Part Two: Essay.
Write an essay that responds to the given question by building an argument based on a discussion of two different authors we have read this term. At the top of your final exam essay, provide the following names: (1) the authors to be discussed in this final exam essay (THESE WILL BE ADDED BY ME; JUST DISREGARD THIS INSTRUCTION); and (2) the authors to be discussed in your final paper.
Write an essay that responds to one of the two topics below by building an argument based on a discussion of two different authors we have read this term (in works of theirs read for class). The essay should have an opening “thesis” paragraph, and at least one paragraph for each author discussed. Include as many relevant details from each author’s work as you can to make your argument more concrete and persuasive. You are not expected to quote from each author’s work directly in your essay – as this is not something that would be required from an in‐person exam – but you can chose to do so if you prefer. (I underscore, however, that direct quotation is neither an expectation nor a requirement.) ** You can earn up to 8 points for the essay. [You will be writing only one essay, based on one of the provided topics.]
FINAL EXAM ESSAY TOPIC #1:
“The New Colossus,” Emma Lazarus’s poem dedicated to the Statue of Liberty, ends with this famous statement about the possibility of acceptance and promise in America: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest‐tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Chose two of the literary authors we have read this term and write an essay that argues why these authors agree or disagree with Lazarus’s vision of American acceptance and promise for those of different racial, religious, national, and/or ethnic backgrounds. How do these authors present their own views about American acceptance and promise? If American acceptance and promise exist, under what terms? If they don’t exist, why has the vision failed?
FINAL EXAM ESSAY TOPIC #2:
As discussed by David Shi, different writers in the post‐Civil War era turned away from “idealistic” representations of human life to ones that were more “realistic.” This transition from “idealistic” to “realistic” representations can be seen in how different post‐Civil War authors represented problems of courtship, marriage, and family life. Chose two of the literary authors we have read this term and write an essay that argues how each author’s representation of courtship, marriage, and/or family life reflects this post‐Civil War interest in realism. How does each author reflect different realities (or challenges) of post‐Civil War America in the way that she or he represents the human relationships involved in courtship, marriage, and/or family life? If these relationships succeed, what obstacles must they overcome? – if they fail, why do they fail?
Literary Texts Read During the Term (in full or in part)
‐ Walt Whitman, Song of Myself; “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night”; “The Wound‐Dresser”;
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
‐ Ambrose Bierce, “Chickamauga”
‐ Mark Twain, “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed”; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
‐ Constance Fenimore Woolson, “Rodman the Keeper”
‐ Bret Hart, “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
‐ Sarah Orne Jewett, “A White Heron”
‐ Henry James, “The Real Thing”; “Daisy Miller: A Study” and “The Beast in the Jungle”
‐ Jack London, “To Build a Fire”; “What Life Means to Me”
‐ Joel Chandler Harris, “The Wonderful Tar‐Baby Story”
‐ Charles Chesnutt, “The Goophered Grapevine,” “Po’ Sandy,” “The Wife of His Youth,” and “The Passing of Grandison”
‐ Booker T. Washington, from Up From Slavery
‐ W.E.B. DuBois, from The Souls of Black Folk
‐ Ida B. Wells‐Barnett, from “Mob Rule in New Orleans”
‐ Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, “A New England Nun” and “The Revolt of ‘Mother’” ‐ Kate Chopin, The Awakening
‐ Edith Wharton, “Roman Fever”
‐ Upton Sinclair, from The Jungle
‐ Hamlin Garland, “Under the Lion’s Paw”
‐ Frank Norris, “A Deal in Wheat”
‐ Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat,” and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
‐ Abraham Cahan, Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto
‐ Jane Addams, from Twenty Years at Hull‐House
‐ Theodore Roosevelt, from “American Ideals” and “The Strenuous Life”
‐ Sui Sin Far, “Mrs. Spring Fragrance”
‐ Voices from Native America: Smohalla; Charlot; Chief Joseph; Francis LaFlesche; Zitkala Ša; The Ghost
Dance Songs; Nicholas Black Elk and John G. Neihardt; Charles Alexander Eastman
‐ Sarah Winnemucca, from Life Among the Piutes
‐ John Oskison, “The Problem of Old Harjo”
‐ Frederick Jackson Turner, from “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
‐ José Martí, “Our America”
‐ Zitkala Ša, from Impressions of an Indian Girlhood and The School Days of an Indian Girl; “The SoftHearted Sioux”; “Why I Am a Pagan”
‐ Emily Dickinson, a selection of lyric poems
‐ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wall‐paper”
‐ Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
