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UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Summer Examinations 2015
US Writing and Culture, 1780-1920 – Finalists
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Time allowed: 2 hours
SEEN Examination Paper
There are TWO sections to this paper. You must answer BOTH sections.
Read carefully the instructions on the answer book and make sure that the
particulars required are entered on each answer book.
Do not substantially repeat material from assessed essays or substantially use the
same author for both parts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Section A: Write a critical analysis of ONE of the following passages, discussing the
language, themes and contexts. In your answer you may relate the passage to no
more than TWO other works by authors covered in the module, but be sure to focus
mainly on the passage of your choice.
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"And promise me, dear father, that Tom shall have his freedom as soon as"—she
stopped, and said, in a hesitating tone—"I am gone!"
"Yes, dear, I will do anything in the world,—anything you could ask me to."
"Dear papa," said the child, laying her burning cheek against his, "how I wish we
could go together!"
"Where, dearest?" said St. Clare.
"To our Saviour's home; it's so sweet and peaceful there—it is all so loving there!"
The child spoke unconsciously, as of a place where she had often been. "Don't you
want to go, papa?" she said.
St. Clare drew her closer to him, but was silent.
"You will come to me," said the child, speaking in a voice of calm certainty which
she often used unconsciously.
"I shall come after you. I shall not forget you."
The shadows of the solemn evening closed round them deeper and deeper, as St.
Clare sat silently holding the little frail form to his bosom. He saw no more the deep
eyes, but the voice came over him as a spirit voice, and, as in a sort of judgment
vision, his whole past life rose in a moment before his eyes: his mother's prayers and
hymns; his own early yearnings and aspirings for good; and, between them and this
hour, years of worldliness and scepticism, and what man calls respectable living. We
can think much, very much, in a moment. St. Clare saw and felt many things, but
spoke nothing; and, as it grew darker, he took his child to her bed-room; and, when
she was prepared for rest, he sent away the attendants, and rocked her in his arms,
and sung to her till she was asleep.”
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
Continued
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There is something in the Negro which, in a peculiar way, fits him for avocations
about one's person. Most Negroes are natural valets and hair-dressers; taking to the
comb and brush congenially as to the castanets, and flourishing them apparently
with almost equal satisfaction. There is, too, a smooth tact about them in this
employment, with a marvellous, noiseless, gliding briskness, not ungraceful in its
way, singularly pleasing to behold, and still more so to be the manipulated subject
of. And above all is the great gift of good humour. Not the mere grin or laugh is here
meant. Those were unsuitable. But a certain easy cheerfulness, harmonious in every
glance and gesture; as though God had set the whole Negro to some pleasant tune.
When to all this is added the docility arising from the unaspiring contentment of a
limited mind, and that susceptibility of blind attachment sometimes inhering in
indisputable inferiors, one readily perceives why those hypochondriacs, Johnson and
Byron- it may be something like the hypochondriac, Benito Cereno- took to their
hearts, almost to the exclusion of the entire white race, their serving men, the
Negroes, Barber and Fletcher. But if there be that in the Negro which exempts him
from the inflicted sourness of the morbid or cynical mind, how, in his most
prepossessing aspects, must he appear to a benevolent one? When at ease with
respect to exterior things, Captain Delano's nature was not only benign, but
familiarly and humorously so. At home, he had often taken rare satisfaction in sitting
in his door, watching some free man of colour at his work or play. If on a voyage he
chanced to have a black sailor, invariably he was on chatty, and half-gamesome
terms with him. In fact, like most men of a good, blithe heart, Captain Delano took to
Negroes, not philanthropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundland
dogs.
