English

English 2132, Mid-Term Exam

Dr. Fegley

Spring 2024

Due Date: March 11, 11:59 PM, via D2L

Part II. (30 pts.) Out-of-Class Essay. Write a fully developed (2-3 page) essay on one of the following topics. You are not required to use outside sources, but you may do so if you choose. If you do use outside sources, you must cite and document properly according to MLA style.

1) Discuss one of the works we have read by Chopin, Crane, or Wharton as an example of Realism, Naturalism, or Modernism.

2) Basing your judgment only on the works we have read thus far, which branch of human knowledge (from the “What Is Literature?” handout) has had the most impact upon the development of American literature? Discuss.

3) Is T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land a product of Ezra Pound’s call to “make it new”? Discuss.

4) Using one or more of the works we have read this semester, discuss how that work(s) reflects the final question of Robert Frost’s “The Oven Bird.”

5) What is the role of the Mississippi River in Mark Twain’s Huck Finn? Does it function on a level that is primarily Romantic (epic/myth/romance) or Realistic (novel)? Explain what “facts” limit its function on a mythic level.

Books we have read

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), from Huck Finn

Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat,” from War Is Kind

Kate Chopin, “The Storm”

Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,”

“Design,” “The Oven Bird”*