The Mid-Term Exam

Due to the number, length, and complexity of the texts we've read in the first section of the course, we have not had enough opportunities in class discussion to step back from individual works to a consideration of how they relate to each other. The mid-term exam is designed to promote such consideration, both in your preparation for the exam and during the exam itself. It tests your ability to recall, recognize, contextualize, analyze, and synthesize key moments and issues in the texts we've read thus far in the semester. It provides you with the opportunity to focus on the texts and problems that have interested you most in the semester; rather than identifying what you don't know, it is structured to give you a chance to show what you do know and have thought about.

The exam consists of three sections:

• Passage Identifications (roughly 10 minutes; worth roughly 10% of your grade): You will be asked to identify the author and title of a given short excerpt from several works that we've read to date. You will have to identify five out of ten passages, with partial credit (if you can't remember exact names, good descriptions will be rewarded) and bonus points (for additional identifications) awarded. Passages chosen for identification will be as obviously significant and distinctive as possible; there will be no "trick" passages.
• Interpretive Skills (roughly 30 minutes; worth roughly 40% of your grade): You will be asked to write two brief essays on a passage or passages that you've identified in the previous part of the exam. You may choose from the following three options: a) close reading (discuss what a passage means and how it means); b) relating part to whole (discuss how a passage contributes to the meaning of the work from which it comes); or c) comparison/contrast (identify a major theme of a given passage and compare/contrast the treatment of that theme in that and one other text).
• Interpretive Essay (roughly 40 minutes; worth roughly 50% of your grade): You will be asked to write a long essay in which you respond to one of several integrative questions by drawing on at least three texts from the first section of the course.

A precise virtual replica of the exam (minus the actual passages to be IDed of course; if I told you now, I'd have to kill you) follows.

EN 336: Mod. Am. Lit......................Mid-Term Exam ....................Fall 1998 (Simon)

NAME: ______________________________...........................DATE: _________

Part I: PASSAGE IDENTIFICATIONS (10 points; recommended time: 10 minutes)

Choose five (5) of the following ten (10) passages (see the list of passages at the end of this exam [not! at least, not now]) and identify both the author and title of each. You may identify the other five (5) passages for extra credit. Please fill out your answers in the space below.

List the IDs of the five (5) passages you're most confident you've identified correctly. Errors will be penalized for answers in this section; partial credit will be awarded.

PASSAGE NUMBER...............................AUTHOR.........................................TITLE
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

For extra credit, you may try to identify the author and title in the other passages. Errors will not be penalized for answers in this section; credit will be awarded only to exact identifications of author or title. Try for extra credit on Part I only AFTER completing Parts II and III.

PASSAGE NUMBER................................AUTHOR..................................TITLE
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.

PART II: INTERPRETIVE SKILLS (40 points; recommended time: 30 minutes)

Choose two (2) of the following three (3) skills on which to demonstrate your competence. Be sure to indicate clearly which two options you've chosen.

A. CLOSE READING. Choose one of the passages from Part I and do a brief close reading of it: write one to three paragraphs or an organized list of observations on its meaning and the means by which that meaning is disclosed.

B. PART/WHOLE. Choose one of the passages from Part I and briefly relate it to the work from which it comes: write one to three paragraphs or an organized list of observations on how it contributes to the meaning of the larger work.

C. COMPARE/CONTRAST. Choose one of the passages from Part I and briefly compare/contrast it to another work (preferably from this course): write one to three paragraphs or an organized list of observations on a theme/issue/problem that the passage addresses, noting similarities and differences between the treatment of it in the passage and the same theme/issue/problem's treatment in another work.

Extra credit will be awarded for choosing two (2) different passages as the focus of your two mini-essays/ordered lists.

PART III: INTERPRETIVE ESSAY (50 points; recommended time: 40 minutes)

Choose one (1) of the following options on which to write a short essay. Your task here is to let me understand your position. It is better to be reasonable (evidenced and persuasive and thoughtful) than "right" (to select an "answer"). You may even discover that your "answer" is your opening sentence and all the rest (the important stuff) is justification/explanation. You may assume I am familiar with the texts, so keep plot summary and other scene-setting devices to an absolute minimum. You may bring in a list, to be handed in with the test, that contains quotations you are confident you will use in answering the essay question you have chosen.

• 1. What seem to be the distinctive features of "modernist" literature? Just what is "modern" about the texts we've read thus far? Drawing on at least three texts from the first part of the course, explain the reasoning behind your answer to these questions. [In preparing for this question, looking up the many meanings of "modern" in the Oxford English Dictionary might help you organize your thoughts, as would reviewing the Heath Anthology's introduction that we read back in week 1.]
• 2. Is there only one way for a text to be truly "modern"? How would you distinguish between various kinds or versions or schools of "modern American literature"? How would you identify various American modernisms?
• 3. Modernism is often thought of as a literary movement that ruthlessly questions and disrupts fixed assumptions, formulaic conventions, empty pieties, and established hierarchies. But to what end(s)? What ideas or values or traditions do various modernist writers seem to take for granted or want to defend, revive, or invent? Your task in answering these questions is to compare and contrast what seems to be valued by at least three different writers from the first part of the course.
• 4. In what ways do modernist texts represent, respond to, or register the various social transformations taking place in the U.S. after the Civil War and before World War II (e.g., Reconstruction; segregation; industrialization; the rise of a consumerist, market economy; immigration; World War I; the Great Migration; Prohibition; urbanization; changing gender roles; the Great Depression. . .)? How do modernist writers represent and respond to events or issues in their own times? You may decide to choose one issue or event and relate it to works by several authors. Or you may decide to show how different writers take up different events. In either case, your goal should be to identify and comment on the techniques and strategies developed by modernist writers to engage their own present and recent past.
• 5. Compare and contrast the treatment of one of the following subjects in at least three of the writers whose works we have read thus far: class, race, gender, sexuality, or religion.
• 6. Since the texts we've been reading are considered "modern," many readers expect that they will relate fairly directly to our own times and lives. Yet the most recent of the texts we've read was written over 40 years ago, and the great majority were published over 70 years ago. Which texts from the first part of the course do you think are most relevant to our (post)modern society? Least? Why? Your task here is to come up with and defend a general statement about either how and in what ways "modern American literature" relates to our own times, or how and why it doesn't.