Benito Cereno, Herman Melville
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I talked to them of our want of manhood, if we submitted to our enslavement
without at least one noble effort to be free. We met often, and consulted frequently,
and told our hopes and fears, recounted the difficulties, real and imagined, which we
should be called on to meet. At times we were almost disposed to give up, and try to
content ourselves with our wretched lot; at others, we were firm and unbending in
our determination to go. Whenever we suggested any plan, there was shrinking--the
odds were fearful. Our path was beset with the greatest obstacles; and if we
succeeded in gaining the end of it, our right to be free was yet questionable--we
were yet liable to be returned to bondage. We could see no spot, this side of the
ocean, where we could be free. We knew nothing about Canada. Our knowledge of
the north did not extend farther than New York; and to go there, and be forever
harassed with the frightful liability of being returned to slavery--with the certainty of
being treated tenfold worse than before--the thought was truly a horrible one, and
one which it was not easy to overcome. The case sometimes stood thus: At every
gate through which we were to pass, we saw a watchman --at every ferry a guard—
Continued
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on every bridge a sentinel-- and in every wood a patrol. We were hemmed in upon
every side. Here were the difficulties, real or imagined--the good to be sought, and
the evil to be shunned. On the one hand, there stood slavery, a stern reality, glaring
frightfully upon us,--its robes already crimsoned with the blood of millions, and even
now feasting itself greedily upon our own flesh. On the other hand, away back in the
dim distance, under the flickering light of the north star, behind some craggy hill or
snow-covered mountain, stood a doubtful freedom--half frozen--beckoning us to
come and share its hospitality. This in itself was sometimes enough to stagger us; but
when we permitted ourselves to survey the road, we were frequently appalled.
Upon either side we saw grim death, assuming the most horrid shapes. Now it was
starvation, causing us to eat our own flesh;--now we were contending with the
waves, and were drowned; --now we were overtaken, and torn to pieces by the
fangs of the terrible bloodhound. We were stung by scorpions, chased by wild
beasts, bitten by snakes, and finally, after having nearly reached the desired spot,-after swimming rivers, encountering wild beasts, sleeping in the woods, suffering
hunger and nakedness,--we were overtaken by our pursuers, and, in our resistance,
we were shot dead upon the spot! I say, this picture sometimes appalled us, and
made us
“rather bear those ills we had,
Than fly to others, that we knew not of.”
In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry,
when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful liberty at most,
and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless
bondage.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglas
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The deck beside the forward winch was warm and briny damp. They were sprawled
side by side in greasy denims talking drowsily in whispers, their ears full of the
seethe of broken water as the bow shoved bluntly through the long grassgray swells
of the Gulf Stream.
"J’te dis mon vieux, moi j'fou I'camp a New York.... The minute we tie up I go ashore
and I stay ashore. I'm through with this dog's life." The cabinboy had fair hair and an
oval pink-and-cream face; a dead cigarette butt fell from between his lips as he
spoke. "Merde!" He reached for it as it rolled down the deck. It escaped his hand and
bounced into the scuppers.
"Let it go. I've got plenty," said the other boy who lay on his belly kicking a pair of
dirty feet up into the hazy sunlight. "The consul will just have you shipped back."
"He wont catch me."
"And your military service?"
"To hell with it. And with France too for that matter."
"You want to make yourself an American citizen?"
"Why not? A man has a right to choose his country."
The other rubbed his nose meditatively with his fist and then let his breath out in a
long whistle. "Emile you're a wise guy," he said.
Continued
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"But Congo, why dont you come too? You dont want to shovel crap in a stinking
ship's galley all your life."
Congo rolled himself round and sat up crosslegged, scratching his head that was
thick with kinky black hair.
"Say how much does a woman cost in New York?"
"I dunno, expensive I guess.... I'm not going ashore to raise hell; I'm going to get a
good job and work. Cant you think of nothing but women?"
"What's the use? Why not?" said Congo and settled himself flat on the deck again,
burying his dark sootsmudged face in his crossed arms.
"I want to get somewhere in the world, that's what I mean. Europe's rotten and
stinking. In America a fellow can get ahead. Birth dont matter, education dont
matter. It's all getting ahead."
"And if there was a nice passionate little woman right here now where the deck's
warm, you wouldn't like to love her up?"
"After we're rich, we'll have plenty, plenty of everything."
Manhattan Transfer, John Dos Passos
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SECTION B: Answer ONE of the following questions. Your answer should be based on
a discussion of TWO or THREE texts on the module. Do not attempt to cover more
than three texts at length.
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Consider the significance of the frontier, defined either through land or sea,
as a space for transforming and/or extending existing power relations during
the 19th-century.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Using one example from each genre, compare how two different genres offer
a “solution” to one of the problems facing 19th-and early 20th-century
America.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How do different authors use the supernatural novel, and to what ends, in
the 19th-century novel?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Analyse the dynamic of commodity fetishism whereby things become
animated, and people take on the character of things, in 19th-century US
writing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How are questions of gender inflected by the language of race or class in
texts studied on the module?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Discuss the significance of the formal innovations (i.e. nonlinearity, use of a
‘camera eye,’ fragmentation) in the three modernist novels.
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