English 102 Final Exam Example

This is a take-home exam, so I have higher expectations. Along with the validity and completeness of your answer, I will be grading your grammar as I do on your essay assignments. Answer all four questions. I expect no less than THREE substantial but concise paragraphs for each answer. Quotes with page citations are encouraged, but no Works Cited page is required.

ALL WORKS DISCUSSED MUST BE ON THE SYLLABUS AFTER THE MIDTERM POINT.

Each question is worth up to 10 POINTS. I do give partial credit.

According to Aristotles Poetics, a play should follow three unities: UNITY OF ACTION (one main action with few or no subplots), UNITY OF PLACE (limited to one physical space), and UNITY OF TIME (cover no more than a 24-hour period). Also, according to the formula of the 19th-century WELL-MADE PLAY, a play should occur in real time, with no chronological leaps.

Discuss the strategies by which Susan Glaspells Trifles meets the credentials for THE UNITIES OF ACTION, TIME, AND PLACE and THE WELL-MADE PLAY, as well as how those strategies contribute to the plot and to the theme.

Susan Glaspell Trifles

Unit of Action

According to (Kennedy) unity of action requires that all subplots if any always build the main plot. Trifles follow the unity of action because it concentrates on the acts of Mrs.Wright. The County Attorney and Sherriff are at Mrs. Wright farmhouse kitchen to find out clues of what may have ensued between her and her husband. The acts of Mrs. Lucy become the main focus of the play. Trifles lack major sub-plots that run parallel to the main storyline. All other events that take place are focused on Mrs. Wright actions. The other men in the room are hurling insults at Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. Hence the play shows the unity of action.

Unity of Time

The main plot of trifles also manages to adhere to the unity of time. The murder of Mr. Wright and the investigation conducted by the County Attorney and Sheriff also takes place within the same day of Mr. Wright murder. The three gentlemen stand in Mrs. Wright kitchen along with two other ladies and the conversations that occur in trying to solve the murder all happen within 24 hrs.

Compare how ONE play and ONE poem differently address the discrepancy between traditional IDEALISM and modern DISILLUSIONMENT.

Discrepancies between idealism and disillusionment

In the play Trifles by Glaspell Trifles, County Attorney and the County Sherriff both pursue what they term ideal. They stick to the traditional ideals of justice. The ideals that everyone deserves justice regardless of what they might have done. The ideals of County Attorney reflect the traditional idealism where every murder must be investigated. There, however, exists discrepancy in the play because of the disillusionment of the two ladies. The two ladies are convinced that their actions are justified. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters were able to showcase the disillusionment of Mrs. Wright who happened to have killed her not so loving husband. This contradicts their earlier actions of the idealism of trying to protect Mrs. Wright by hiding the canary from the County Attorney.

T.S Eliots Poem,The Waste Land. Takes a look at the events that followed World War 2 in Europe. The poem points out the idealism that preceded the War where it was an honorable thing to serve one's country. It also goes ahead to depict the disillusionment that followed the war where the majority of the generation had died and were referred to as the lost generation. The idealism that preceded the War now seemed misplaced. From the discrepancies between idealism and disillusionment occur where the same thing that was earlier considered ideal before the war is considered disillusionment after the occurrence of the war.

Notice how the tragedies of William Shakespeare are all named for a single person (except, obviously, Romeo and Juliet, who get treated as a couple), with the broader social commentary centering upon that character as either a victim or a tragic hero. The full title of the Shakespeare play covered in class is Othello, the Moor of Venice. How does that very title address problems pertaining to postcolonialism? Furthermore, how is Chinua Achebes Michael Obi a similarly tragic character?

Othello, The Moore of Venice touches on the issue of colonization by talking about race and ethnicity. Somehow racism and colonization are the same things. Analyzing the poem, one gets to understand that as much as decolonisation occurred it left the notions of races and ethnicity within peoples minds. Hence the poem addresses the problems about post-colonisation through the issue of racism. Prospero as the colonizer always insisted on controlling the sexuality of his subjects something that left subjects with the behaviors of people in captivity long after the departure of Prospero.

