Directions

1. You only have to answer one of the following essay questions. You may prepare it before hand by thinking about ideas, organization and evidence. No notes or books may be brought to the test other than what is contained on the back and margins of these pieces of paper.

2. For any of these questions you need to use at least six to eight of the works we have read in the course, listed on the Core List. At least half of these should be novels or plays. You may use more if you wish. (If you only cover five works, it will drop your grade on the essay a full letter grade.)

3. If you write a chunky (nearly one-page long) paragraph on each of your works, plus some kind of intro, your average essay will be 5-8 pages long, handwritten. Don’t bother to skip lines.

4. Remember to keep your essay as specific as possible. Use the space on the back of these pages to list specific details such as character's names, even short quotes that you will want to use in the essay. Remember to "load every rift with ore": that is, don’t write wasted sentences; make sure there is some concrete image or event or reference to the text in every sentence you write.

5. You are not allowed to do your essay on the same topic and/or set of works as you wrote about for your paper.  The final essay must be a NEW way of seeing, organizing a major theme in the course.

1. A number of the works we’ve read this semester have been somewhat critical of Christianity, suggesting that it needs to be revised or reformed. What seems to be wrong with Christianity according to various authors? What parts of traditional religion are still viable? What suggestions do authors make for changing religion?
 
 

2. The battle between the sexes has been a key element in several works we’ve read. What kinds of symbolic oppositions are ascribed to gender by different authors? What qualities, values, and images are men associated with? What qualities, values, and images are women associated with? Are genders demonized and/ or glorified? What characters cross these gender lines? What happens to them? Are there significant difference between how male and female writers portray gender?

love version: Can Carson McCullers' definition of the NATURE OF LOVE be applied to the view of love in works we've read this semester?    Do these works also see love in terms of the lover and the beloved? Do any of these works have a fundamentally different definition of the nature of love?
 
 

3. How have the works we have read this semester enacted the structure of the hero’s quest as defined by Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye. Frye has said that "all literature is the story of the loss and regaining of identity." Is this statement true for the works we have read this semester? Can you see them as quests -- journeys in search of identity? Compare and contrast the pattern of the journey towards selfhood in at least 6 of the works we have read.

Loss of Innocence:  Blake and the Romantics contrasted innocence and experience-- the world of experience is the world of sin and death Adam and Eve fell into anad we are stuck in.  How do the works we read this semester portray innocence and the loss of innocence?  What causes "the fall" in  works we've read?
 

4. The Other -- the ones who are different from us in gender, in race, in species, in beliefs -- is a central theme in many of the works we’ve read in this course. Who is "the Other" in various works we’ve read? What do authors critique about our typical treatment of the Other? How do they think we should behave towards Others?

5. Almost all the works we have read present an opposition between MATERIALISTIC/ MECHANICAL images and images of more humane or spiritual values. Explore this dichotomy in at least six works , showing how materialism and mechanism are associated with discontinuity and describing the similarities and differences in the authors’ attitudes towards the possibility of something -- love, work -- helping to create and sustain different kinds of continuity and community.
 
 

6. In many of the works we have read we have seen characters who are SELF-DIVIDED or somehow crippled mentally or physically. Compare and contrast the nature, causes, and effects of this crippling in a half dozen characters.

How do alcohol and drugs tie into this self-divison and crippling?
 
 

7. A number of the works we have read question the viability of the myth of the HEROIC MALE -- macho man, the archetypal jock, hunter, soldier -- asking whether this image of how a man "should be" is really very healthy. Using specific incidents and quotations from several works compare and contrast how several authors feel about this myth.
 
 

8. Compare and contrast the views of WOMANHOOD we’ve seen in our reading. What are the most prominent stereotypes these authors present about women? What are the good and bad kinds of women? Do women authors portray women differently from male authors? Do you see any change over time?
 
 

9. The epistemological issue of WHAT IS REALITY? is raised in several of the works we have read which question how real certain characters’ perception of reality are. How true or false is these characters’ vision? Why do they see things the way they do? Is there an absolute boundary line between truth and illusion for various authors?
 
 

10. There has been a good deal of outcry lately about the decline of traditional family values. How healthy is the contemporary family in the works we have read? What causes problems in the structure of the family? What cultural myths about families are critiqued? What do authors see as wrong with the family and what kinds of suggestions do they make, if any, for reforming it?

11. Since most of the literature we have read this semester has been American, the theme of "America"  -- what it means to be an American, of whether the country is living up to its best self -- is approached in many of the works we've read.  What is the different visions of America?  What are the common hopes for the country?  Where do the various authors think America has failed or is in danger of failing?