American Literature
FINAL EXAM
HONORS
DO NOT WRITE ON THIS TEST. All answers are to be written on the answer sheet.
EXAM B
DO NOT WRITE ON THIS TEST. All answers are to be written on your answer sheet.
English 11 Course Literary Terms
A. BildungsromanB. Dialect
C. Diction
/ D. Foil
E. Local Color
AB. Mood
/ AC. Satire
AD. Style
AE. Third Person Omniscient
/ BC. Third Person Limited BD. Tragedy
BE. Tone
1. The writer's or the speaker's distinctive word choice
2. A character that contrasts with another character, usually the protagonist
3. Novel about the education and maturing of a young person
4. Attitude of the author toward the reader or the people, places, and events in a work
5. The perspective seen through the mind of a single character
6. Focuses on character who, because of a flaw, brings ruin upon him- or herself
7. Ideas, customs, behaviors or institutions are ridiculed for the purpose of improving society
8. The distinctive way in which the writer uses language in their writing
9. Lending realism to a story by describing area customs, manners and re-creating spoken language
10. A variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group or a particular region
Unit 1: Defining America
Read the following excerpt from President George Bush’s 9/11 speech and answer questions 11-12:
“The victims were in airplanes or in their offices. Secretaries, business men and women, military and federal workers. Moms and dads. Friends and neighbors…Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.”
11. What rhetorical device is illustrated in this excerpt?
a. Hook
b. Parallelism
c. Figurative language
d. Anaphora
12. What is the dominant appeal of this excerpt?
a. Ethos
b. Logos
c. Pathos
Read the following excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and answer questions 13-14
“But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”
13. Which rhetorical device is most dominant in the excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech?
a. Irony
b. Extended Metaphor
c. Simile
d. Personification
14. What is the effect of the rhetorical device utilized in this excerpt?
a. Appeal to the reader’s Ethos
b. Appeal to the reader’s Logos
c. Appeal to the reader’s Pathos
Unit 2: Introduction to Political Documents as Literary Nonfiction
15. In “Model of Christian Charity,” what does John Winthrop mean when he says that the people must be “knit” and work as “one man” together?
a. People should act more as a community
b. People should not worry about family needs
c. People should not worry about independence
d. People should model themselves after one Christian man
Review the following excerpt from The Declaration of Independence and answer question 16:
“The history of the present King of Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. TO prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”
16. What best describes the purpose of The Declaration of Independence?
a. To inform Europe of their complaints against King George III
b. To encourage world peace and the pursuit of happiness
c. To prove that America is the greatest nation in the world
d. To persuade Europe that America is a land of opportunity
e. To persuade the American people to fight for independence
17. What does Jefferson mean when he says that “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”?
a. Only governments can decide what is right for the common people.
b. People cannot be expected to make decisions about the government.
c. If people do not vote, they should have no say in the government.
d. Governments are created and given power by the people they govern.
e. None of the above.
18. In The Declaration of Sentiments, who is the “he” to whom Stanton refers to in the following statement: “he has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice”?
a. Men and Women
b. Husbands
c. The President
d. Men
19. What do The Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to The Constitution, and the “Miranda rights” show about the “people’s” view toward government?
a. Angry
b. Indifferent
c. Cautious
d. Loyal
Review the following excerpt and answer question 20:
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
20. According to the Preamble, what is the goal of “the people”?
a. Set the slaves free
b. Establish a Christian community
c. Declare Independence
d. Create a better government
21. In Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural Address,” what does he mean when he says that “neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained”?
