Answer Key
English 11 Honors
FINAL EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
HELPFUL TIPS:
• Read everything on the final exam. Read ALL instructions, introductions, captions, footnotes, etc.
• Review all literary devices. Be sure you can come up with your own example for each. Also, be
sure you can recognize literary devices when you see them.
• Know the meaning of basic question words, such as: infer, assume, illustrate, assertion,
antecedent, excerpt, rhetorical question, restrictive, implication, and conclude.
• When you se the word EXCEPT in a question, it usually means that there are multiple right
answers and you are to choose the incorrect answer.
Section 1: Passage Analysis
In this section, you will be required to read a passage from a novel you have read this semester. You
will also be required to read and compare themes in an essay and a poem you haven’t read. After
each piece, there will be multiple-choice questions that ask you to analyze the readings.
Section 2: Literary Terms
For this section you should know and be able to identify the following terms:
1. Allegory- a story which can be understood on two levels. Common characters stand for
something larger than themselves, leading to a second deeper meaning.
2. Aside- a comment in a play made to either the audience or another character. There are
other characters on the stage during an aside, but only the audience or a specific character
can hear the comment. It usually helps explain the plot, treachery, or character motivation.
3. Connotation- the feelings associated with a word. Ex: pungent; people usually associate
this word with a bad smell, when really it just means a strong smell.
4. Denotation- the dictionary definition of a word
5. Denouement- the resolution of a play or novel. This is the point in the plot where all loose
ends are tied up and conflicts are resolved.
6. Dialect- when an author writes something exactly as it would be said. Usually this will
involve incorrect grammar and accents. This was used heavily with Tess’ parents in Hardy’s
novel.
7. Epic- a extended narrative about the feats of a hero. It usually involves superhuman
triumphs. Beowulf was an epic.
8. Epic Hero-the central figure in an epic. This hero usually is the ultimate symbol of his
culture or race.
9. Simile- a comparison of unlike things using like or as
10. Metaphor- a comparison of unlike things without the use of like or as. Usually one thing
will become another
11. Character Foil- These are two character is similar or parallel situations in a novel. They
often reveal characteristics about the other. Examples: Hamlet and Laertes, Jack and Ralph
12. Hyperbole- a exaggeration, usually used for effect in poetry
13. Motif- a theme or symbol that is repeated throughout a novel to add to the author’s
meaning
14. Pun- a language trick in which a word can have double meanings. This was used repeatedly
in Hamlet. Think about the scene with Polonius and Hamlet, where Hamlet is making fun
of him and Polonius does not even realize it.
15. Satire- a humorous tale that demeans a subject to bring about change.
16. Soliloquy- a long speec h given by a character in a play alone on stage. Hamlet’s “To b e or
not to be” is an example
17. Symbol- an object that stands for something larger than itself
18. Tone- the overally feeling of a work created throught the authors use of specific words and
images
19. Tragic Hero- a character with a fatal flaw that eventually leads to his or her downfall. See
Aristotle tragic hero sheet.
20. Irony- When the opposite of what is expected happens. There are several types: Dramatic,
verbal, situational
Section 3: The literature of England
Be sure to know the essential questions that we’ve gone over and which elements are identified in
each piece we have read. Also, be able to identify the main literary periods.
For this section all the answers are on the power point on my ZUMU page. If the computer asks
you for a password, just click cancel.
Rightful King:
Class System:
Imperialism:
Evolution of Language:
Anglo-Saxon:
Middle Ages:
Renaissance:
Romanticism:
The Victorian Age:
Modernism:
Section 4: Critical Essay
In this section you will read a critique by another author on a work you have read this semester. You
will then be required to answer multiple choice questions based on the passage.
Section 5: Structural Analysis
On this section of the final exam, you will be asked to read excerpts from works that you have read
throughout the course. You will then answer multiple choice questions about author’s purpose,
word choice, diction and syntax.
Essay Section
It will be worth 20% of the final exam. This will be a timed response using the first best draft format.
Correct answers are highlighted
Excerpt from Huxley’s Brave new World chapter 1.
A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words,
CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the
World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the
summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin
light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some
pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and
bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The
overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured
rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the
microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the
polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the
work tables.