Chinua Achebes No Longer at Ease also talks about Obi who moves over to the city in search of a better life. Through Obi, the reader sees the effects of post-colonialism, specifically Nigeria and how it left the people devastated with insufficient resources. Post-Colonialism points towards a country stripped of its resources, its people displaced and they have few job opportunities. The Novel shows how Post-Colonialism as a difficult time for those present because they are trying to adapt the customs of pre-colonial Nigeria after spending decades under colonial custom which were very different from those of pre-colonial Nigeria.

Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wall-Paper is an essential example of the so-called female Gothic. How so? Also, compare its female-Gothic credentials to those demonstrated by another work covered in class.

The Yellow Wallpaper is an example of female gothic because of its focus on the isolation of the narrator whose mental status deteriorates because of her fascination with a wallpaper located in her bedroom. The manner in which the narrator describes the setting of the room warrants it to be considered gothic. Although the house is not initially gothic because it is a converted nursery, she describes how the room and the wallpaper come together to display images and patterns that show some suicidal concepts.

The gothic credentials are also similar to other works through her husband. Her husband is the one who chose the room for her. The shapes the ends up seeing in the yellow wallpaper is only visible to her and her alone. Something that leads her to put the blame on her husband. When she asks to be moved to a different room her husband decline making her wonder the part he might be playing in her demise. The story gives the husband the figure of a dominant figure who forces his females into solitude and taking pleasure in their demise. The husband was however not taking any pleasure when he laughed on the wallpaper other than the ridiculousness of his wifes accusations.

Poetry is a great way to try to express the inexpressibleor at least the complicated. Yusef Komunyakaa expresses a complicatedly sad and dark bundle of emotion and social commentary through his lyrical transformation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial into a kind of Gothic object. Explain, focusing on imagery and word choice. (In doing so, be sure to keep his identitythat of an African-American Vietnam veteranin mind.)

In the first sentence the black face is an imagery showing the first image of a soldier. It is what can be seen by people and when the face is hidden it is difficult for a person to make sense out of themselves.

Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night and Wallace Stevens The Emperor of Ice-Cream each address death differently, and both betray what might be expected. Explain, focusing on imagery and word choice.

Good night in this case depicts the unconscious nature that come a long with death. The emperor.

What makes the title character of Katherine Anne Porters The Jilting of Granny Weatherall unreliable as a narrator? Also, considering how the story plays with the uncertainty of individual perception and subjective experience, how is it similar to Louise Bogans poem, Medusa?

The character does not follow the experiences of Katherine Anne Porter as she herself is not in the shoes of the character. The story is similar tp Bogans Poem Medussa since they are both motivational.

Edgar Allan Poes Annabel Lee and William Butler Yeats Leda and the Swan both use Romantic language and imagery to ironically disillusioning (even upsetting) effect. Explain. In their works you find romans and irony mixed. In his work a murderer finds that despite all his attempts at a cover-up. At this point his victim is heard.

How is Flannery OConnors A Good Man Is Hard to Find an example of the Southern Gothic? In particular, consider what the grandmother and the Misfit each represent.

The grandmother is static is a dynamic individual while Bailey is seen as a static person.

Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? has been called suburban Gothic. Why? Also, how does Oates clearly take a page from Nathaniel Hawthornes book when it comes to using ambiguity (such as in Young Goodman Brown, for example)? The southern Ontario gothic applies follows then cultural content of sensibility to the Canadian cultural context in relation to the character Young Goodman Brown.

Work Cited

Gioia, Dana. Literature: an introduction to fiction, poetry. And drama. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. 2017.

Pye, Christopher. " To throw out our eyes for brave Othello": Shakespeare and Aesthetic Ideology." Shakespeare Quarterly 60.4 (2009): 425-447.

Ben-Zvi, Linda. "Murder, She Wrote": The Genesis of Susan Glaspell's" Trifles." Theatre Journal 44.2 (1992): 141-162.