Midterm Discussion | Introduction to the Study of English Literature

General Comments:

Follow instructions. If the prompt asks you to discuss two works, don't discuss only one. If the prompt asks you to choose "an instance from each" work to focus on in your discussion, don't write about five. If the prompt asks you to discuss dialogue and you discuss character and plot, 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 when you are writing your responses.
Support your ideas with textual evidence.
Avoid plot summary.
Proofread. Georg Wishington is not the first president of the United States, nor is Susan Gospell the author of Trifles.
Follow academic conventions in writing about literature and provide proper citations.

Identify five of the following eight quotes by title, author, and, where applicable, note the literary device(s) used, who the speaker is, to whom he/she is speaking, what the situation is, and include a brief sentence about the significance of the quote.

Comments:

This is where you show an overall understanding of the works and literary concepts in the course. It tests knowledge (information retention: Do you remember facts about the works you have read? Do you know what the literary terms in your coursebook mean?), comprehension (Do you understand the works that you have read?), application (Can you apply your knowledge of literary terms to the reading of a literary text?), analysis (Can you examine and explain how or why an element or aspect of the text performs what it performs? Do you notice contradictions or connections between aspects and ideas in a text? What weaknesses or strengths do you see in the text?), synthesis (Can you bring together information and skills from different sources to formulate a new or modified approach or understanding? Can you compare and incorporate ideas from class discussion, from other classes, from experience, from external reading, and from your own close reading of course material and arrive at a fresh or different perspective of the text?), and evaluation (After closely examining and comparing different elements and aspects of a text, can you make a judgment about it? Can you decide which character is more or less important and in what way? Can you choose which feature of a text is more or less relevant to the theme? Can you determine whether a text or part of a text is effective or successful and in what way?).
Follow instructions. This means choose only five quotes to identify. You do not need to do all eight quotes. If you did answer all eight quotes, which many of you did, only the first five will be graded.
Follow instructions. This also means identify the quotes by 1) title, 2) author, and if these apply to the quote you've chosen, 3) literary device, 4) speaker, 5) interlocutor, 6) situation, and finally 6) significance of the quote. What this does not mean is that you should or must give a listed answer ex.

author: William Saroyan
title: "Gaston"
literary devices: negation, diction: connotation, themes
speaker: the girl
interlocutor: the father
significance:

A short answer seems the most effective format for responding to ID questions because you can address many of the requirements in a compact way and actually use one required item to support or clarify a few others while avoiding redundancy or repetitiveness in the process.

The significance of the quote item seems to have been a problem for many students so it is especially discussed here. A good answer is specific to the quote. Look at the series of quotes and student responses below.

Quote: No. I want the same kind that you ate, with somebody in the seed.

Student Response: In "Gaston" by William Saroyan, this is significant because it shows that the girl usually imitates adults and does not think her own thoughts so it is easy for adults to influence a child, but her father wants to encourage her to think for herself.

Quote: I don’t want a perfect peach. I want a peach with people.

Quote: Of course not, but the important thing is what you want, not what I want.

Quote: Of course not. How would we like it if somebody hollered every time we came out of our house?

Quote: “What are we going to do?”
“Well, we’re not going to squash him, that’s one thing we’re not going to do,”

The answer is too broad if it applies to every sentence in the story and is correct. It means that your answer is not about that specific quote, but about the entire story as a whole. And that is not what the prompt is asking of you. A significance of the quote explanation is useless if that same response could describe just about any sentence in the short story, in this case, "Gaston."

What would be the point if every sentence in an eight-page story meant the same thing and had the same significance? Why would the author need to write any other sentence except only one if every new sentence would all have the same message, importance, and function?

In showing that you are a competent reader in general, and a competent reader of literature specifically, you need to demonstrate the ability to close read. This is the kind of reading that is sensitive to diction (word choice), sentence structure, verbal/lexical patterns, order, ideas and other techniques and devices used to create and manipulate meaning. Your response to "significance of the quote" is a small but wide-ranging showcase for this skill.

In the sample below, the student's response is specific to the quote but uninformative because it simply rephrases the quote. It repeats what the quote is saying. In other words, this answer is a non-answer since it gives nothing new. It gives nothing we don't already know from the quote itself.

Quote: “Did you start him in business?” I inquired.
            “Start him! I made him.”
            “Oh.”
            “I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was at Oggsford I knew I could use him good.”