"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."
Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director
of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence,
the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop
of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather
abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which,
whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's
mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made a point
of personally conducting his new students round the various departments.
"Just to give you a general idea," he would explain to them. For of course some sort
of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently–though as
little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For
particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are
intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors
compose the backbone of society.
"To-morrow," he would add, smiling at them with a slightly menacing geniality,
"you'll be settling down to serious work. You won't have time for generalities.
Meanwhile …"
Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse's mouth into the notebook.
The boys scribbled like mad.
Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the room. He had a long
chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his
full, floridly curved lips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was hard to say. And
anyhow the question didn't arise; in this year of stability, A. F. 632, it didn't occur to
you to ask it.
"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D.H.C. and the more zealous students
recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the beginning. "These," he waved
his hand, "are the incubators." And opening an insulated door he showed them racks
upon racks of numbered test-tubes. "The week's supply of ova. Kept," he explained,
"at blood heat; whereas the male gametes," and here he opened another door, "they
have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes." Rams
wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs.
Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils scurried illegibly
across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilizing process; spoke first, of
course, of its surgical introduction–"the operation undergone voluntarily for the good
of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months'
salary"; continued with some account of the technique for preserving the excised
ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a consideration of optimum
temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to the liquor in which the detached and
ripened eggs were kept; and, leading his charges to the work tables, actually showed
them how this liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out drop by
drop onto the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggs which it
contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porous
receptacle; how (and he now took them to watch the operation) this receptacle was
immersed in a warm bouillon containing free-swimming spermatozoa–at a minimum
concentration of one hundred thousand per cubic centimetre, he insisted; and how,
after ten minutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor and its contents reexamined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, it was again immersed,
and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilized ova went back to the incubators;
where the Alphas and Betas remained until definitely bottled; while the Gammas,
Deltas and Epsilons were brought out again, after only thirty-six hours, to undergo
Bokanovsky's Process.
"Bokanovsky's Process," repeated the Director, and the students underlined the
words in their little notebooks.
One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will
proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a
perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six
human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.
Multiple Choice Questions:
1. The second paragraph contain all of the following except
a. Simile
b. Personification
c. Parallelism
d. Metaphor
e. Imagery
2. In the sentence “Not philosophy but fretsawyers and stamp
collectors compose the backbone of society,” the word
“fretsawyers” most likely means
a. Loggers
b. Professors
c. Bookbinders
d. Artists
e.
3. “One
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Dictionary writers
egg, one embryo, one adult—normality,” is an example of
Humor
Satire
Metaphor
Allusion
Hyperbole
4. “Begin a the beginning,” is an example of (a/an)
a. Antithesis
b. Simile
c. Alliteration
d. Anastrophe
e. Antecedent
5. According to the director, Bokanovskification is a good thing
because it
a. Creates intelligent humans
b. Eliminates the need of providing a source food
c. Eliminates the unpredictability inherent in natural
fertilization
d. Promotes a sense of family
e. Lacks the stability that is hallmark of the World State
6. In the second paragraph (beginning “The enormous room”) the
room could best be described as
a. Organized and productive
b. Shining and sterile
c. Scientific and creative
d. Lifeless and cold
e. Luscious and intriguing
7. The demeanor of the students is one of
I.
Awe of the Director
II.
Intimidation due to the setting
III. Nervous eagerness
a. II only
8. In the sixth paragraph (beginning “ ‘Tomorrow,’ he would add”),
the words “Menacing geniality” are an example of
a. Oxymoron
b. Parallelism
c. Metaphor
d. Double entendre
e. Reversal
9. From the passage, the reader can infer all of the following about
the society except that
a. It is highly organized and efficient
b. It is more interested in productivity than in intellectual
pursuits
c. It is focused on the good of the whole more than on the
good of the individual
d. It is scientifically advanced in the areas of medicine and
reproduction
e. It is totally dispensed with generalities in favor of
particulars
10.
