ACCELERATED AMERICAN LITERATURE
First Semester Final Exam Review
Answers to the final exam questions will be graded on your ability to use clear and specific examples to support your
thoughts. You must also demonstrate your ability to clearly begin, support, and conclude each paragraph of your answer and
also organize your complete answer in a similar fashion.
On the day before the exam, bring, or post in the “O-Drive” in ONE DOCUMENT, quotes or selections from the authors’
and/or poets’ literature you would like to use to help support your answers. Each selection must have a properly written
works cited entry. You will be able to access these selections on the day of the final exam. In at least two of your answers,
you must demonstrate that you know how to correctly use a quote and parenthetical citations.
For the exam, I will choose a selection of questions from the following list. You will be required to answer four of the
selected questions. Plan to budget your time; you will have approximately 20 minutes per question.
1. Discuss the origins and characteristics of the earliest American literature.
2. Discuss characteristics of Puritan writing, and demonstrate your knowledge of these characteristics by featuring at least
two writers and their works to support your answer.
3. What views and characteristics did the American Realists and the American Romantics have? How are the American
Realists and the American Romantics different?
4. How did American Romanticism evolve?
5. Discuss the Dark Romantics, also known as the Anti-Transcendentalists, and provide examples from their literature to
support your answers.
6. Why is the period of 1840 to 1860 referred to as the American Renaissance?
7. Define transcendentalism and list views of the transcendentalists. Provide examples from their writings to support your
definition.
8. The “Declaration of Independence” and Patrick Henry’s “Speech in the Virginia Convention” are both powerful
arguments for American independence. In what ways are the two arguments similar? In what ways are they different?
9. Choose one of the following poets, and discuss his or her style and the impact his or her work has had on American
Literature: Phyllis Wheatley, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell.
10. Respond to Whitman’s or to Dickinson’s poetry by writing a letter to him or to her in which you express your personal
reactions to his or to her poetry. Choose one or more of their poems that we discussed, and specifically identify and
discuss literary techniques that are characteristic of the poet. Also address the following questions: What was your
initial reaction to the poetry and to any criticisms you read. How did the poetry affect you emotionally? Did you find
it difficult to understand? If so, why? Did you find that the poetry helped you to understand yourself in any way?
11. Discuss the characteristics of Jim from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and how or if he qualifies as a heroic
figure.
12. Discuss the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a realistic portrayal of American racism before and after the Civil War.
13. We briefly explored the writing of several American realist authors: Charles W. Chesnutt in “The Wife of His Youth,”
Jack London in “Love of Life,” Hamlin Garlind in “Under the Lion’s Paw,” Willa Cather in “Neighbor Rosicky,” and
O. Henry in “The Last Leaf.” What techniques did these authors use to create these very realistic stories? When
looking at the evolution of American literature, address the development of these techniques. In other words, how is
the writing of these authors different and similar to that of the Native Americans, the Puritans, the Transcendentalists,
etc.? In your answer, also address the work of at least one of these realist authors we discussed in the last week of
class.