Student Response: In the last chapter of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Meyer Wolfsheim claims a non-biological paternity to Jay Gatsby when Nick Carraway, in New York City to get him to Gatsby's funeral, asks him about his role in Gatsby's beginning. This quote marks not only beginning themes coming up on the heels of ending themes ("life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall"), but also marks Nick's "Oh" discovery that though Gatsby was a self creation, the great Gatsby of the novel's title was "raised...up out of nothing" by Wolfsheim. Yet, of the two contrasting fathers who engendered the character remembered in this book, one a white blood-connection Henry Gatz and the other a non-white (literally Jewish) shady "gonnegtion" (like the not quite legitimate "Oggsford") that Nick meets, one right after the other, in this leave-taking chapter, Wolfsheim could not claim his "make" openly and refuses to "get mixed up" by attending the funeral.

1. (20 points) “Dialogue,” says writer Elizabeth Bowen, is among “the most vigorous and visible interaction” between characters. Conversations show rather than tell, reveal character in what is said or unsaid, and build tension and drama. From the three short stories and one short play that we have read, choose at least two works and discuss an instance from each in which characters are speaking that demonstrates these crucial functions. Explore, for example, what internal unseen qualities about the characters become seen through talk. In what way do the characters change—react, think or feel differently—during the dialogue? How does it effect pace, rhythm, mood, or suspense in the scene? What discoveries and developments are created through the conversations?

Comments:

Dialogue means a conversation, a verbal exchange between two or more characters. It is not a one-sentence quote of a character speaking or narration about speaking. So,

A dialogue

“Who is it?” the girl said.
“Gaston.”
“Where does he live?”
“Well, he used to live in this peach seed, but now that the peach has been harvested and sold, and I have eaten half of it, it looks as if he’s out of house and home.”
“Aren’t you going to squash him?”
“No, of course not, why should I?”
“He’s a bug. He’s ugh.”
“Not at all. He’s Gaston the grand boulevardier.”
“Everybody hollers when a bug comes out of an apple, but you don’t holler or anything.”
“Of course not. How would we like it if somebody hollered every time we came out of our house?”
“Why would they?”
“Precisely. So why should we holler at Gaston?”
MRS. PETERS. Why, this isn't her scissors.
MRS. HALE. Oh, Mrs. Peters—its—
MRS. PETERS. It's the bird.
MRS. HALE. But, Mrs. Peters—look at it! It's neck! Look at its neck! It's all—other side to.
MRS. PETERS. Somebody—wrung—its—neck.

Not a dialogue

“There's always been a lottery.”
“He’s not the same as us.”
The girls stood aside, talking among themselves
Soon the men began to gather. surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and
taxes.
They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands.

Demonstrating several functions of dialogue makes for a stronger essay than discussing only one function. Many students discuss not only one function that has to do solely with character, but only one aspect of that function which is character change.

2. (25 points) Although The Crucible begins in spring, which should anticipate the warmth of summer, an unseasonable coldness seems to plague Salem. And yet, amidst all the cold, there are many references to heat as well. Consider the way frostiness and fieriness are featured in the text on a personal, domestic, and social level. What significance, both literal and figurative, of "cold" and "hot" is expressed in the text? How do these two concepts play off of each other, and what do they contribute to the themes of the story? Select a few of the passages provided below for close reading, but make sure you also draw on relevant ideas and events from the rest of the play in your discussion.

Comments:

The prompt asks you to discuss the significance of heat and coldness in The Crucible, with an eye to their interrelationship and connection to the play's themes. Here are some characteristics of a good essay:

Gets to the point and answers the question right away (clearly states the importance of heat and coldness in The Crucible)
Shows how heat is related to coldness in the play
Explains how heat and coldness are related to the themes of the play; and, of course, the essay spells out clearly what the themes of the play are
Is not wordy and stays focused on heat and coldness; that is, the body of the essay is structured tightly around a clear investigation of important functions of heat and coldness without retelling the story of The Crucible
Is not a list of several heat and cold references in the play
Gives relevant and compelling evidence from the text of the play to illustrate and support its discussion and incorporates it smoothly into the prose of the essay
Demonstrates understanding of the play and critical and analytical thinking
Has very few or no grammatical mistakes

Title

Text.

Title

Text.

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. Plays. Ed. C. W. E. Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. 35–45. Print.

Jackson, Shirley. "The Lottery." The Magic of Shirley Jackson. Ed. Stanley Edgar Hyman. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. 137–45. Print.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts. 1953. Introd. Christopher Bigsby. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print. Penguin Classics.

O'Connor, Frank. "First Confession." Collected Stories. New York: Knopf, 1981. 175–82. Print.

Saroyan, William. "Gaston." Madness in the Family. Ed. Leo Hamalian. New York: New Directions, 1988. 25–32. Print.