In the paragraph beginning “Still leaning against,” the
comment about the voluntary operation reveals that
a. People in this world will voluntarily do what is good for
society
b. All operations are done for the good of individuals
c. People probably consent to the operation for money rather
than for the good of society
d. The operation is very popular and profitable for the state
e. The state must perform the operation to increase the
population
Wuthering Heights was the only novel Emily Brontë ever published, and both it
and the book of poetry she published with her sisters were printed under the pen name,
Ellis Bell, a name which Emily chose because she was afraid works published under a
woman's name would not be taken seriously. Emily Brontë died shortly after her book
was published and just prior to her thirtieth birthday, but her single novel remains one of
the classics of English literature. Wuthering Heights is a complex novel, and critics have
approached it from many different standpoints. Feminist critics have examined the strong
female characters and their oppression by and resistance to violent men. Marxist critics
have pointed to the class differences that set in motion the primary conflicts of Wuthering
Heights, and psychoanalytic critics have analyzed the dreams that fill the book. While all
of these approaches are useful and valid, Wuthering Heights is, above all, a book of
repeating cycles and recurring patterns, and perhaps the simplest way to begin an
examination of this book is by tracing the course and resolution of some of these patterns.
When Lockwood spends the night at the Heights, he finds the window ledge
covered with "a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small—Catherine
Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine
Linton." Indeed, the repetition and variation of these four names, Catherine, Earnshaw,
Heathcliff, and Linton, fills the book just as the writing fills the window ledge. The
original Catherine begins life as Catherine Earnshaw. In what Terry Eagleton in Case
Studies In Contemporary Criticism: Wuthering Heights calls "a crucial act of selfbetrayal and bad faith," she rejects the opportunity to become Catherine Heathcliff and
instead becomes Catherine Linton. She then gives birth to another Catherine Linton, who
enters the world only hours before her mother leaves it, and this second Catherine first
marries Linton Heathcliff, becoming Catherine Heathcliff, and finally, at the end of the
book, becomes engaged to Hareton Earnshaw. The cycle of names thus comes full circle
as this final marriage will give the second Catherine the original name of the first.
At the same time, Catherine's marriage with Hareton completes another cycle—
the union of souls for which the reader has longed. The second Catherine is in many ways
a reincarnation of her mother. Though she is softened by the characteristics which she has
inherited from her father, she has "the Earnshaw's handsome, dark eyes" and, as Nelly
states, she has the same "capacity for intense attachments" as her mother. Similarly,
Hareton is a gentler version of his oppressor and foster father, Heathcliff. Though
Heathcliff does his best to make Hareton a tool of his revenge against the first Catherine's
brother Hindley Earnshaw, he succeeds instead in creating a reproduction of himself. He
reveals his own knowledge of this strange turn of events when he tells Nelly, "Hareton
[seems] a personification of my youth … the ghost of my immortal love, of my wild
endeavours to hold my right, my degradation, my pride, my happiness, and my anguish."
Thus, even more than the reunion of Catherine's and Heathcliff's ghosts, the union of
their spiritual descendants gives the reader the impression that a great wrong has finally
been set right.
In addition to being later versions of Heathcliff and the first Catherine, Hareton
and the second Catherine are the last in a long line of orphans and outcasts. In an article
in American Imago Philip K. Wion has observed that the absence of mothers in
Wuthering Heights has a profound effect on the identities of the orphaned children, and
certainly the book is full of orphaned and abandoned characters seeking fulfillment
through union with others. Heathcliff, of course, is a foundling taken in by Mr. Earnshaw,
and after the old man's death Hindley makes him an outcast. The first Catherine, also
orphaned by Earnshaw's death, becomes still more isolated after Heathcliff's departure.
Heathcliff has been her one true companion, so much a part of herself that she tells Nelly,
"if all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and, if all else
remained, and he were annihilated, the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger." The
loss of her soul mate thus leaves her alone in the world, and her death, likewise, orphans
him for a second time, leaving him "lonely, like the devil, and envious like him." The
next generation fares no better. Linton Heathcliff loses his mother and is raised by a
father who despises him; Hareton's mother dies shortly after his birth, and the death of his
alcoholic and abusive father leaves him penniless and at the mercy of Heathcliff.
