Overview of the aims of the Final Exam.  Besides trying to read the works in terms of each other as carefully as we could, we've focused on a number of themes and several skills during this term   The final exam will try to engage you in all these activities: it will get you to write about how some of the works compare with each other and how they represent different world views roughly reflecting their "periods"; it will get you to write very specifically about individual works and parts of those works, and in the process to display your skill--the one we emphasized throughout the term--at explaining how a part of a literary work helps to develop the whole.  The exam will also ask you to analyze and offer convincing evidence, and therefore to shun plot summary and vague assertions.  If you think through the following topics/problems with some care you will be prepared for the exam.  The exam will be an open note and open book exam.  Feel free to work together to prepare for the exam.
 

1.  Analysis of passages.  One of the tasks on the exam is to identify and then analyze the importance of passages we have looked at or referred to during the term.  You will need to explain how the passage represents some major theme(s), how it raises a problem, how it picks up on a motif or line of imagery within the work, and/or how it reveals character. You might also be asked/invited to say how one of these passages captures a theme that runs across much of the literature in the course.  What follows is first a sample passage, with a sample of a complete and perceptive analysis of it and second a collection of passages, some of which will appear on the exam.

Sample passage:

In Act 3, iii Iago continues his "work" on Othello's mind, saying this about Desdemona:

                                         She that, so young, could give out such a seeming
                                            To seal her father's eyes up close as oak--
                                            He thought 'twas witchcraft--but I am much to blame.
                                            I humbly do beseech you of your pardon
                                            For too much loving you. (209-13)

Sample Response:

  This passage develops almost all the themes in the play:  the conflict between generations, the 
difference between appearance and reality; blindness; magic; and the rivalry between male brotherhood and heterosexual love.  In a nutshell, though, the passage builds upon what I think is the central concern of the play:  the haunting fear of always being an outsider.  Iago's speech plays on this concern by bringing up many of those other themes.  For instance, by emphasizing Desdemona's youth, Iago reminds Othello of the difference between Othello's and Desdemona's generations, and thereby suggests Othello's inevitable distance and difference from his own wife.  By bringing up the issue of blindnss--and perhaps recalling Brabantio's parting words to Othello ("Look to her, Moor, if thou has eyes to see:/She has deceived her father, and may thee")--Iago further emphasizes this sense in Othello of alienation from what's commonly known, this sense of being the outsider.  After all, if you can't see what's going on under your nose and everyone else can, you remain on the outside.  Interestingly, the allusion to Brabantio's words also suggestively lodges Othello even more completely in the generation older than Desdemona's.  Even Iago's allusion to witchcraft echoes the speech in which Brabantio depicted Othello as an outsider because of his blackness, an outsider only capable of gaining his daughter's affections in an unnatural way, through witchcraft or sorcery.  Finally, Iago's backing off from the accusations against Desdemona on the basis of his love for Othello subtly establishes a kind of "us against them" attitude, the males bonded in their soldierly love vs. those--Desdemona and perhaps the civilian Venetians generally--who aren't part of that brotherhood.  The more Othello feels alienated from the world around him, the more he depends on "the world according to Iago."  This dependency is central to the plot.  But the feeling of alienation also remains the most important, the most essential theme in the play, and this passage does much to sustain that theme in all its variations. 

Sample Passages:

  "One day, to pass the time away, we read
of Lancelot--how love had overcome him.
We were alone, and we suspected nothing.
   And time and time again that reading led
our eyes to meet, and made our faces pale,
and yet one point alone defeated us.
   When we had read how the desired smile
was kissed by one who was so true a lover,
this one, who never shall be parted from me,
   while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth.
A Gallehualt indeed, that book and he
who wrote it, too; that day we read no more"
   And while one spirit said these words to me,
the other wept, so that--because of pity--
I fainted, as if I had met my death.
   And then I fell as a dead body falls.

. . . for the whole world turns to his will--he knows nothing worse until his portion of pride increases and flourishes within him; then the watcher sleeps, the soul's guardian; that sleep is too sound, bound in its own cares, and this slayer most near whose bow shoots treacherously.  Then is he hit in the heart, beneath his armor, with the bitter arrow--he cannot protect himself--with the crooked dark commands of the accursed spirit.  What he has long held seems to him too little, angry-hearted he covets, no plated rings does he give in men's honor, and then he forgets and regards not his destiny because of what God, Wielder of Heaven, has given him before, his portion of glories.
 

I stood there alone.  And then I saw
Lurking beyond the door sill of the Vesta,
In hiding, silent, in that place reserved,
The daughter of Tyndareus.  Glare of fires
Lighted my steps this way and that, my eyes
Glancing over the whole scene, everywhere.
That woman, terrified of the Trojans' hate
For the city overthrown, terrified too
Of Danaan vengeance, her abandoned husband's
Anger after years--Helen, the Fury
Both to her own homeland and Troy, had gone
To earth, a hated thing, before the altars.
Now fires blazed up in my own spirit--
A passion to avenge my fallen town
And punish Helen's whorishness. 
 

. . . And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.  And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

. . . he too 
was sitting there unhappy among the suitors,
A boy, daydreaming.  What if his great father
came from the unknown world and drove these men
like dead leaves through the place, recovering
honor and lordship in his own domains?
Then he who dreamed in the crowd gazed out at Athena
Straight to the door he came, irked with himself
to think a visitor had been kept there waiting . . .

Here I am myself--
you all know me, the world knows my fame: 
I am Oedipus

                              . . . and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for
                         as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stripped Joseph out of his coat of many colors that was on him and they took him, and cast him into a pit:  and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.  And they sat down to eat bread . . .So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.. . After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.  And job spake, and said, Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said.  There is a man child conceived.  Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it . . .

"Accursed be a cowardly and covetous heart!
In you is villainy and vice, and virtue laid low!"
Then he grasps the green girdle and lets go the knot, 
Hands it over in haste, and hotly he says:
"Behold there my falsehood, ill hap betide it!
Your cut taught me cowardice, care for my life,
And coveting came after, contrary both
To largesse and loyalty belonging to knights.
Now am I faulty and false, that fearful was ever
Of disloyalty and lies, bad luck to them both!"

For the fear of death indeed is the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that man knows what he does not know?

She wore her cloak with dignity and charm,
And had her rosary about her arm,
The small beads coral and the larger green,
And from them hung a brooch of golden sheen,
On it a large A and a crown above;
Beneath, "All things are subject unto love."

"Mother, why do you grudge our own dear minstrel
joy of song, wherever his thought may lead?
Poets are not to blame, but Zeus who gives 
what fate he pleases to adventurous men.
Here is no reason for reproof: to sing
the news of the Danaans!  Men like best
a song that rings like morning on the ear.
But you must nerve yourself and try to listen.
Odysseus was not the only one at Troy
never to know the day of his homecoming.
Others, how many others, lost their lives!"

Sorrow not, wise warrior.  It is better for a man to avenge his friend than much mourn.  Each of us must await his end of the world's life.  Let him who may get glory before death:  that is best for the warrior after he has gone from life.

             So where's the worry?
The men can't burn their way in or frighten us out.
The Gates are ours--they're proof against fire and fear--
and they open only on our conditions.

Now this man with his news ran to the tyrant,
who made his crooked arrangements in a flash,
stationed picked men at arms, a core of men
in hiding; set a feast in the next room;
then he went out with chariots and horses
to hail the king and welcome him to evil.
He led him in to banquet, all serene, 
and killed him, like an ox felled at the trough . . . (255)

                     So all began
To draw the lots, and as the luck would fall
The draw went to the Knight, which pleased us all.

                 Into the court
She burst her way, then at her passion's height
She climbed her pyre and bared the Dardan sword--
A gift desired once, for no such need.
Her eyes now on the Trojan clothing there
And the familiar bed, she paused a little,
Weeping a little, mindful, then lay down . . .
 

A man in a distant field, no hearth fires near,
will hide a fresh brand in his bed of embers
to keep a spark alive for the next day;
so in the leaves Odysseus hid himself, 
while over him Athena showered sleep
that his distress should end, and soon, soon. 
In quiet sleep she sealed his cherished eyes.

                                 Come, in fairness,
tell me the name you bore in that far country;
how were you known to family, and neighbors?
No man is nameless--no man, good or bad,
but gets a name in his first infancy, 
none being born, unless a mother bears him! 

Experience, though all authority
Was lacking in the world, confers on me
The right to speak of marriage, and unfold
Its woes.

  May God so let you, reader, gather fruit 
From what you read; and now think for yourself
how I could ever keep my own face dry
   when I beheld our image so nearby
and so awry that tears. down from the eyes
bathed the buttocks, running down the cleft.
   Of course I wept, leaning against a rock
along that rugged ridge, so that my guide
told me: "Are you as foolish as the rest?
   Here pity only lives when it is dead:
for who can be more impious than he
who links God's judgment to passivity?

He took her in his arms and gave her kisses
A thousand times on end; he bathed in blisses.
And she obeyed him also in full measure
In everything that tended to his pleasure.
 And so they lived in full joy to the end.
And now to all us women may Christ send
Submissive husbands, full of youth in bed,
And grace to outlive all the men we wed.
And I pray Jesus to cut short the lives
Of those who won't be governed by their wives. . .

His father and the Lady Antikleia
welcomed him, and wanted all the news
of how he got his wound; so he spun out 
his tale, recalling how the boar's white tusk
caught him when he was hunting on Parnassos. (454) 

  Soon after they had talked a while together,
they turned to me, saluting cordially;
and having witnessed this, my master smiled;
   and even greater honor then was mine,
for they invited me to join their ranks--
I was the sixth among such intellects.
   So did we move along and toward the light,
talking of things about which silence here
is just as seemly as our speech was there.

Fate often saves an undoomed man when his courage is good.

                 Do not rise yet.
Witness you ever-burning lights above,
You elements that clip us round about,
Witness that here Iago doth give up
The execution of his wit, hands, heart
To wronged Othello's service.  Let him command,
And to obey shall be in me remorse
What bloody business ever.

I will speak out now as a stranger to the story,
a stranger to the crime.  If I'd been present then,
there would have been no mystery, no long hunt
without a clue in hand. 

But now it is the rich Italian land
Apollo tells me I must make for:  Italy,
Named by his oracles.  There is my love;
There is my country.

"If you are so impatient, sirs, to find
Death," he replied, "turn up this crooked way,
For in that grove I left him, truth to say,
Beneath a tree, and there he will abide.
No boast of yours will make him run and hide.
Do you see that oak tree?  Just there you will find
This Death, and God, who brought again mankind, 
Save and amend you!" 

I ha't.  It is engendered.  Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light.

   "But now reach out your hand; open my eyes."
And yet I did not open them for him;
and it was courtesy to show him rudeness.
 

2.  Thematic Matters. In this section you will have a chance to build a discussion of a number of the works we have 
explored this term.  I will ask you to deal with works from each of the periods, which I've coded in colored font bove--Ancient/Biblical, Classical Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance. 

a.  Representation of "internal" workings of character

b.  The heroic world view

c.  Search for Eden

d.  Function of poetry/poet

e.  Relations between the sexes

f.   Fate vs. free will as played out in 1) poetic structure OR 2) references to deities in the works

g.  What happens to the epic as genre/world view during these periods?

h.   Story-telling
 

3.  Stylistic issues.  Be able to identify, illustrate and explain the primary stylistic feature/literary device(s) of each work you've read.  For instance, with regard to Oedipus, I would argue that irony is its primary literary M.O.  Obviously in doing this task you will be exercising judgment and the ability to argue you point.

4.  Hero-table.  Be prepared to build an essay out of either an horizontal tracing of a character through the themes or a vertical tracing of a theme through the different characters in the following table.