[Note:  If you print off this prep sheet for use off-line, remember that anything that shows up as underlined is not being singled out for special emphasis, but represents a link that you can follow-up only by going back online and clicking on it.]

Exam 1 will cover all of the assignments (except for those specified as recommended only) on Parts 1 and 2 of the Course Schedule.

Page references below are to our text, Gioia and Gwynn's The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction.  When you print out a copy of this prep sheet, remember that anything underlined here is a link, which you have to click on while you're on-line, in order to access the document to which it is linked.

This exam is worth a total of 150 points.  There are three parts to it.   Part A is an out-of-class essay (worth 50 points).  It is described in more detail in  Exam 1:  Out-of-Class Essay Portion -- Topic Options, Criteria, Format.  Parts B and C (together worth 100 points) will be taken in-class, on a closed book basis.  For these, be sure to see the Detailed Prep Sheet for the In-Class Portion of Exam 1.

In each answer, whether shorter or longer, you will be expected to show familiarity with certain critical concepts and, of course, with the relevant details of the work under discussion.

Here are the works you need to be familiar with for the Mid-Term Exam.

1. Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart" (p. 1471)
2. Welty, "Why I Live at the P.O." (p. 1690)
3. Walker, "Everyday Use" (p. 1670)
4. Barth, "Night-Sea Journey" (p. 139)
5. Gilb, "Look on the Bright Side" (p.725)
6. Dubus, "A Father's Story" (p. 566)
7. Ellison, "A Party Down at the Square" (p. 583)
8. Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" (p.627)
9. Singer, "Gimpel the Fool" (p. 1523)
10. Cisneros, "Barbie-Q" (p. 432)
11. Erdrich, "The Red Convertible" (p. 590)
12. Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” (p. 430)
13. Porter,  “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” (p. 1477)
14. Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (p. 735)
15. Mansfield, "Miss Brill" (p. 1147)
16. Conrad, "The Secret Sharer" (pp. 442)

Recall that, for many of these stories, there is a study guide that might be worth your attention.  You can locate these by consulting the Course Schedule (Part 1 and Part 2).  Unless you've already printed these off, you'll need to be online to access them.

The critical concepts you should try to show familiarity with on this exam are the following.  In the list below I have given links to some rather extensive discussions of some of these notions in the Glossary of Critical Concepts on our course web site.  But you should first review the introductory and concluding pointers the editors of our text provide in their sections on

• "Origins of the Short Story" (pp. 9-38)
• "Significant Features of the Early Short Story" (p. 1846)
• "Poe's Theory of the Short Story" (pp. 1846-1847)
• "The Essential Qualities of the Short Story" (p. 1848)
• "Plot" (pp. 1863-1968);
• "Characterization" (pp. 1868-1871)
• "Point of View" (pp. 1871-1873)
• "Setting" (pp. 1873-1874)
• "Theme" (pp. 1874-1875)

When you have decided on the questions want to focus on preparing for your longer answers, you can then go to the more detailed treatments of the relevant concepts in our web glossary.  (Don't forget, though, that a very important resource to exploit should be the discussion that develops on these stories on our class Message Board.)

• the distinction between chronicle and plot
• elements of plot
• dramatic situation
• conflict
• protagonist
• antagonist
• dramatic question
• structural features
• exposition
• precipitating incident
• complication / rising action
• suspense
• foreshadowing
• crisis
• climax
• falling action:  conclusion / resolution / dénouement

• similarities and between traditional fables and tales on the one hand and a "short story" (in the modern sense) on the other.  Among the notions that we might need to have recourse to in articulating the distinguishing features of these genres are:
• primacy of focus
• on incident ==> tales
• on moral or prudential wisdom ==>  fables, parables.
• Features tending to distinguish fables from parables include:
• plot:  fanciful vs. plausibly realistic.
• Often the plot of a short stories is often organized around an epiphany.
•  the situation examined in a short story confronts us with an initiation story.
• main characaters:  anthropomorphized animals or natural beings/forces vs. human beings
• conveyance of moral:  explicit statement vs. suggestive implication
• kinds of parables, in turn
• Illustrative example
• Allegorical translation
• on character, and especially on complexity of character (short story)
• details of psychological and social repression
• [How is psychological repression distinct from social (e.g., political) repression?  What elements do the two have in common?  How can they reinforce each other?]
• the unconscious (as a noun concept)
• narrative means
• allegory vs. realism:  which predominates in the short story?
• summary vs. scene:  which has come to predominate in the short story?