Likewise, the second Catherine is born only hours before her mother's death, and the
death of her father leaves her "destitute of cash and friends." Once again, it is the
marriage of Hareton and Catherine that will bring this cycle of orphanhood to a close.
The housekeeper, Nelly, proudly tells the tenant Lockwood that they are both "in a
measure, [her] children," and the union of her two charges finally ends the progression of
lonely, isolated, orphaned individuals.
Heathcliff's death and the second Catherine's gaining control of the property also
bring to an end the series of tyrannical men who rule the Heights with violence and
curses. The first Mr. Earnshaw is easily vexed, and "suspected slights of his authority
nearly [throw] him into fits." Hindley, Mr. Earnshaw's successor, is still worse. He
threatens to "demolish the first who puts [him] out of temper," and his abuse of Heathcliff
is "enough to make a fiend of a saint." Heathcliff, in his turn, does turn out to be a fiend,
and deserves the term "Devil daddy" with which young Hareton christens him. He takes
pleasure in inflicting on Hindley's son the same abuse which Hindley had given
Heathcliff because he wants to see "if one tree won't grow as crooked as another, with the
same wind to twist it," and he values his own son only because he wants "the triumph of
seeing [his] descendent fairly lord of their estates; [his] child hiring their children, to till
their father's lands for wages." Thus, even Heathcliff's plot to reverse past patterns by
making his child lord of the Earnshaws and Lintons, only results in the reestablishment of
an old pattern. Heathcliff, the former victim of tyranny, becomes yet another tyrannical
man ruling Wuthering Heights. This cycle is only broken when, after Heathcliff's death,
the property is granted to the second Catherine, the first woman in the book to own her
own property. Her marriage to Hareton will, of course, make her property his, but it
seems unlikely that his "honest, warm, intelligent nature" will allow him to become a
tyrant like his predecessors. The pattern of violent men ruling the Heights, like so many
other patterns in the book, ends with the death of Heathcliff and the marriage of the
second Catherine and Hareton.
1. What is the author’s main purpose in this essay?
a. To comment on the strangeness of the female novel
b. To expose Heathcliff as a tyrant
c. To provide and overview of different critical approaches to Wuthering Heights
d. To analyze cycles and patterns in the novel
2. The absence of mothers in Wuthering Heights, according to Phillip K. Wion, could have
which of the following possible effects?
a. Inheritance of property
b. Marriage between Catherine and Edgar
c. The development of a strong female character
d. The foreshadowing of death
3. Paragraph 3 (lines 27-40) of the essay showcases which elements of quote incorporation?
a. Proper citation for reference in MLA format
b. Paraphrasing to help keep Bronte’s originally intended message
c. Skillfully included quotes in Woodford’s own words
d. Woodford restates the quote after it is included
4. One possible critique of Woodford’s essay would be:
a. The author does not include enough evidence
b. The opening sentences do not relate to the thesis
c. The topic sentences do not match the paragraphs
d. The essay provides too much plot summary
5. In the opening sentence of paragraph 2 (lines 14-17), why are the names of the various
Catherines italicized?
a. Lockwood is reading the names to himself
b. Lockwood is citing the title of books on the window ledge
c. Woodford is drawing attention to the names
d. Lockwood believes that the three names are actually the same person
6. In paragraph 4, after a series of long sentences Woodford includes the sentence, “The
next generation fares no better” (lines53-54). What effect does Woodford create by
incorporating this simple sentence?
a. Woodford wants the reader to pause for emphasis
b. Woodford is attempting to transition to a new, related topic
c. Woodford is trying to quicken the pace of the reading
d. Woodford is repeating herself to reflect the goal of her thesis statement
Literary Criticism
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Revisited
The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth. However elegant and memorable,
brevity can never, in the nature of things, do justice to all the facts of a complex situation.
On such a theme one can be brief only by omission and simplification. Omission and simplification help us to understand -- but help us, in many cases, to understand the wrong
thing; for our comprehension may be only of the abbreviator's neatly formulated notions,
not of the vast, ramifying reality from which these notions have been so arbitrarily
abstracted.
