English 444: American Literature from 1945 to the Present

Spring 2010 Final Examination Preparation

The final examination will consist of four parts: a matching section asking you to link quotations to the texts in which the quotations appear; an essay discussing Edward Albee and Amiri Baraka; and essay discussing literary experimentation in Barth, Coover, and Wallace; and an essay discussing one of the three assigned novels. The examination will be written in class on Wednesday, May 5, from 1:00 to 3:00; as explained in the course syllabus, the examination is worth 25% of the course grade or 250 points. A more detailed description of each part of the examination with the assigned point values is provided below.

Part I. Matching [60 Points]. When you arrive, you will receive the key to the assigned readings presented below and Part I of the examination consisting of 20 quotations from the 13 pieces of fiction and drama discussed to date in the course. Each answer is worth 3 points for a total of 60 points. Your goal is to match the letter of the alphabet assigned to the relevant story to the quotation. For this portion of the examination, you will have nothing on your desk but the key, the list of 20 quotations, and a pen or pencil. All other materials must be placed on the floor or on a chair beside you. To complete this portion of the examination, simply place the correct letter of the alphabet in the blank preceding the quotation as illustrated in the examples below. Please note that you will respond to 20 quotations but there are only 13 assigned readings. As a result, some titles will be the correct answer two or more times. There is no way by process of elimination to determine a correct answer, so do not waste time trying to figure out which titles have already been used and which haven't.

A / "Ambrose His Mark" by John Barth
B / The American Dream by Edward Albee
C / "The Babysitter" by Robert Coover
D / "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver
E / City of Glass by Paul Auster
F / The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
G / Dutchman by Amiri Baraka
H / "Little Expressionless Animals" by David Foster Wallace
I / "Lost in the Funhouse" by John Barth
J / The Names by Don DeLillo
K / "A Small Good thing" by Raymond Carver
L / "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way" by David Foster Wallace
M / The Zoo Story by Edward Albee

Essay Questions: The essay questions for the examination appear below exactly as they will appear on the examination. Come to class prepared to write your responses on the lined paper that I will provide. You may use your books and may have passages marked or notes in the books. For each essay, you are also required to bring a thesis statement and outline or list of supporting examples on a 4 X 6 index card [or similar sized substitute or reasonable facsimile thereof] and to submit that preparatory material with your completed exam.

Part II. Essay on Albee and Baraka [60 Points]. When Amiri Baraka's Dutchman premiered in 1964, it was paired with Edward Albee's 1958 play, The Zoo Story. This implies that the two plays and playwrights could be related either by the form or the content of their work. Write an essay in which you identify similarities in content and/or form between Baraka's Dutchman and either Albee's The Zoo Story or his The American Dream. In addition to formal similarities, you might consider how each play addresses American identity, the American Dream, the conflict between surface pleasantries [What Albee calls the fiction that everything is "peachy keen."] and repressed anger or violence, or any other thematic links that you see between the two plays.

Part III. Essay on Short Experimental Fiction [60 Points]. Robert Coover in "The Babysitter," John Barth in "Lost in the Funhouse," and David Foster Wallace in "Little Expressionless Animals" provided examples of short fiction that both experiments with narrative form and comments on how culture shapes our sense of self and our gender identity. Decide which of these three stories, for you, most effectively combines formal experimentation and an address to culture and identity. Then write an essay that opens by naming your choice and then proceeds to defend your choice through discussion of specific examples from the selected story. The strongest responses will occasionally reference the two rejected stories while defending the choice.

Part IV. Essay on One of the Novels [70 Points]. Write a discussion of one of the three novels covered in the second half of the course: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, City of Glass by Paul Auster, or The Names by Don DeLillo. All three novels can be considered postmodern, all three involve conspiracy theories that seem to influence the protagonist's actions and sense of self, all three address the relation between language and identity, or between culture and identity, and all three end in uncertainty, rejecting conventional notions of narrative closure. Select the novel that you feel best countered the ambiguity, uncertainty, and lack of formal closure prevalent in postmodern literature and discuss how that single novel maintained your interest through a thematic concern or issue that provided a sense of unity and continuity. Of course, the strongest responses will present a clear thesis paragraph that identifies the unifying idea and will then proceed to develop that thesis by discussion of concrete examples from the novel.