Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

In developing your answers, you may use your book and notes, as well as the resources from our online class.  However, you should not use any outside sources.  In terms of length, your Midterm should be 2-3 pages in total.

I.    Select TWO essay questions from the following, using literary terms to clarify your analysis:  (40 pts.) 

1.    Explain the significance of Montresor's coat of arms in The Cask of Amontillado.

2.    How do the events of "Battle Royal" add to the thematic significance of the grandfather's advice?

3.    Identify and explain the use of symbols in one of Hawthorne’s short stories. 

4.    In Carver’s “Popular Mechanics” how do small actions take on larger significance in the story?

II. SELECT AND ANSWER ONE ESSAY QUESTION FROM EACH OF THE FOLLOWING  SECTIONS, USING YOUR BOOK AND NOTES TO DEVELOP YOUR POINTS:
A.    CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES (40 PTS.)

1.    Hawthorne describes his purpose as a writer as his own reading of "the truth of the human heart."  Using this as a guide, determine whether he meets this goal in his short stories that are included in our text.

2.    Faulkner centers his fiction on "the human heart in conflict with itself."  What is the nature of the conflict in "A Rose for Emily"?  Do we sympathize with her plight or see her merely as a symbol of the Southern past?

B.    MAKING CRITICAL CONNECTIONS IN FICTION (40 PTS.)

1.    Compare Melville's Bartleby's withdrawal from life with Hemingway's Krebs.

2.    Compare and contrast the conclusions in the two versions of “The Lady with the Pet Dog.”  

3.    Compare and contrast Carver's use of setting in "Popular Mechanics" with Updike's in "A & P."