary to the take-over by the black government went by.

16.       John is a physician, and perhaps – (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) – perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.  You see, he does not believe I am sick!  And what can one do?

17.       “De Spain!” he cried, panted.  “Where’s…” then he saw the white man too emerging from a white door down the hall.  “Barn!” he cried.  “Barn!”

18.       I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney.  Why don’t you do a dance around the ashes?  I’d wanted to ask her.  She had hated the house that much.

19.       Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.  There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here.  Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything’s being done.  The black box grew shabbier each year; by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some placed faded or stained.

20.       “I lied to thee, Pilon,” he said.  “I told thee I had no money, for I was afraid.  I did not know about my friends, then.  You have told me how hidden money is so often stolen, and I am afraid again.  Only last night did a way out come to me.  My money will be safe with my friends.  No one can steal it if my friends guard it for me.”

Part Two: Essay Questions

Select 2 of the following 5 essay prompts.  For each prompt, compose an essay using three of the texts given as options (you may substitute another appropriate text from the syllabus if you desire).  You must use different stories or novels for each question in order to receive credit.  A successful essay response will incorporate specific supporting details and analysis from the texts into a larger argument about the topic.  Please read the prompt carefully, before beginning your response, to ensure that you understand the question(s) posed.

1.         Jill summarized Margaret Blanchard’s article, “Socialization in Mrs. Dalloway,” for the class.  In this article, Blanchard states that the novel poses a question: “Are there grounds for genuine union between persons and if so, can these bonds be realized without violence to the authentic self?”  This question seems relevant to several of the works we have read this semester, and particularly appropriate to those dealing with feminist themes.  Discuss the way in which the “authentic self” (however the individual character conceives that) is placed in tension with the demands of others on that individual in three texts we studied this semester.  Suggested texts: "The Yellow Wallpaper," "To Room Nineteen," "The Story of an Hour," "Boule de Suif," Mrs. Dalloway, Possession.

2.         Pilon uses a curious logic to justify his actions, often to ensure self-interested outcomes, in Tortilla Flat.  Consider the various texts we have read which include non-normative ethical (or moral) systems, and discuss the way that these ethical systems inform the relationship between the individual and the surrounding society.  In framing your response, you may find it helpful to consider the following questions: Whose interests are served by these alternative systems?  What enables or perpetuates these systems, and what motivates the author of each text to present these alternative ethical systems?  What happens when these systems clash with more “normal” systems?  Suggested texts: Tortilla Flat, “Boule de Suif,” “The Lottery,” "The Things They Carried,” “Heart of Darkness.”

3.         Wilfred Owen, a British poet who served and died during World War I, wrote a poem about the horrors of death during a gas attack.  After this vivid description, his poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” concludes:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The final lines can be roughly translated, “It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.”  Several of the texts we have read deal with war, either in the past or the present, and show war as a factor in an individual character’s internal conflict – conflicts associated with duty, loyalty, identity, and/or responsibility.  These individuals discover that war is not the honorable, glorious experience they might have expected.  Discuss the way in which war is associated with internal conflict and disillusionment in three of the following texts: “Barn Burning,” “The Things They Carried,” “Guests of the Nation,” “A Soldier’s Embrace,” “Boule de Suif,” Mrs. Dalloway.

4.         The term bildungsroman is drawn from German: bildung meaning education, and roman meaning book.  As we discussed early in the semester, a bildungsroman is a novel that follows the development or maturation of the main character, who often must overcome some difficulty or loss to find a sense of purpose.  The term bildungsroman refers to a specific type of novel, but in a broader sense, we have considered the search for purpose or identity and the journey to maturation (physical, emotional, or ethical) in discussing several texts this semester.  These texts have examined the journeys, physical and metaphorical, of characters from varying situations and of varying ages.  Discuss the way in which the social context (family, friends, and/or society) of a character shapes the outcome: the person he or she is by the end of the story.  Suggested texts: The Snapper, “Royal Beatings,” Mrs. Dalloway, “Araby,” “The Things They Carried.”

5.         On the midterm, I asked you to consider how daughters were shaped by their relationships with specific parents.  Now consider the mothers we have encountered this semester.  What values do mothers or their stand-ins (such as stepmothers or aunts) advocate, and what conclusions or judgments do authors invite us to make about these maternal figures?  What characteristics define them?  How are we meant to assess them, and on the basis of what words or situations?  Discuss mother figures and their connection to larger social critiques or questions in three of the following: “Everyday Use,” “Rules of the Game,” “Royal Beatings,” Pride and Prejudice, “Heart of Darkness,” “Girl.”