Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University


 

2202235  Reading and Analysis for the Study of English Literature

 

Test 1 Discussion


This discussion of test 1 should be useful in reviewing for test 2 as well as the final since many of the evaluative methods are the same and common student problems are addressed.

 

General Comments:

  • Follow instructions. If the prompt asks you to discuss at least two works, don't discuss only one. If the prompt asks you to discuss the difference between two resolutions, don't focus on the beginning. If the prompt asks you to consider how "ways out" differ and you describe characters and what they say, you are off topic and not following directions. You're going to get fewer points than if you were on topic.
  • Have a clear point to make in each of your paragraphs, and in the essay as a whole.
  • Support your ideas with textual evidence.
  • Avoid plot summary. Order your discussion around your argument, not according to the the plot of the story. Mention only plot points that are necessary to your argument.
  • Proofread. Georg Wishington is not the first president of the United States, nor is Place theif a story by Etan Beeber.
  • Follow academic conventions in writing about literature and provide proper citations.

           

 

Prompt: (25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work.


 

Comments:

  • The prompt asks you to compare two resolutions to problems, one from each work you have chosen.
  • Good responses answer this prompt right away and demonstrate understanding of the works and critical and analytical thinking as well as effective writing. An essay with high marks
    • Within the first three sentences, 
      • Clearly identifies the trouble/problem that characterizes the two (or more) works chosen
      • Clearly and accurately indicates the work titles and authors being discussed
      • Clearly identifies how the trouble/problem is dealt with
    • Explains how the two answers to problems are different.
    • Explanation and discussion of the difference between each way of resolving the problem is fully and logically developed.
    • Analysis is not wordy or rambling, but stays focused on teasing out the differences between one way of dealing with the trouble and the other, and making sense of it in relation to the work as a whole.
    • Shows sensitivity to the works' diction, argument, logic flow, sentence structure, imagery, form, patterns, incongruities, and their effect on creating meaning.
    • Gives relevant and compelling evidence from the text of the works to illustrate and support its discussion and incorporates it smoothly into the prose of the essay.
    • Does not lapse into retelling the story, describing the story, giving a plot summary, or paraphrase.
    • Follows academic conventions in writing and citation.
    • Has very few or no grammatical mistakes.


Good Responses

Notice how good responses answer the prompt right away, identify the works involved, and establish the focus and direction of the discussion that will follow.


Student F:

 

(25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work. 
 

"Each unhappy person is unhappy in their own way." This is the problem for Simone that marks Beber's Misreadings. While that teenager is coping with a young person's desperate unhappiness in the play, an older person is struggling with a sticky and no less desperate spiritual anxiety that structures Milton's "Sonnet 19." Simone ends both her personal and academic problem with a single answer: suicide. Milton's speaker, on the other hand, wants to avoid being ended in darkness with "weeping and gnashing of teeth," so his solution is about enabling him to live.





- Uses quote from play to open the essay and immediately answers what the problem is
- Links two responses in two works together while setting up the differences between them as a development for solution from the opening problem.

           

Student K:

 

(25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work. 
 

Both Milton's "Sonnet 19" and Canin's "The Palace Thief" deal with trouble within the main character—the speaker/poet and Mr. Hundert, respectively—and their solutions similarly come with keys: the poet uses "Patience" and Hundert uses "conviction."





- Immediately incorporates and identifies both works in the response in a unified way.
- Cites key terms in the texts to establish the comparison of two solutions and to substantiate the claim being made about them.

           


Common Problems


Does Not Answer the Test Question, Rewrites the Test Question

Student N:

 

(25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work. 
 

A series of metaphors characterizes both Neena Beber's play Misreadings and Ethan Canin's short story "The Palace Thief." In the former, the imagery of the metaphor shows the characters' personality, Ruth and Simone. In the latter, the occurrence of the metaphor announces the state of mind of Mr. Hundert.





- Brings up metaphors but does not show how they answer or relate to any of the prompt questions: What is the trouble? What is the solution? What is the difference between solutions in two works?

   


Student O:

 

(25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work. 
 

Neena Beber's play Misreadings and John Milton's "Sonnet 19" both start with a problem that affects the rest of the work. The play opens with Simone creating a problem and Ruth posing a problem. The sonnet similarly begins with Milton stating a problem. Simone and Ruth's announced problems begin all the other issues in the play, and Milton's thinking of his problem continues throughout the fourteen lines. However, the two works are different in that Simone shows an opposite emotion from Ruth and Milton.





- The prompt asks: What is the trouble? What is the solution? What is the difference between solutions in two works? but the student changes it to "What are the similarities and differences in the trouble that causes all the problems in two works?" Discussion then focuses on beginnings and trouble rather than endings, resolutions, and coping with trouble.

