SAMPLE EXAMINATION QUESTIONS
BBL 3201 - INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL APPRECIATION
SECTION A (10 marks)
Read this excerpt from “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen and answer the questions below.
I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.
‘I wish you would manage the time to come and talk with me about your daughter. I’m
sure you can help me understand her. She’s a youngster who need help and whom I’m deeply
interested in helping.’
‘Who needs help.’ … Even if I came, what good would it do? You think because I am her
mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived for nineteen
years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me.
And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total? I will start and
there will be an interruption and I will have to gather it all together again. Or I will become
engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been and what cannot be helped.
She was a beautiful baby. The first and only one of our five that was beautiful at birth.
You do not guess how new and uneasy her tenancy in her now-loveliness. You did not know her
all those years she was thought homely, or see her poring over her baby pictures, making me tell
her over and over how beautiful she had been – and would be, I would tell her – and was now, to
the seeing eye. But the seeing eyes were few or nonexistent. Including mine.
I nursed her. They feel that’s important nowadays. I nursed all the children, but with her,
with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, I did not like the books then said. Though her cries
battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with swollenness, I waited till the clock decreed.
Why do I put that first? I do not even know it matters, or if it explains anything.
She was a beautiful baby. She blew shining bubbles of sound. She loved motion, loved
light, loved colour and music and textures. She would lie on the floor in her blue overalls patting
the surface so hard in ecstasy her hands and feet would blur. She was a miracle to me, but when
she was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she
was no miracle at all, for I worked or looked for work and for Emily’s father who could no longer
endure’ (he wrote in his good-bye note) “sharing want with us”.
I was nineteen. It was the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression. I would start
running as soon as I got off the streetcar, running up the stairs, the place smelling sour, and
awake or asleep to startle awake, when she saw me she would break into a clogged weeping that
could not be comforted, a weeping I can hear yet.
-2-
After a while I found a job hashing at night so I could be with her days, and it was better.
But it came to where I had to bring her to his family and leave her.
It took a long time to raise the money for her fare back. Then she got chicken pox and I
had to wait longer. When she finally came, I hardly knew her, walking quick and nervous like her
father, looking like father, thin and dressed in a shoddy red that yellowed her skin and glared at
the pockmarks. All the baby loveliness was gone.
She was two. Old enough for nursery school they said, and I did not know then what I
know now – the fatigue of the long day, and the lacerations of group life in the kinds of nurseries
that are only parking places for children.
Except that it would have made no difference if I had known. It was the only place there
was. It was the only way we could be together, the only way I could hold a job.
1.
The plot in this story does not follow the usual sequence of time and
chronology.
i)
What is the literary device used in this story?
_________________________________________________________
ii)
Write down an expression in the extract that illustrates your answer
above.
__________________________________________________________
(2 marks)
2.
To whom do you think the mother is speaking?
__________________________________________________________
(1 mark)
3.
Sylvan Barnet (2002) said “the title of an essay generally‘ gives the
reader a clue, a small idea of the … essayist topic”. Explain how the title
above is significant to this story.
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
2
-3-
(2 marks)
4.
One feature of the Marxist Criticism is that it sees history primarily as a
struggle between socioeconomic classes, and it sees literature … as the
product of economic forces of the period” (Barnet & Cain : 112).
i)
Quote the phrase in the extract which shows the period in history
that is the setting for the above story.
__________________________________________________________
ii)
Give two examples found in the extract that aptly portray the
narrator as a ‘product of economic forces of the period.”
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
(3 marks)
5.
The story ends like this : “Let her be. So all that is in her will not
bloom…only help her to know – help make it so there is cause for her to
know – that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless
before the iron.”
Explain what you think the mother means when she says that Emily ‘is
more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.”
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
(2 marks)
3
-4-
SECTION B (10 Marks)
Read the poem below and answer ALL the questions that follow.
Ballad of Birmingham (1969)
(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)
Dudley Randall (1914 - )
“Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”
“No, baby, no you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren’t good for a little girl.”
“But, mother, I won’t be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children’s choir.”
She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know her child
Was in a sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,
But baby, where are you?”
4
-5-
1.
What is the difference between the mother’s and the daughter’s
attitudes?
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
(4 marks)
2.
What is the irony in this poem?
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
(3 marks)
3.
If you were to write a critical appreciation of this poem, which critical
approach would you use and why?
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
(3 marks)
5
-6-
SECTION C (10 Marks)
CHOOSE EITHER TEXT (d) OR TEXT (e) : Attempt a critical appreciation of
ONE of the two works of literature below.
TEXT (d)
Read the poem below and write a critical appreciation of about 250 - 300 words,
focusing on
i.
ii.
iii.
point of view
tone
message
The Man He Killed (1902)
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
“Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
“But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
“I shot him dead because –
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was:
That’s clear enough; although
“He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps,
Off-hand-like – just as I –
Was out of work – had sold his traps –
No other reason why.
“Yes, quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.”
6
-7-
Answer.
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
7
-8-
_________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
8
-9-
Text (e)
Barbie Doll was introduced in the USA in 1959 and at that time, there were
strict gender roles and culturally expected conformity to ideals. Read the short
passage and answer the questions that follow.
The short passage describes the importance of Barbie Dolls to even very poor
children. Write a short critical appreciation of about 250 – 300 words, with
special attention to the following :
1.
2.
3.
the symbolism
the portrayal of the American way of life
the message in the passage
Barbie-Q (1991)
Sandra Cisneros
Yours is the one with mean eyes and a ponytail. Striped swimsuit,
stilettos, sunglasses, and gold hoop earrings. Mine is the one with bubble hair.
Red swimsuit, stilettos, pearl earrings, and a wire stand. But that’s all we can
afford, besides one extra outfit apiece. Yours, ‘Red Flair,’ sophisticated A-line
coat dress with a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat, white gloves, handbag and heels
included. Mine, ‘Solo in the Spotlight’ evening elegance in black glitter strapless
gown with a puffy skirt at the bottom like a mermaid tail, formal length gloves,
pink chiffon scarf, and mike included. From so much dressing and undressing,
the black glitter wears off where her titties stick out. This and a dress invented
from an old sock where we cut holes here and here and here, the cuff rolled over
for the glamourous, fancy-free, off the shoulder look.
Every time the same story. Your Barbie is roommate with my Barbie, and
my Barbie’s boyfriend comes over and your Barbie steals him, okay? Kiss kiss
kiss. Then the two Barbies fight. You dumbbell! He’s mine. Oh no he’s not, you
stinky! Only Ken’s invisible, right? Because we don’t have money for a stupidlooking boy doll when we’d both rather ask for a new Barbie outfit next
Christmas. We have to make do with your mean-eyed Barbie and my
bubblehead Barbie and our one outfit apiece not including the sock dress.
Until next Sunday when we are walking through the flea market on
Maxwell Street and there! Lying on the street next to some tool bits, and platform
shoes with the heels all squashed, and a fluorescent green wicker wastebasket,
and aluminum foil, and hubcaps, and a pink shag rug, and windshield wiper
blades, and dusty mason jars, and a coffee can full of rusty nails. There!
Where? Two Mattel boxes. One with the “Career Gal” ensemble, snappy blackand-white business suit, three quarter length sleeve jacket with kick pleat skirt,
red sleeveless shell, gloves, pumps, and matching hat included. The other,
9
- 10 -
“Sweet Dreams”, dreamy pink-and-white plaid night gown and matching robe,
lace-trimmed slippers, hairbrush and hand mirror included. How much? Please,
please, please, please, please, until they say okay.
On the outside you and me skipping and humming but inside we are doing
loopity-loops and pirouetting. Until at the next vendor’s stand, next to boxed
pies, and bright orange toilet brushes, and rubber gloves, and wrench sets, and
bouquets of feather flowers, and glass towel racks, and steel wool, and Alvin and
Chipmunks records, there! And there! Bendable Legs Barbie with her new pageboy hairdo. Midge, Barbies’s best friend. Ken, Barbie’s boyfriend. Skipper,
Barbie’s new sister. Tutti and Todd, Barbie’s and Skipper’s tiny twin sister and
brother. Skipper’s friends, Scooter and Ricky. Alan, Ken’s buddy. And Francie,
Barbie’s MOD’ern cousin.
Everybody today selling toys, all of them damaged with water and smelling
of smoke. Because a big toy warehouse on Halsted Street burned down
yesterday – see there? – the smoke still rising and drifting across the Dan Ryan
Expressway. And now there is a big fire sale at Maxwell Street, today only.
So what if we didn’t get our new Bendable Legs Barbie and Midge and
Ken and Skipper and Tutti and Todd and Scooter and Ricky and Alan and
Francie in nice clean boxes and had to buy them on Maxwell Street, all water
soaked and sooty. So what if our Barbies smell like smoke when you hold them
up to your nose even after you wash and wash and wash them. And if the
prettiest doll, Barbie’s MOD’ern cousin Francie with real eyelashes, eyelash
brush included, has a left foot that’s melted a little – so? If you dress her in her
new ‘Prom Pinks’ outfit, satin splendour with matching coat, gold belt, clutch, and
hair bow included, so long as you don’t life her dress, right – who’s to know.
Answer.
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
10
- 11 -
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
END OF PAPER
11