Study Guide for Exam 2
Exam 2 will be held in our usual classroom on the date listed on the syllabus.
The second exam will cover work completed in the second half of the course; there will not be identification questions on earlier works. However, if you want to discuss characters from earlier novels in your essay, you should feel free to do so.
Your class notes will be the best guide to preparing for this exam.
I. Format. The second examination will resemble the first one in format. It will be designed to take no more than 75 minutes although you can have the full 2 hours.
Exam 2 will consist of three parts:
- one section of multiple-choice questions
- one section of either identification questions or short passagea for close reading
- one essay question from a choice of two or three questions.
II. Works Covered (You should know title, author and the significance of scenes and events). Items marked with an asterisk * were not discussed extensively in class, so while you can use them in writing your essays, there will not be specific questions about them on the exam.
- Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
- Chesnutt, "The Goophered Grapevine"
- Jewett, "A White Heron"
- Shelley, "Ozymandias"
- Coleridge, "Kubla Khan"
- Mary Seacole, from The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands
- Kipling, "The White Man's Burden"
- Hubert Harrison, "The Black Man's Burden"
- Kipling, "The Man Who Would Be King"
- Kate Chopin, The Awakening
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (including the preface)
- Doyle, "A Scandal in Bohemia"
- Wharton, "The Eyes"
- Orientalism (see Edward Said in course pack)
- Imperialism
- Aestheticism
- Decadence
- Regionalism and Plantation Fiction
- Gothic (from earlier part of the course)
- Material from reports (Sherlock Holmes, Kipling, etc.)
- Materials from lectures and class discussions
IV. Potential Essay Questions. Your class notes and the discussion questions will be your best guides to potential essay questions.
Essay questions may ask you the following:
1. To compare and contrast
- A specific aspect or character of the two works.
- Compare Dorian Gray and Edna Pontellier as characters. How do their attempts to live as free individuals affect their lives? Do their journeys of self-discovery end in self-destruction?
- Compare Louisa Gradgrind (Bounderby) with Edna Pontellier. In what ways are they similar? What do they seek? In what ways are their choices constrained by their gender and culture?
- Compare The Picture of Dorian Gray with "The Eyes." How does each present such themes as corruption, art, beauty, homosexuality, and vampirism?
- Compare Roxy and Edna Pontellier as women who take control over their own lives.
- Two characters in the same work:
- Compare and contrast Mlle. Reisz and Madame Ratignolle as foils for Edna Pontellier.
- Themes or ideas in the works.
- How does the idea of the double self (or the hidden self) inform nineteenth-century works we've read this semester, such as The Picture of Dorian Gray or The Awakening?
- How do the concepts of Hebraism and Hellenism affect the values promoted in The Awakening or The Picture of Dorian Gray?
- Technique or style
2. To analyze a passage through close reading as it relates to the work as a whole
3. To address a larger theme or idea as it relates to the work.
- In what way do any two works read this semester, such as "The Man Who Would Be King,"The Adventures of Mary Seacole in Many Lands, or "A White Heron," address the issue of colonialism and imperialism? Do they defend or critique this idea?
- Pudd'nhead Wilson and "The Man Who Would Be King" can be read both as racist texts and as texts that denounce racism. Discuss.
- Characters of color such as Jim, Billy Fish, Julius McAdoo, and the silent, unnamed mixed-race servant in The Awakening serve an important function in the works in which they appear. In what ways does racism constrain or shape the ways in which they speak in the work? What tactics do they use to empower themselves and make their wishes heard in a dominant white culture?
4. To analyze a particular pattern of imagery or symbolism in a work. Example:
- Examine the symbolism of water (the sea, the river, and so on) in The Awakening and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
- What is the role of nature in "The Goophered Grapevine"?
- Why is Freemasonry important in "The Man Who Would Be King"?
- Examine the symbolism of music, art, painting, and books in The Awakening and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
- What is the role of acting and disguise in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Picture of Dorian Gray?
- To respond to a critic’s statement about the work.
- To apply a concept to a specific work. Examples:
- We started this semester with the creation of a human being assembled from parts (Frankenstein) by an ambitious scientist. We ended it with a human being dismembered into parts after an artist/aesthete had determined that he must be destroyed (The Picture of Dorian Gray). How do these two works provide "bookends" or contrasting perspectives on human beings and human bodies in the nineteenth century? On ideas of art and science?
- In what way is The Picture of Dorian Gray and its preface (or The Awakening) an attempt to dismantle 19th-century theories of romanticism as seen in Wordsworth and Coleridge? In what ways is this novel an example of a romanticism gone badly wrong or a romanticism in decay? Think about issues of individualism, identity, sexuality, and nature when you answer this question.
- Compare "Ozymandias" and "Kubla Khan" in light of Said's theories of Orientalism.
- Would you call The Awakening (or The Picture of Dorian Gray) a naturalistic novel, a Decadent novel, or an Aesthetic novel? Define your terms and defend your answer.
- In what ways does knowledge of a region--a characteristic of regionalism--allow characters to outwit or outmaneuver an outsider? Or this: In what ways do some regionalist texts, such as "A White Heron" and "The Goophered Grapevine," allow protagonists marginalized by race or gender to outmaneuver representatives from the dominant culture? How does their superior knowledge of place and region outweigh their position as members of a subordinate group?
- In what way do the West and the conventions of the Western genre shape identity in "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"?