a. Lincoln is disappointed by the magnitude and the duration of the Civil War
b. The Civil War has been long and bloody
c. The size and the violence of the Civil War took both the North and the South off guard
d. Neither the North nor the South thought the other could win the Civil War
22. What document is most closely associated with the “Miranda Rights”?
a. “A Model of Christian Charity”
b. The Declaration of Independence
c. The Constitution of the United States
d. The Declaration of Sentiments
e. Lincoln’s ”Second Inaugural Address”
Unit 3: American Romanticism – Transcendentalism
23. In the following line from “A Psalm of Life,” the bolded words demonstrate which type of meaning?
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time
a. Connotative
b. Figurative
c. Technical
Reread the following section and then answer question 24:
“For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the friend’s parlor. If this aversion had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause—disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs…The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them…”
24. What did Emerson say caused us NOT to be self-reliant?
a. the world's reaction
b. consistency
c. morality
d. a & b
e. b & c
f. a & c
Read the following quote and then answer question 25:
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
25. After his stay at Walden Pond, Thoreau declared that people who pursue their dreams
a. Will achieve favorable outcomes
b. Shall need the support of the woods
c. Should expect to give them up in the end
d. May be ridiculed by practical people
e. Must be careful not to reach too high
Read the following quote and then answer questions 26:
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
26. The primary type of language Thoreau uses in the above quote is “figurative.” What does the figurative language mean?
a. A man shouldn’t concern himself with what other people are doing, but only what is important to him.
b. It is important to connect to nature, which is the drum beat of our heart.
c. Music is a great way to show self-reliance
d. A man should try to keep pace with his companions, but if he doesn’t, that’s OK.
Read the following quote and then answer question 27:
“I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe -- "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”
27. What type of government does Thoreau believe is currently necessary?
a. No government
b. A weak central government
c. A strong central government
d. A totalitarian government
Read the following quote and then answer question 28:
“No clapping is possible without two hands to do it, and no quarrel without two persons to make it.”
28. What type of language or structure does Gandhi use?
a. First person point-of-view
b. Allusion
c. Parallelism
d. All of the above
Unit 4: Author’s Craft – Walt Whitman
“I Hear America Singing”
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
29. What is the effect of the parallelism in “I Hear America Singing”?
a. Emphasize the main symbol in the poem
b. Stresses an equality between professions
c. Establishes the speaker’s sense of uncertainty
d. Reinforce positive attitude toward workers
e. All the above
30. Which of the following quotes from “I Hear America Singing” serves as the clearest example of cataloguing?
a. “at noon intermission or at sundown”
b. “America”
c. “I hear America singing “
d. “singing what belongs to him or her”
e. “shoemaker singing”
“I Sit and Look Out”
I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame,
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate,
I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer of young women,
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid, I see these sights on the earth,
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners,
I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest,
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.
31. Which of the following best describes the attitude of the speaker in “I Sit and Look Out” toward the subject of the poem?
a. Outraged and scared
b. Hopeful and optimistic
c. Detached and mournful
d. Surprised and angry
e. All the above
32. What is the effect of Whitman’s anaphora?
a. Emphasizes the passive nature of the speaker
b. Reinforces the main simile of the poem
c. Explains why the end of each line repeats
d. Creates a sense of sadness and depression
e. Stresses the unity of all nature
Unit 5: American Romanticism – Gothic
33. American Gothic functions as one part of what literary movement?
a. Realism
b. Naturalism
c. Puritanism
d. Romanticism
e. none of the above
34. Which of the following was an influence on the Gothic movement in some way?
a. Romanticism
b. the Age of Reason
c. architecture of the Middle Ages
d. all of the above
e. none of the above
35. Gothic writers were romantic writers who explored the ____ of the individual.
a. romantic part
b. freedom
c. potential evil
d. transcendence
e. goodness
36. Which of the following writers did not write Gothic or Gothic-type literature?
a. Edgar Allan Poe
b. Walt Whitman
c. Nathanial Hawthorne
d. Stephen King
e. all of the above
37. Which of the following is NOT an element of Gothic writing?
a. verisimilitude
b. depravity
c. supernatural
d. death
e. horror
38. Which of the following is an element of Poe’s playbook?
a. claustrophobia
b. heightened senses
c. insanity of narrator
d. de-emphasis of death
e. all of the above
39. Edgar Allan Poe stated that "the death . . . of a beautiful woman . . . is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world." His famed poem, “The Raven” embraces this topic. Which of the following lines best summarizes the grieving tone of the poem?