ENGLISH IV Fall Semester Exam Review/Amyett
SECTION I
Total exam time—approx. 1 hour, 20 min.
(Suggested time for this section—40 minutes. This question will counts as one-half of the total
semester exam score.)
Below is an example of the type of question you will be given for this section. It would
benefit you to explicate one of the example poems and write a practice essay response
incorporating a literary theory and the use of poetic devices in relation to the speaker’s
complex attitude toward desire (Marxist criticism, feminist criticism, reader-response
criticism, or psychoanalytical criticism would work especially well with either poem).
Note: You should incorporate the SIFT strategy for analyzing literature that we utilized earlier
this semester (Green SIFT bookmarkers may be utilized during the exam). You should also
review and study the poetic devices we utilized in SB Unit 1 with the explication of Sylvia
Plath’s poem, Mushrooms.
In the following poems by Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) and Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), the
speaker addresses the subject of desire.
Read the poem carefully.
Then write a well-developed essay in which you read the poem through the lens of (your
choice) one literary theory in order to analyze how poetic devices help to convey the
speaker’s complex attitude toward desire.
Thou Blind Man’s Mark by Sir Philip Sidney
Thou blind man’s mark,1 thou fool’s self-chosen snare,
Fond fancy’s scum, and dregs of scattered thought;
Band of all evils, cradle of causeless care;
Thou web of will, whose end is never wrought;
5 Desire, desire! I have too dearly bought,
With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware;
Too long, too long, asleep thou hast me brought,
Who should my mind to higher things prepare.
But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought;
10 In vain thou madest me to vain things aspire;
In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire;
For virtue hath this better lesson taught—
Within myself to seek my only hire,2
Desiring naught but how to kill desire.
1 target
2 reward
Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Section 2
(Suggested time for this section—40 minutes. This question counts as one-half of the total
semester exam score.)
Carefully read the following excerpt from the play, Othello by William Shakespeare.
“Haply for I am black,
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have; or for I am declined
Into the vale of years—yet that’s not much—
She’s gone. I am abused, and my relief
Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapor of a dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others’ uses. Yet ’tis the plague of great ones;
Prerogatived are they less than the base.
’Tis destiny unshunnable, like death. (III.iii.267–279)
Then write a well-organized essay using one literary theory (your choice) in order to
analyze the development of Othello’s character. In your analysis, you may wish to consider
such literary elements as selection of diction and figurative language. *Pre-writing will help!