• the possibilities at stake in an author's choice of point of view in narrating a story.  What are the different options, what "games" do they make possible, and what readers have to be alert to in tuning into these games and carrying out the reader's role in the playing of them?  (In particular, when should we be on the lookout for innocent or unreliable narrators, or for an unreliable central consciousness?)
• participant narrator (also known as first-person narrator)
• narrator a minor character
• marginal participant in the action
• an observer of the action on the scene (sharing the time and place with the action) but not participating in the action
• narrator a major character or central participant (even protagonist)
• non-participant narrator.  Here there is a continuous range of possibilities, within which the following categories may claim our attention.
• omniscient narrator  (Note that interior monologue and stream of consciousness are special possibilities of "omniscience" that in practice, especially in short stories, will almost always be limited to selective omniscient windows).
• broadly omniscient narrator (seeing into the thoughts and feelings of any and all of the characters)
• selectively omniscient narrator (whose telling is also sometimes referred to as "limited omniscient" narration)
• narrator affording an inside view of one major character
• narrator affording direct access to the inner experience of a single minor character
• objective narrator (abstaining from giving direct information on the interior life of any characters, and presenting only externally observable details of their behavior)

• concepts important for articulating choices authors make regarding characterization
• stock characters
• motivation
• flat vs. round characterization
• static vs. dynamic characterization
• classifying plots in terms of this distinction
• allusion
• anti-hero

• ways in which setting (cultural-historical it may be, or physical) can enter into the situations that engage our interest, by
• helping to form character, or
• setting up a predicament under which character can display itself, or
• functioning symbolically to illuminate action or character.

Your job is not to define these terms in the abstract ("fill in the blank"), or to match them with definitions.  Rather you should be able to apply them appropriately.

• You will encounter questions that incorporate one or more of these terms.  Obviously you cannot frame a suitable answer to the question without understanding the concepts involved, and recognizing what features of the particular story you're discussing fall under it.
• In general, too, you will not be asked just to identify some feature of the story that falls under a particular concept, but to explain something of the significance of this feature in the overall working of the story.  This shows your awareness of the point of being acquainted with the concept.
• For example:  while you should indeed be able to identify the climactic moment of each story [a what question], and to explain what about it makes it function that way, you should be ready to say something about so what?  You might spell out some particular implication at stake in this dramatically emphasized moment that supports (say how) the larger theme, or reason for being, of the story as a whole.
• For any story you would want to be able to describe story's point of view.  But you would also want to be able to say something specific about how the author's choice of that point of view contributes something important to the overall effect or theme of the story.  (You might do this be imagining some apparently close equivalent point of view and then figuring out what would happen if were chosen instead.)
• For any character -- but certainly for any character crucial in the main action of the plot -- we want to reflect on whether that character changes in some important way in the course of the action.  But we want to use what we come to notice, under this curiosity, to take us further into the heart of the story:  how are these facts about the character important in shaping the particular kind of experience the author evidently wants to invite us to "try on," or in raising the issues the story evidently is designed to invite us to think about?

• In a bonus section, I will also present you with a statement or two that exhibit a conceptual confusion involving one or more notions.  You should be able to explain, briefly but accurately, what is nonsensical about the formulation given.

Part A is an out-of-class essay (worth 50 points).  It is described in more detail in  Exam 1: Out-of-Class Essay Portion -- Topic Options, Criteria, Format.

Parts B and C (together worth 100 points) will be taken in-class, on a closed book basis.  For these, be sure to see the Detailed Prep Sheet for the In-Class Portion of Exam 1.

On our exams and in our essays, students are acting under Kansas State University's provisions regarding Academic Honesty and Plagiarism.  An important point in these provisions is that instructors may spell out what degree of collaboration is permitted among students on specific assignments.  For this exam, you are positively encouraged to use the class Message Board to help each other in thinking through the facts and issues that are relevant to any of the questions on this prep sheet.

Good luck!  I hope to be able to participate in an active discussion on our Message Board!