Literature Questions

Directions: Please answer EIGHT of the following in 5-7 sentences. Your answers should give specific evidence from the story or the poem and from lecture. Be sure to use key terms discussed concerning each work.
1. Define the word zeitgeist and give two characteristics of the Victorian era. In at least one way, how is Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” Victorian?
2. Give two characteristics of the Romantic era. How is Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” influenced by this movement?
3. Complete a brief Marxist reading of Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” as discussed in lecture.
4. Define Modernism and its reaction against two events. This answer needs only to be three sentences long.
5. Discuss the epigraph at the beginning of T. S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and its relationship to the idea of hope in the poem.
6. Name three symbols of the ocean and/or the city in T. S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” In general, what might these symbols stand for?
7. What is Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” about?
8. Why does the female in Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” keep
insisting that she is fine or that she loves the man more than she loves herself?
9. Discuss the two sets of instructions in “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid.
10. How is Raymond Carver’s work an example of Revisionary Mythopoesis?
Part Two: Please create a five paragraph reaction to ONE of the following topics. You can use previous work, but your essay should not be an exact replica of an earlier draft.
1. Discuss the role of women in Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour.”
2. Discuss the city as a recurring image in T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song.” 3. Discuss Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” as Modern. 4. Discuss Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” as Modern or Post-Modern.
5. Discuss Raymond Carver’s work as Post-Modern.