• Choose one of the questions below to answer for this assignment. Please remember to copy/paste the question with your response and analysis. You should choose a question that you find interesting and believe you can answer in an engaging manner. You will want to support your response not only with good logic and explanations on your part but also with pertinent passages (short quotations are best) from the texts that pertain to the question you have chosen.
• Your response should be in the form of a typical essay (probably four to six paragraphs), with a short introduction, thesis statement, and supporting paragraphs with a conclusion.
• Your essay should total at least 500 words.
LIST OF QUESTIONS
1. In what ways does Eliot’s poetic technique in “Love Song” reflect Modernist poetry? What characteristics of Modernism in general do you find in this poem?
2. Is Frost’s “Mending Wall” as Modern as Eliot’s “Love Song”? Explain. For example, are the Frost poems less fragmented or easier to follow than Eliot’s poem? Are they written in stream of consciousness? What other characteristics of Modernism do you find embedded or missing in Frost’s poems?
3. What advantage/disadvantage does Fitzgerald gain by using the third-person narrator in Winter Dreams,” rather than having Dexter tell the story in first person? In what ways is this
narrative technique similar/different to that used by Faulkner in “A Rose for Emily”?
4. Consider how and why Emily tries to control time and circumstance in “A Rose for Emily.” How does she resist change and why? Does Homer represent change? Consider his job.
Consider important symbols in the story, such as her watch. What do these say about her as a character? How has her life been influenced by certain actions and opinions of her father?
5. Some critics have pointed out that Hurston, as a folklorist, is re-rewriting the Garden of Eden story in “Sweat,” but from a feminist point of view. Do you agree? Why would she do
this? What is her purpose? If order is restored at the story’s end, how does that differ from the biblical version?
6. Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” critiques the American Dream, revealing this idea as an illusion for many in America. Why does Hughes do this in the poem and what techniques does he employ to get his message across? Also, why is it significant that Harlem is not mentioned in the poem? This poem was written many years after the Harlem Renaissance ended; why is this important to understanding the poem?
7. Like Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” “Dare’s Gift” is a Gothic story with images of female entrapment. Why would a modern writer like Glasgow
write a Gothic story? What other characteristics of Gothic literature do you find in the story and how does an examination of these characteristics help us understand the story’s meaning?
8. Consider the difference between “vision” and “seeing” in “Good Country People.” Whose vision or sight begins and ends the story? Who are the blind characters and who really sees
9. The center and one could say the heart of “Sonny’s Blues” is the flashback detailing the murder of the father’s brother. Why is this placed at the center of the story and, aside from
the basic plot, what is so significant about this event in the family history?
10. What is the significance of the fact that Morrison in “Recitatif” does not tell us the race of the two protagonists?
11. Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” is complex because it talks not only about the abuse the poet suffers as a result of her father, but because she says, “Every woman adores a Fascist, / The boot in the face, the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you.” In other words, the poet seems to indicate that there is a participation in the brutality she suffers. What do you make of this
and how does it not only describe the poet in particular, but extends to issues of women suffering at the hands of men more generally?
12. According to Susan Farrell, most readers do not feel sympathy with or identify with Dee in Walker’s “Everyday Use.” But Farrell explains that Dee’s point of view about her heritage
also has validity. Farrell states, “[Dee] offers a view of heritage and a strategy for contemporary African Americans to cope with an oppressive society.” Do you agree?
13. Consider the qualities of postmodernism provided in the definitions section and in the introduction to Unit 5. How is “The Balloon” exemplary of many of the qualities of postmodernism? What do you think is the significance of writing a story that embodies these qualities? That is, how does it reflect on the nature of living in late twentieth century
America?
14. The lovers in “Yellow Woman” are in an area where different territories or regions can be seen, yet they do not occupy any of them. Explain the significance of this borderline region, both in terms of the story’s potential meaning but also in terms of Silko’s position as a Native American writer?