But life is short and information endless: nobody has time for everything. In practice
we are generally forced to choose between an unduly brief exposition and no exposition at
all. Abbreviation is a necessary evil and the abbreviator's business is to make the best of a
job which, though intrinsically bad, is still better than nothing. He must learn to simplify, but
not to the point of falsification. He must learn to concentrate upon the essentials of a
situation, but without ignoring too many of reality's qualifying side issues. In this way he
may be able to tell, not indeed the whole truth (for the whole truth about almost any
important subject is incompatible with brevity), but considerably more than the dangerous
quarter-truths and half-truths which have always been the current coin of thought.
Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World Revisited in 1958. His purpose was to reexamine some
of the issues he had introduced in the novel. The following is an excerpt from the first chapter; in
it, Huxley discusses a dystopian novel that followed on the heels of his own.
From Chapter 1: Overpopulation
Twenty-seven years later, in this third quarter of the twentieth century A.D., and long before the end of
the first century A.F., I feel a good deal less optimistic than I did when I was writing Brave New World. The
prophecies made in 1931 are coming true much sooner than I thought they would. The blessed interval
between too little order and the nightmare of too much has not begun and shows no sign of beginning. In the
West, it is true, individual men and women still enjoy a large measure of freedom. But even in those countries that have a tradition of democratic government, this freedom and even the desire for this freedom
seem to be on the wane. In the rest of the world freedom for individuals has already gone, or is manifestly
about to go. The nightmare of total organization, which I had situated in the seventh century After Ford, has
emerged from the safe, remote future and is now awaiting us, just around the next corner.
George Orwell's 1984 was a magnified projection into the future of a present that contained Stalinism
and an immediate past that had witnessed the flowering of Nazism. Brave New World was written before the
rise of Hitler to supreme power in Germany and when the Russian tyrant had not yet got into his stride. In
1931 systematic terrorism was not the obsessive contemporary fact which it had become in 1948, and the future dictatorship of my imaginary world was a good deal less brutal than the future dictatorship so brilliantly
portrayed by Orwell. In the context of 1948, 1984 seemed dreadfully convincing. But tyrants, after all, are
mortal and circumstances change. Recent developments in Russia and recent advances in science and
technology have robbed Orwell's book of some of its gruesome verisimilitude. A nuclear war will, of course,
make nonsense of everybody's predictions. But, assuming for the moment that the Great Powers can
somehow refrain from destroying us, we can say that it now looks as though the odds were more in favor of
something like Brave New World than of something like 1984.
In the light of what we have recently learned about animal behavior in general, and human behavior in
particular, it has become clear that control through the punishment of undesirable behavior is less effective,
in the long run, than control through the reinforcement of desirable behavior by rewards, and that
government through terror works on the whole less well than government through the non-violent manipulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of individual men, women and children. Punishment temporarily puts a stop to undesirable behavior, but does not permanently reduce the victim's tendency to indulge in it. Moreover, the psycho-physical by-products of punishment may be just as undesirable as
the behavior for which an individual has been punished. Psychotherapy is largely concerned with the debilitating or anti-social consequences of past punishments.
The society described in 1984 is a society controlled almost exclusively by punishment and the fear of
punishment. In the imaginary world of my own fable, punishment is infrequent and generally mild. The nearly
perfect control exercised by the government is achieved by systematic reinforcement of desirable behavior,
by many kinds of nearly non-violent manipulation, both physical and psychological, and by genetic
standardization. Babies in bottles and the centralized control of reproduction are not perhaps impossible; but
it is quite clear that for a long time to come we shall remain a viviparous species breeding at random. For
practical purposes genetic standardization may be ruled out. Societies will continue to be controlled postnatally -- by punishment, as in the past, and to an ever increasing extent by the more effective methods of
reward and scientific manipulation.
In Russia the old-fashioned, 1984-style dictatorship of Stalin has begun to give way to a more up-to-date
form of tyranny. In the upper levels of the Soviets' hierarchical society the reinforcement of desirable behavior has begun to replace the older methods of control through the punishment of undesirable behavior.