If you are dissatisfied with the options on Part III, you may pose and answer a question of your own, provided you justify/explain the significance of the question itself in your essay. You should be aware that taking this option means taking a significant risk. Your question must be one that requires you to draw together at least three different texts, take a position, and justify it.

Read all your answers over again before handing in your exam. Give yourself time to plan your approach to the exam. Time spent planning what you will write in Parts II and III is time well spent. In Part III in particular, it is better to be clear and relatively organized (with a beginning that states your claim and an end that sums it up) than to write a stream of consciousness modernist epic of an answer-although such an answer will count in a pinch. Try for extra credit on Part I only AFTER completing Parts II and III. Extra credit will also be awarded to those who excel in a given section, as well as those who consider a variety of texts in the exam as a whole. Relax, focus, and enjoy yourself.

* * *

These suggestions will be a little dated by now, when you're staring down the barrel of the exam, so to speak. Focus tonight on preparing your answer in detail to one of the essay questions from Part III. (I include the other advice on the page simply because I don't want to have to make it up again when I next teach this course.)

In reviewing for this exam, you should be looking for significant connections and contrasts between the texts that we've read in the first section of the course. Some possible thematic connections through which to consider contrasting authorial perspectives include the treatment of religion in Toomer, Cullen, Hughes, Brown, and Hemingway; the treatment of tradition or heritage in Eliot, Pound, Hughes, Cullen, and Hemingway; the treatment of dialect in Chesnutt, Dunbar, Stein, Hughes, Brown, and Hurston in light of Johnson's essay; the representation of women in Toomer, Stein, and Hemingway; the representation of men and masculinity in Eliot, Hemingway, Crane, and McKay; the treatment of heterosexual relationships in Toomer, Eliot, Stein, Hurston, and Hemingway; and the treatment of values/morality in Toomer, Pound, Stein, Hemingway, and McKay. You may suggest other possible connections on the listserv.

Another way to proceed while reviewing is to identify major issues or topics in an individual work, and, for each issue/topic, to consider one or more other works that also treat it. For instance, taking Jean Toomer's Cane as the central text, one might think about how the poem "Conversion" relates to Cullen's "Heritage" on the question of race and religion; how "Esther" and "Kabnis" relate to the treatment of religion and interracial tensions in Hughes's "Big Meeting"; how "Blood-Burning Moon" compares to Hurston's "The Gilded Six-Bits" on the question of heterosexual relationships and rivalries; or how "Theater" and "Box Seat" compare to Stein's "Melanctha" on class issues among African-American men and women. Again, you may use the listserv to identify other intertextual relations.

Your goal while reviewing should be not only to brainstorm possible avenues of comparison and contrast, but also to consider the meaning and significance of the similarities and differences among the works we've read this semester to date. This will prepare you for the latter two sections of the exam. I can't recommend highly enough that you study in groups and use the listserv to pass along ideas and approaches, particularly when it comes to brainstorming possible axes of comparison and how to go about doing the different types of tasks that the test requires. I will be reading the listserv and chiming in when necessary.

Each section is weighted only "roughly" for several reasons. First, I want some discretion in assigning your letter grade, in part to reward exceptional performance on a given section of the exam, and in part to reward treatment of a wide range of texts and topics in the exam as a whole. Second, although the structure of the exam is relatively fixed, the relative importance of each section is open to negotiation. You may note on your exam how much time you put into each section and how each section should be weighted. You may also raise issues about the structure and weighting of the exam on the listserv. Third, I am fine-tuning my own sense of the exam's purposes and goals, and thus may revise how I weight each section over the next week.

In both the Thursday and Tuesday classes before the exam, we will spend some time reviewing for the exam. We will focus on such issues as how to recognize a given author's literary "signature," how to produce a close reading, how to compare and contrast texts, how to use texts as evidence in making a larger argument, and how to manage time during the exam. I will also be available during office hours on both Wednesdays to meet with groups of students to discuss specific issues. By then my office computer should be hooked up to the campus network, so I can respond to issues raised on the listserv from there, as well [ah, the optimism of youth!].

Take advantage of the experience of writing a critical response essay and preparing for the exam to help integrate and reflect on the readings for the first section of the course. Good luck on the exam, and don't hesitate to raise any and all issues and questions you may have in the next week or so [or next few hours!].

EN 336: Modern American Literature, Fall 1998
Last modified: 10/14/98, 7:11 pm