English 320: The Short Story (Fall 2004)
General Prep Sheet for the Exam
1
[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. (There is one story -- Lardner's
"Haircut" -- that is not to be found in our text. If you've lost
the copy handed out in class, you can print another off in Adobe Acrobat format
(*.pdf) from the link below.)
This exam is worth a total of 100 points.
It will be taken in-class,
on a closed book basis. For these, be sure to see the Detailed
Prep Sheet for 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 exam.
- the Grimm Brothers' "Godfather
Death"
- Voltaire's "Story of
a Good Brahmin" (There's a Study
Guide to this piece.)
- Thurber's "The Owl
Who Was God"
- Bierce's "The
Moral Principle and the Material Interest"
- Freud's allegorization of the traditional
tale of "The Horse of Schilda"
- Boccaccio's "The Pot of Basil" (pp. 32-36)
- Marguerite of Navarre's "The One-Eyed Servant and His Wife"
(pp. 35-36)
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Guy de Maupassant, “The Necklace”
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Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” (SG)
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Kate Chopin, "The Storm"
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Chinua Achebe, "Dead Men's Path" {Cf. SG1
or SG2.)
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Flannery O'Connor, "Revelation"
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Yukio Mishima, "Patriotism"
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Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (SG)
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Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the P.O." (SG)
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Ring Lardner's "Haircut"
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T. Coraghessan Boyle, "Greasy Lake
-
Raymond Carver, “Cathedral”
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Ralph Ellison, "A Party Down at the Square"
- Jamaica Kincaid, "Girl"
Notice what does not appear on this list:
- Walker's "Everyday Use" will not show up on the exam.
That's because, on the exam, you are not to write on any story you've
already written on in an in-class or an out-of-class essay (and everyone has
already written on foil in "Everyday Use").
- Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" does not appear
here. That's because the exam will cover only those readings assigned
through March 31.
- A number of the short pieces we read at the outset (stories that are short
but not "short stories") you can set aside in preparing for this
exam. Only the first 7 items listed above may appear on the
exam. By far the greater emphasis on the exam will fall on the
remaining 13 stories.
Recall that, for many of these stories, there is a study guide that might
be worth your attention. I've indicated these. As you re-read the
stories in preparation for the exam, make a special point of bringing to bear
the standard repertoire of sophisticated curiosities we've been practicing so
far. Possibly useful in helping you to do this is General Study Guide: An Agenda of Curiosity for Reading Fiction.
Once you have made some provisional decisions about which stories you want
to focus on for the first three sections, you will want to see whether
the editors' questions following these stories might offer useful inroads
for your purposes. The same goes for the various study guides on
the web that were linked to from the Course Schedule (Parts I).
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)
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"Poe's Theory of the Short Story" (pp. 1846-1847)
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"The Essential Qualities of the Short Story" (p. 1848)
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"Plot" (pp. 1863-1968);
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"Characterization" (pp. 1868-1871)
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"Point of View" (pp. 1871-1873)
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"Setting" (pp. 1873-1874)
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"Theme" (pp. 1874-1875)
Then review the stories listed above
in the light of their discussions.
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.)
č
I've also indicated with the symbol # pages
where you can find a brief entry in the editors' glossary towards the end of our
textbook.
-
the distinction between chronicle and plot
-
elements of plot
-
structural features
-
exposition
-
precipitating incident
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complication / rising action (#1913, 1922)
-
suspense
-
foreshadowing (#1915)
-
crisis / moment of crisis (#1913, 1918)
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climax (#1912)
-
falling action: conclusion / resolution / dénouement (#1913,
1921).
- See also our editors' useful distinction between open dénouement
(#1920) and
- closed dénouement (#1913).
-
similarities and differences 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:
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primacy of focus
-
on incident ==> tales
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on moral or prudential wisdom ==> fables, parables.
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Features tending to distinguish fables from parables include:
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plot: fanciful vs. plausibly realistic.
-
Often the plot of a short stories is often organized around an epiphany.
-
The situation put forward in a short story often confronts us with an initiation
story.
-
main characaters: anthropomorphized animals or natural beings/forces
vs. human beings
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conveyance of moral: explicit statement vs. suggestive implication
-
kinds of parables, in turn
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Illustrative example
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Allegorical translation
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on character, and especially on complexity of character (short story)
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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). Cf. the entry for Dramatic Point of View (#1913).
-
editorializing narrator. Cf. the entry under Editorial Point of View (#1914).
In thinking about "point of view" in connection with fiction,
you'll want to work through the following articles in our online glossary of
critical terms:
-
concepts important for articulating choices authors make regarding characterization
-
stock characters (# 1923)
-
motivation (cf. also the entry under "character motivation," #1912)
-
flat vs. round characterization
-
static vs. dynamic
characterization
-
allusion
-
anti-hero (# 1911)
-
Of particular importance for characterization in many stories is the concept of foil,
and the kinds of curiosity this formal feature presupposes the reader is ready
to bring to bear once s/he realizes the author may be exploiting it.
- Insofar as a character speaks (whether as a narrator, or as reported by a
narrator), his or her attitudes and feelings towards what s/he talks about
will be conveyed through tone of voice. These attitudes and
feelings will be expressions, in turn, of certain assumptions and values the
character holds.
- Tone, in other words, is always motivated, and is therefore an
important aspect of characterization. Be prepared to describe the
tone of voice in a passage from one of our stories, and to explain some
aspect of its significance in the story as a whole.
- For getting clear on what we mean by "tone" or "tone
color" in speech, a big resource would be Oliver Sacks' essay "The
President's Speech".
-
ways in which setting (cultural-historical it may be, or physical) can
enter into the situations that engage our interest, by
-
prompting acts that are important elements in the central action (or plot) of
the story as a whole, or
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helping to form character, or
-
setting up a predicament under which character can display itself, or
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functioning symbolically to illuminate action or character.
- the concept of theme: How does the thematic dimension of short
stories differ from the thematic dimension of parables and fables (which we
commonly refer to as the tale's "moral")?
- Consult the editors' discussion of theme in their appendix on elements of
fiction (pp. 1874-75).
- There's also an article on theme in our
online glossary of literary terms
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, or how
it leads us to some deeper insight into the character (psychological/ethical) of
the protagonist..
-
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?
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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.
Be sure to see the Detailed
Prep Sheet for Exam 1. This gives you concrete examples of the particular
kinds of questions you can expect to encounter on the exam.
You may wish to review the criteria I will be using in evaluating your
essays (both in-class and take-home). You can find a succinct statement
of these here and a more detailed explanation
here. |
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 recommend an active discussion
on our Message Board!