Engineers and scientists, teachers and administrators, are handsomely paid for good work and so moderately
taxed that they are under a constant incentive to do better and so be more highly rewarded. In certain areas
they are at liberty to think and do more or less what they like. Punishment awaits them only when they stray
beyond their prescribed limits into the realms of ideology and politics. It is because they have been granted a
measure of professional freedom that Russian teachers, scientists and technicians have achieved such
remarkable successes. Those who live near the base of the Soviet pyramid enjoy none of the privileges
accorded to the lucky or specially gifted minority. Their wages are meager and they pay, in the form of high
prices, a disproportionately large share of the taxes. The area in which they can do as they please is
extremely restricted, and their rulers control them more by punishment and the threat of punishment than
through non-violent manipulation or the reinforcement of desirable behavior by reward. The Soviet system
combines elements of 1984 with elements that are prophetic of what went on among the higher castes in
Brave New World.
Meanwhile impersonal forces over which we have almost no control seem to be pushing us all in the
direction of the Brave New Worldian nightmare; and this impersonal pushing is being consciously accelerated
by representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of the masses. The techniques of manipulation will be discussed in later chapters. For the moment let us confine our attention to
those impersonal forces which are now making the world so extremely unsafe for democracy, so very inhospitable to individual freedom. What are these forces? And why has the nightmare, which I had projected
into the seventh century A.F., made so swift an advance in our direction? The answer to these questions
must begin where the life of even the most highly civilized society has its beginnings -- on the level of biology.
…
It is worth remarking that, in 1984, the members of the Party are compelled to conform to a sexual ethic
of more than Puritan severity. In Brave New World, on the other hand, all are permitted to indulge their sexual impulses without let or hindrance. The society described in Orwell's fable is a society permanently at war,
and the aim of its rulers is first, of course, to exercise power for its own delightful sake and, second, to keep
their subjects in that state of constant tension which a state of constant war demands of those who wage it.
By crusading against sexuality the bosses are able to maintain the required tension in their followers and at
the same time can satisfy their lust for power in a most gratifying way. The society described in Brave New
World is a world-state, in which war has been eliminated and where the first aim of the rulers is at all costs to
keep their subjects from making trouble. This they achieve by (among other methods) legalizing a degree of
sexual freedom (made possible by the abolition of the family) that practically guarantees the Brave New
Worlders against any form of destructive (or creative) emotional tension. In 1984 the lust for power is
satisfied by inflicting pain; in Brave New World, by inflicting a hardly less humiliating pleasure.
Questions for Brave New World Revisited
1. How does Huxley contrast the world situations that influenced Brave New World and 1984?
BNW is written before the rise of Stalin and Hitler. Totalitarian government turns out to be
more brutal than envisioned in BNW as reflected in 1984.
2. What does Huxley mean by the sentence which begins “Recent developments in Russia…” (lines
24-26)
The actual developments of the things in 1984 make 1984 seem blown out of proportion.
3. What aspect of Brave New World does Huxley believe has been proven accurate by recent
science and history?
Punishment of undesirable behavior is not as effective as encouraging positive.
4. How does the society in 1984 differ in this respect?
Society is controlled by punishment and fear.
5. According to Huxley, how has Russia (then the Soviet Union) changed to reflect this new
knowledge about behavior?
They pay more and tax less (the upper class) when they do good work.
6. In the sentence beginning in line page 2 line 17, Huxley states, “The Soviet system combines
elements of 1984 with elements that are prophetic of what went on among the higher castes in
Brave New World.” Considering what you know about the latter society, what elements must
be present in 1984?
Punishment to straying from the norm.
7. How are the sexual ethics in 1984 different from those in Brave New World? Why are they
different?
In 1984 sex is strictly controlled to keep the society in a constant state of tension which war
demands, whereas in BNW sexual freedom is encouraged to keep society in a state of bliss so they
don’t cause trouble.
Brave New World Structural Analysis Quotes
Directions: Read each of the following quotes carefully, focusing particularly on syntax and
diction, then answer the questions below.