   

      


Retells the Story or Describes the Work Rather Than Analyzes the Work

Student D:

 

(25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work. 
 

Milton begins his "Sonnet 19" with the musing line "When I consider how my light is spent." He then brings up time in the form of days, darkness, and expansiveness. The speaker later introduces one Talent and is very worried that it will cause God to be angry at him if he does nothing with it. When Patience comes to the speaker's aid, it occurs just before the volta, the turn of the sonnet's argument.





- Describes the sonnet line by line, following the argument and structure of the sonnet with no argument of the student's own.

           


Vague

Student L:

 

(25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work. 
 

Though there are several parallels between "Sonnet 19" and Misreadings, there are also many aspects of the two stories which are somewhat different.


- Parallels between which aspects of the texts?
- What are the aspects of the texts that you will examine?
- The works are different in what ways?
- Vagueness makes your essay bland, uninteresting.
- Vagueness says you don't have a point to make.

           


Broad, General

Student P:

 

(25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work. 
 

Trouble is what every work of literature has. Without it there would be no conflict, no drama, no tension, no lessons, and no reward. The function of trouble in a story is absolutely crucial. In real life one might wish for trouble-free life, but in literature, trouble is the throbbing heart of plot, character, dialogue, tone, and theme, the life-giving force of the entire piece. Therefore, closely scrutinizing the problem or trouble that a writer has created in that work will allow us to understand every other element in the work.

- This beginning is too broad. It announces trouble in general rather than specific trouble in the work that is going to be analyzed. It also addresses all of literature rather than focusing tightly on at least two particular works as required by the test prompt. You don't have time to cover everything being introduced here.
- An entire paragraph is wasted and we don't even know yet what works will be discussed, which passage, whose trouble.
- It does not look like there will be enough room to develop from this sweeping beginning to detailed and in-depth analyses of solutions in a balanced way.

           



Inadequate or No Substantiation

Student M:

 

(25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work. 
 

In Misreadings, Simone is ironically both a troublemaker and a problem solver. She creates problems for Ruth, her professor, and she solves Ruth's problems as well as her own. Unlike the teacher who can only ask questions, Simone the student asks and answers. She faces problems and she sets out to solve them. 

- What problems does Simone create for Ruth?
- Mentioning or citing Ruth's question, "What are the issues for which you would kill?," to preface Simone's answer to it would help illustrate and support the claim about Simone.
- The argument is that Simone asks and answers multiple questions, creates and solves problems, so evidence showing more than one case of Simone's role would help substantiate the assertion.

           


Very Little or No Analysis

Compare the two responses, without and with analysis.

 

Student V Student U
(25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work. 
 

Misreadings ends with Simone committing suicide like Anna Karenina in Tolstoy's novel. She does what her teacher tells her to do: to let the story move her. This tragic ending tells Ruth and the audience that they have misread Simone throughout the play.

(25 points)  Trouble marks each of the first three works we have read, and how it is resolved shapes the telling of the story. Choose at least two works and write an essay discussing the difference between one resolution and the other. What is the sticky problem? What is the way out? You might consider how the solutions differ in some of these terms: imagery, metaphors, tone, pace, irony, effect, outcome, implications, and relation to the themes of the work. 
 

If Ruth's problem (and the audience's) is inability to read a literary text as speaking to and about life, then Simone's solution to commit suicide in the play is able to overcome that obstacle either way. Ruth can stay in her "world made of words" and analyze Simone's "inexorable progression" toward tragedy the way she studies literary texts like Anna Karenina. "Study me, baby," she even insists. And, "I want to look slick..." tells us from the start that Simone is already an actor, performing a part in a play. The audience can see the play only as entertainment for the night, a separate world from reality like Ruth, "where death is as impermanent as anesthesia." But Beber's trick is the ironic impermanence of live theater. If the audience, despite frequent reminders, forgets that an actress is acting fresh and pretending nuisance as Simone, and read her not as a character but as a person, then that "wall" separating two different worlds has come down. And despite Ruth's words "replaying" in one's ears after the blackout, one has to get out of the theater; that ending is real. Misreadings solved.

- What does the suicide mean as a solution? To what problem? How effective is it? Why?
- What does Simone obeying her teacher's instructions mean? Is it ironic? Why?

           

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Reference



Beber, Neena. Misreadings. The Best American Short Plays 1996–1997. Ed. Glenn Young. New York: Applause, 1997. 1–10.  Print.


Bush, Douglas, ed. Milton: Poetical Works. London: Oxford UP, 1974. Print.


Canin, Ethan. "The Palace Thief." The Palace Thief. London: Bloomsbury, 1994. 169–227.  Print.


Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly. New York: Plume, 1989. Print.

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Last updated March 4, 2015