These are the questions that will be on the midterm, except only two of these three essays will be present for you to choose from.
Essay Questions
Choose one of the following two questions and write an insightful, cohesive essay in response to each. Be sure to have a clear thesis and support it with specific textual examples and careful analysis (64 points).
- Many of the novels and poems we’ve read exhibit a fractured or fragmented form, yet such disjuncture is not always used to the same effect. Compare and contrast the form of any two texts we’ve read, making an argument regarding the purpose such forms serve.
- All three of the prose works we’ve read exhibit a fascination with Catholicism. Examine at least two of these texts and make an argument about how Catholicism met some of the particular needs of post-war America.
- In “The Idea of Order at Key West,” Stevens concludes,
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds. (311)Compare Stevens’s view of language here—the maker’s rage to order words of the sea—with the view of language articulated in one of the prose works we’ve read.