“After the scene in the Fertilizing Room, all upper caste London was wild to see this delicious
creature who had fallen on his knees before the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning—or
rather ex-Director, for the poor man had resigned immediately afterwards and never set foot
inside the Centre again—had flopped down and called him (the joke was almost too good to be
true!) ‘my father.’” (153)
1. What is the main verb of this sentence?
a. see
b. Fallen
c. Resigned
d. Flopped
e. None of the above
2. Why is the phrase beginning “or rather ex-director” set off by dashes?
a. It’s as aside
b. To avoid a run on sentence
c. It shows a contradiction
d. It is a predicate nominative
e. It is an essential clause
3. Why does Huxley choose to use the word “delicious” to describe the savage?
a. To emphasize the appeal of the situation
b. To emphasize the director’s reaction
c. To emphasize the greed nature of the Brave New Worldians
d. To make the comparison of the savage being consumed
e. To present irony
“And long evenings by the fire or, in summertime, on the roof of the little house when she told
him those stories about the Other Place, whose memory, as of a heaven, a paradise of goodness
and loveliness, he still kept whole and intact, undefiled by contact with the reality of this real
London, these actual civilized men and women.” (201)
4.
The work “undefiled” in the quotation most nearly means
a. Not categorized
b. Removed from a category one was placed in
c. Not effected or warped
d. To be made proper and pure
e. To be organized
5. The main verb in the sentence is
a. Told
b. Kept
c. Contact
d. Of
e. undefiled
6. Huxley uses a form of repetition in which he restates a phrase. An example of this is
a. “The Other Place”
b. “on the roof”
c. “actual civilized men and women”
d. “Undefiled by contact with reality”
7. Huxley’s comment “these actual civilized men and women” is an example of
a. Satire
b. Metaphor
c. Parallelism
d. Pun
e. All of the above
“‘Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the
overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability.
And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the
picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt.
Happiness is never grand.’” (221)
8.
This quotations dominant literary device is
a. Satire
b. Parallelism
c. Irony
d. Antithesis
e. None of the above
9. In the quotation the best synonym for “picturesqueness” is
a. Romance
b. Idealness
c. Pragmatisms
d. Grandiose
e. All of the above
10. The best paraphrase of the quote above is
a. Happiness is the root of all evil
b. Happiness is never as good as it seems
c. Happiness is really not happiness, but causes the fall of society
d. Man doesn’t really know what he wants
e. None of the above
Practice Lit terms Questions- Answers
1. Soliloquy
Claudius: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; words
without thoughts never to heaven go.”
2. Hyperbole
“So let us melt, and make no noise, no tear-floods, nor sigh—
tempests move.”
3. Epic
Beowulf, Odyssey, Iliad, The Lord of the Rings
4. Tone
“On that bleak hill top the earth was hard with black frost, and
the air made me shiver through every limb.”
5. Dialect
“ ‘What are ye for?’ he shouted. ‘T’ maister’s dahn I’ t’fowld.
Goa rahund bt th’ end ut’ laith, if yah went tuh spake tull him.’”
6. Simile
“And the Champak’s odours fail like sweet thoughts in a dream;”
7. Foil
Heathcliff and Edgar, Hamlet and Laertes
8. Motif
The Moors in Wuthering Heights
9. Symbol
The gold, the old man, and the tree in “The Pardoner’s Tale”
Excalibur in “Day of Destiny”
10. Irony
Hamlet’s inability to kill Claudius because he is praying
11. Epic Hero
Beowulf, Frodo Bagins, Odysseus, King Arthur
12. Pun
Rosencrantz: “—over my step over my head body!—I tell you
it’s all stopping to death, it’s boding to a depth, stepping to a
head, it’s all heading to a dead stop—“
13. Denouement
Hamlet uses his dying words to pronounce Fortinbras the heir to
the throne of Denmark
14. Antithesis
“To thine own self be true”
15. Tragic Hero
Hamlet and John , and Heathcliff
16. Aside
Hamlet enters backwards, talking, followed by Polonius, upstage
Hamlet: “…for you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am if like
a crab you could go backward.”
Polonius: “though this be madness, yet there is method in it.”
17. Denotation
Cool- temperature
18 . Connotation
Cool- one who is hip and with it
19. Metaphor
“degrading her [Lenina] to so much mutton”
20. Allegory
“The Pardoner’s Tale” Lord of the Flies, Brave New World
21. Satire
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead