Short Answer: Answer ELEVEN of the following short answer questions, for three points apiece (33% of the
exam.) WARNING! On this exam I will only count the FIRST ELEVEN you answer. Choose
carefully!
1) Name ONE thing which the metaphor of the mestiza (mixed) person represents in La Conciencia de la Mestiza.
2) Briefly describe one possible (and reasonable) significance for the use of Moloch in “Howl.”
3) In the poem “Living in Sin,” what change occurs from the earlier to the later version?
4) In “Sonny’s Blues,” briefly describe one reasonable possible significance for the author’s use of the Biblical reference to the
“cup of trembling” at the end of the story.
5) Name ONE of the “deep images” from “Lying in a Hammock on William Duffy’s Farm.”
6) In “Autumn Begins in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio,” why are the women compared to starved pullets?
7) Briefly characterize the images which appear throughout the early stanzas of “Skunk Hour.” What kind of images are they, or
what kind of feeling do they give?
8) In “White Tigers”, briefly describe what the speaker needs from the story of Fa Mu Lan.
9) In “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World,” briefly explain why the person goes from wanting the laundry to be forever
clean and unworn to feeling that it should be worn and dirtied.
10) In “Sand Creek,” what does the author say that the land would have done to/for the settlers if they had let it?
11) In “Daddy,” offer ONE reasonable speculation as to what Daddy has done that makes the speaker hate him so.
12) In “The Woman in the Ordinary,” name ONE of the metaphors used to describe that woman inside the nervous girl.
13) In “A World Without Objects Is a Sensible Emptiness,” what creatures represent the spirit?
14) In A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, what benefits does the author imply come from the four-way system of marriage?
15) Briefly explain what the title metaphor means in the essay “The Tools of the Master Will Never Dismantle the Master’s
House”
Identification. From the following quotations, choose eleven. For each, list 1) the work from which it was taken, 2) the name
of the author (last name is enough), 3) the general context or significance of the quote to the work--that is, what event might it
refer to, and/or what feelings does it express, and/or who said it, if a character was involved? Three points are possible for each
question answered (title, author, significance) for a total of 33% of the exam. On this exam I will only count the FIRST eleven
you answer. Choose carefully.
1) The second time I meant/To last it out and not come back at all./ I rocked shut//As a seashell./They had to call and
call/And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
2) And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside for us, hungry as a tiger, and that
trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
3) Beasts of my soul who long to drink/Of pure mirage, those prosperous islands are accurst/That shimmer on the
brink/Of absence...
4) The real writer is one who really writes. You have to like it better than being loved.
5) She had thought the studio would keep itself; / No dust upon the furniture of love.
6) in my dreams you walk dripping from a seajourney on the highway across America
in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night
7) I shade my eyes and look up. The bone beak of a hawk slowly circling over me, checking me out as potential
carrion. In its wake a little bird flickering its wings, swimming sporadically like a fish. In the distance the expressway
and the slough of traffic like an irritated sow. The sudden pull in my gut, la tierra, los aguacerros. My land.
8) A car radio bleats,/ 'Love, O careless Love . . . .' I hear my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,/ as if my hand were at its
throat . . . ./ I myself am hell,/ nobody's here-9) That dream/ shall have a name/ after all,/ and it will not be vengeful/ but wealthy with love/ and compassion/ and
knowledge. / And it will rise/ in this heart/ which is our America.
10) I have wasted my life.
11) . . . . the slow/ elegant being coming out of hiding and/ gleaming in the dark air, eager and so/ trusting you could
weep.
12) Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;/ Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,/ And the heaviest
nuns walk in a pure floating/ Of dark habits,/ keeping their difficult balance.
13) Now when I was naked I was a strange human being indeed—words carved on my back and the baby large in
front.
14) Time—her gown tossed like a continent at the creation.
15) Alone, part of nothing, no one. Udan was not my home. I had no home, no people. I had no future, no destiny,
any more than a bubble of foam or a whirlpool in a current has a destiny. It is and it isnt. Nothing more.
16) The glimmering creatures are full of lies. / They are eating each other. They are overfed.
17) The only houses for sale / are under the yellow sky./ You’ve been out of work for/ a year and they’re hiring /at the
plastics factory.
Essays. Select ONE of the following questions to answer in a brief essay, for the final 34% of the exam. Unless you do
this work in class, please type your essay. You may bring it by my office and drop it into the box on the front of my door
(or by the classroom where others are taking the objective sections ) when you are finished; turn it in NO LATER THAN
THE END OF YOUR CLASS’ ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FINAL EXAM.
1) We’ve looked at several branches (or tributaries” of the Postmodern now—Beats (Ginsberg) , Deep Image (Wright), sci-fi (Le
Guin), feminist (Rich and Anzaldua), multi-ethnic (Anzaldua). They all claim to be doing something different from the Moderns
(back before the midterm—Faulkner and Frost and cummings and H.D. and so on.) Take ONE of these “tributaries” and
argue that it is, OR is not, different from the basic endeavors of Modernism as you understand them, and explain why you
believe what you do. This may well involve a comparison between two specific texts, one modern and one postmodern.
2) Find a valid basis of comparison between two texts we have discussed this semester—texts which have something in
common—and explain what it is they have in common and what this similarity tells us about both texts. This may mean
that you read two texts in different categories for basic similarities which tell us something about the categories, or that you read
two apparently similar texts only to discover that they handle the same theme or genre totally differently, or some other approach
completely. This is open-ended, yes—but it’s meant to give you a chance to really do it your way, if you want to.
3) A Fisherman of the Inland Sea presents a planet, O, which could be viewed as a Utopia—that is, an imaginary society meant
to show how good things could be if we’d only let them. Explain why you do, or why you don’t, think that O is Utopian.
This discussion might involve some exploration of plausibility, whether people really could live like that; it should certainly
touch upon that interesting system of marriage and how believable you find the implication that reduced sexual repression and
more support of the family could lead to a world without wars and with a viable economic and ecological balance.
4) Analyze ONE of the poems we have read in terms of its form and style—meter, rhyme, tone, et cetera—and how that
form and style intensify its content.