Final Exam Review

Your final exam will have four sections. You will not be permitted to use notes during the exam. I will provide ample paper, but be sure to bring several working pens or pencils. Your exam begins at 8:00AM on Tuesday, May 26th in DCL 1310. You will have 90 minutes to complete the exam.

A. Identification passages (35 points – 5 IDs, 7 points each)
Prepare to identify the author, title, and speaker of the following passages, and to make two significant observations about each. An observation can comment on the importance of the passage in relation to the book as a whole, suggest how it connects to central themes and issues of the book, explain what it illustrates about a character or the a relationship between characters, or connect it to discussions we’ve had in class.

From The Importance of Being Earnest:

• P. 132 “I am glad to hear it … far too many idle men in London as it is.”
• P. 134-135 “The line is immaterial… a recognized position in good society.”
• P. 141 “Child, you know how anxious your guardian is … lays stress on your German when he is leaving for town.”
• P. 156 “You see, it is simply a very young girl’s record… quite ready for more.”
• P. 162 “Outside the family circle, papa, I am glad to say … It makes men so very attractive.”
• P. 187 “Unmarried! I do not deny… Mother, I forgive you.”

From Heart of Darkness:

• P. 193 “Good heavens! I was going to take charge of a two-penny-half-penny river steamboat… I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit.”
• P. 196 “I avoided a vast artificial hole … the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do.”
• P. 201 “He originated nothing… a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping.”
• P. 201 (very bottom) - 202 “They wandered here and there… waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.”
• P. 205 “I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz … that Kurtz who at the time I did not see – you understand.”
• P. 212 “The earth seemed unearthly … a meaning in it which you – so remote from the night of first ages – could comprehend.”
• P. 231 “He forgot that I hadn’t heard any of these splendid monologues on … Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks.”
• P. 237 “He was alone, and before him I did not know whether I stood on the ground … of phrases spoken in nightmares.”
• P. 246 “She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping … But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark – too dark altogether. . . .”

From Things Fall Apart:

• P. 13 “That was how Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman … One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.”
• P. 52-53 “Okonkwo was inwardly pleased … ten and one wives and not enough soup for his foo-foo.”
• P. 61-62 “Nwoye had heard that twins were put in earthenware pots and thrown away in the forest … It descended on him again, this feeling, when his father walked in, that night after killing Ikemefuna.”
• P. 67 “The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her messenger … A child’s fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm.”
• P. 108 “As she stood gazing at the circular darkness … She would die with her.”
• P. 112 “Okonkwo was also feeling tired, and sleepy, for although nobody else knew it, he had not slept at all last night … by then he had become gravely worried.”
• P 124-125 “As soon as the day broke … They were merely cleansing the land which Okonkwo had polluted with the blood of a clansman.”
• P. 134 “Why is Okonkwo with us today? This is not his clan … And yet we say Nneka – ‘Mother is supreme.’ Why is that?”
• P. 185 “There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him … The over-zealous converts who had smarted under Mr. Brown’s restraining hand now flourished in full favor.”
• P. 208-209 “The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading … He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.”

B. Vocabulary (20 points) Be prepared to demonstrate your understanding of the following words, both by defining in context (10 pts) and by matching words with definitions (10 pts).

From The Importance of Being Earnest: provincial (128), metaphysical (129), gorgon
(135), utilitarian (141), skepticism (174), insuperable (175), mercenary (179), ostentatious (180), heretical (183), capacious (185)

From Heart of Darkness: ascetic (185), august (186), lurid (187), erroneous (192),
lugubrious (194), inscrutable (200), entrails (201), rapacity (202), prevaricator (203), pate (213), incontinent (215), recondite (216), prodigious, wraith (223), jocose (230), hovel (231), tenebrous (233), aspiration (237), inexorable (238), infernal (239), abject (243)

From Things Fall Apart: plaintive (6), incipient (13), brusqueness (26), valediction (32),
arduous (34), harbinger (56), elusive (59), esoteric (88), sinister (104), incipient (106), tremulous (121), callow (147), zeal (179), desecrate (186).

C. Essay (25 points) I will include two of the following three essay questions on your exam, and you will choose one to answer. Your essay should have an overall argument, and at least three major points contributing to that argument supported by specific examples and evidence from the texts you discuss (you may use rough approximations of quotations and/or examples which are specific though not direct quotation). You need not include a fully developed intro and conclusion, but be sure to state your overall argument at the beginning and possibly again at the end of your essay.

1. Compare The Importance of Being Earnest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. What do these two comedies have in common, and in what ways are they different? What generalizations about comedy can you make based on a comparison of these two plays, if any? If you feel the plays present two such different sets of issues and characteristics that no generalizations can be drawn, what might this tell us about the genre of comedy and its potential range?

2. Compare Frankenstein and Heart of Darkness in terms of their perspective on human nature and human culture. Which is more at fault in the tragedy/chaos depicted in each novel, human nature or the values and institutions of human culture? Can you draw any connections between the two books, particularly in relation to the primary obsessions of their central character (in the case of Frankenstein) or characters (in the case of Heart of Darkness)?

3. Compare Things Fall Apart and Oedipus Rex. To what extent are the cultures represented in each text alike and different? Consider especially the role of the hero, people’s relationships to the gods, the importance of community, the place of ritual, and the different roles of men and women in each culture. Does this comparison shed any new perspectives on either of these texts, or any of the other texts, stories, or poems we’ve read this year?

D. Dialogue (20 points) Be prepared to write a brief dialogue between specific characters from two different texts we’ve read this year. Two of the following pairs of characters will appear on the exam, and you’ll be asked to write a dialogue between one of the pairs: 1. Oedipus and Okonkwo, 2. Col. Pickering and Marlow, 2. Emma Woodhouse and Eliza Doolittle, or 3. any one of the four lovers from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and any one of the Four Lovers from The Importance of Being Earnest. Through this dialogue, demonstrate something significant you’ve learned about both of the texts, and shed light on potentially interesting connections (and/or meaningful distinctions) between them. Include in particular how each character might represent his or her culture to the other character, and indicate whether the characters sympathize with and like each other, or not. Make each of the characters consistent with what we see of them in their text of origin. Avoid cliché. Be creative. Length guideline: no more than a single page. I’m looking for quality of insight, not quantity of words.