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Schaefer                                               Midterm Exam, Fall 2006                                               World Lit II

 

Part I—Choose one passage from each of the groups below and for each passage you choose discuss in two paragraphs (or more if you wish) the various ways in which that passage relates to the themes of the work as a whole.  (Fifteen points per passage, for a total of forty-five on this section)

 

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

 

1.  Praskovya Fedorovna recognizing Peter Ivanovich, sighed, went close up to him, took his hand, and said: “I know you were a true friend to Ivan Ilyich . . .” and looked at him awaiting some suitable response.  And Peter Ivanovich knew that, just as it had been the right thing to cross himself in that room, so what he had to do here was to pres her hand, sigh, and say, “Believe me . . .”  So he did all this and as he did it felt that the desired result had been achieved: that both he and she were touched.

 

2.  At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at remembering them.

 

3.  “If I had to die like Caius I should have known it was so.  An inner voice would have told me so, but there was nothing of the sort in me and I and all my friends felt that our case was quite different from that of Caius.  And now here it is!” he said to himself. “It can’t be.  It’s impossible!  But here it is.  How is this?  How is one to understand it?”

 

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

 

1. The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the sweetest engagement with which I was ever blessed.  We loved each other, and to leave them at the close of the Sabbath was a severe cross indeed. . . .  Those dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged.  Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up, and given thirty-nine lashes.  They came because they wished to learn.  Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters.  They had been shut up in mental darkness.  I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like bettering the condition of my race.

 

2. In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan's mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic emancipation.  These were choice documents to me.  I read them over and over again with unabated interest.  They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance.  The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder.  What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights.  The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery . . ..

 

3. We were at it for nearly two hours.  Covey at length let me go, puffing and blowing at a great rate, saying that if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much.  The truth was, that he had not whipped me at all.  I considered him as getting entirely the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him.  The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger.  He would occasionally say, he didn't want to get hold of me again.  "No," thought I, "you need not; for you will come off worse than you did before."

 

“Essay on Man”

 

1.  Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer Being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! Kindly given
That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven:

 

2.  Better for Us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discomposed the mind.
But ALL subsists by elemental strife;
And Passions are the elements of Life.
The general ORDER, since the whole began,
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.

 

3.  All are but parts of one stupendous whole
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same;
Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

 

 

Part II—Answer the following question in an essay of about five paragraphs.  (Thirty points)

 

Compare the life Frederick Douglass depicts himself as having lived with the life of Ivan Ilyich as Tolstoy describes it.  In your view, what are the factors that enable Douglass to resist the messages about himself that his culture seeks to impress on him, and what are the factors that cause Ivan simply to accept the dictates of his culture?  What major realizations about life does Douglass come to that cause him to conclude that he lives meaningfully, and which of those does Ivan avoid coming to until the last hours of his life?  Do you feel that at the end of the story Ivan’s life, like Douglass’, does have a meaning?

 

 

Part III—Answer the following question in an essay of about five paragraphs.  (Twenty-five points)

 

We noted in class that Pope, as a product of the Age of Reason, employs the classical formula of rhetorical persuasion—that is, appeals based on logos, pathos, and ethos—and uses various of the elements of poetry and argument—form, style, tone, allusion, imagery, and analogy—to create those appeals.  Pick three specific examples of Pope’s strategies—such as his use of one particular analogy or set of analogies, one particular allusion or set of allusions, or his employment of the heroic couplet—and discuss whether you find each one effective or ineffective as a means of persuasion for his original audience, Christians on the one hand and devotees of the scientific method on the other.