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Review/Paper Questions

Please post any questions in the comments section of this post.

Here is the essay question that will appear on the exam:

Choose two works we’ve studied this quarter (at least one of them must be a poem) which address a common theme.  For example, you might pick two works that are in some way about death, love, sex, wealth, loss, peace, work, sacrifice, gender, race, art, or any other theme.  Once you’ve identified two works, demonstrate your thorough understanding of both by discussing the similarities and differences in the ways the works address their common theme.  Be sure to use specific examples from your chosen works to support your claims. 

Also, here is a list of poems which may appear on the exam:

The Lanyard
Mid-Term Break
Hands
The Red Wheelbarrow
In a Station of the Metro
To His Coy Mistress
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
The Nymph's Reply
Flags Vex a Dying Face
Ode to a Grecian Urn
We Are Seven
Dulce et Decorum Est
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Fog
Chicago
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Second Coming
The Race
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Autumn Comes to Martin's Ferry, Ohio
The Bean Eaters
We Real Cool
The Road Not Taken
The Darkling Thrush
The Colonel

In general, the poems we spent more class time on will be the ones emphasized most on the exam.

Upcoming readings

2/28
Ode on a Grecian Urn
We Are Seven
Flags Vex a Dying Face (p. 992)
The Second Coming (p. 1026)
Dulce et Decorum Est (p. 989)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (p. 1018)
To an army wife, in Sardis (p. 1016)

3/2
Chicago (p. 674)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (p. 168)


3/7
These are some relatively newer poems.  They're all fairly straightforward, so spend a bit of time with them.  We will likely have our final quiz on these poems.  Also, let me suggest once more that you re-read "Prufrock" now that we've discussed it in class.  You should get a lot more out of an additional reading.

The Race by Sharon Olds
The Bean Eaters by Gwendolyn Brooks
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers by Adrienne Rich
Autumn Comes to Martin's Ferry, Ohio by James Wright

3/9
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
I may announce an additional reading or two during class on Monday the 7th.

Reading for Wednesday, 2/23

Hey Guys.  Sorry for the delay in posting this.  Here it is:

1. Please being printouts of the poems we've already discussed.  We may refer back to them.
2. "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound.  (below)
3. "The Red Wheelbarrow."  You should already have it.
4. "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"by Christopher Marlowe (p. 412)
5. "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" Sir Walter Raleigh (below)
6. William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXXXVIII (When my love swears...) (p. 413)
7. "To His Coy Mistress" (p. 416) This may be the most challenging of the bunch.  Do your best to understand who is speaking to whom and what the message is.

In a Station of the Metro

BY EZRA POUND

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
Sir Walter Raleigh

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten
In folly ripe, in season rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Readings for 2/21

1. "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins

2. "Hands" by Jean Sprackland

3. "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams

4. "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (in textbook)

The Lanyard - Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Hands--Jean Sprackland

She peels cod fillets off the slab,
dips them in batter, drops them
one by one into the storm of hot fat.
I watch her scrubbed hands,
elegant at the work,

and think of the hands of the midwife
stroking wet hair from my face as I sobbed and cursed,
calling me sweetheart and wheeling in more gas,
hauling out at last my slippery fish of a son.
He was all silence and milky blue. She took him away
and brought him back breathing,
wrapped in a white sheet. By then
I loved her like my own mother.

I stand here speechless in the steam and banter,
as she makes hospital corners of my hot paper parcel.

The Red Wheelbarrow

William Carlos Williams

---

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Essay Question for Exam II

Life is hard.  Humans face injuries, illnesses, deaths, racism, wars, sexism, poverty, injustice, and dozens of other obstacles to happiness which are beyond their control and cannot be entirely overcome.  In the fiction we've read, we see characters dealing with these obstacles in a variety of ways.  Pick a character from a story (not a play) and examine the way(s) he or she deals with a specific obstacle.  In a short (200-400 word) essay, discuss the character, the obstacle, and the pros and cons of the character's specific coping method.

Your essay should support its claims by using examples from the stories (as opposed to conventional wisdom).  Here's an example of a claim that would be hard to support: "Flem Snopes deals with economic hardship by manipulating and exploiting his friends, relatives, and fellow citizens.  This is a bad choice because friendships and personal relationships are important in life, and Flem's trickery is going to destroy these relationships and leave him unhappy."  The reason this claim doesn't work is the story suggests the opposite: Flem's fellow citizens (as represented by the narrator) revere and admire him at the end of the story.  Don't claim, then, that Flem is going to wind up lonely and miserable unless you support that claim by summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting specific parts of the story.

You have the option of writing this essay at home or in class.      

Schedule for Upcoming Classes

W 2/9:
Louise Erdrich: "The Red Convertible"
Ambrose Bierce: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Kate Chopin: "The Story of an Hour"

M 2/14:
Jonathan Franzen: "Agreeable" (This story is not in our anthology.  Please go here and print a copy."
Ernest Hemingway: "Hills Like White Elephants"
Raymond Carver: "Signals"

W 2/16
Fiction exam

M 2/21
Intro to poetry.  Readings will be announced.