FINAL EXAM INSTRUCTIONS: April 25 Monday at regular class time 6:25-9:05

1.  It is semi-comprehensive, which means although it will cover nearly all our readings/required websites/my review notes, post-midterm materials will be emphasized.

2. 40% will be 20 questions similar to those in the midterm.

3. 60% will be six short passages from our main texts, which you use to generate a page or so in a small blue book (example below) that addresses the significance of the passage and how it is suggestive of larger themes/issues/etc. in the work from which it is taken.  You should not just reflect back what the paragraph directly tells you; this is a chance for you to show your sophisticated, complex understanding of our readings.  No passages will be selected that were not reviewed in class or highlighted in my review notes.

The example below comes from an exam used in one of my other classes.

The Passage:

"When the sun was dropping low, Antonia came up the big south draw with her team.  How much older she had grown in eight months! ... She wore the boots her father had so thoughtfully taken off before he shot himself, and his old fur cap.  Her outgrown cotton dress switched about her calves, over her boottops.  She kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms and throat were burned as brown as a sailor's.  Her neck came up strongly out of her shoulders, like the bole of a tree out of the turf.  One sees that draught-horse neck among the peasant women in all old countries."

The Response:

After her father's suicide, Antonia takes on his aspirations by laboring on the land, putting aside her own dreams.  She does "man's" labor by necessity, and there is no room for Victorian notions of decorum or femininity.  Jim seems in awe of this exotic immigrant girl who puts her heart and soul into all she does, who increasingly becomes to him, with her mixture of innocence and experience, an earth-mother type figure.  She is both exotic and real with a warmth and light that is unique.  The earth-mother image connects with other images that associate Antonia with the vibrant fields, a set of pastoral descriptions that promise fertility and renewal--in place of images of cold and death (her father's frozen corpse, the grisly wolf scene).  Her father was alienated as an immigrant, but Antonia, without losing her ethnic background, merges with the land.

BELOW I'VE PROVIDED A CLEAN VERSION OF THE SYLLABUS WITH THE READINGS, REVIEW NOTES, AND SITES YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR