10 essay questions

• Make sure to check your spelling and grammar • This test is open book and open note, but you must cite and document your sources. Plagiarism will result in a zero for the exam and failure of the entire course For each quotation, you will need to: 1. Provide the title and author of the work. 2. Give the context of the quotation in the overall work. This might be the relevant aspects of the plot that lead up to or follow from this moment in the story/poem/etc. Do not feel like you have to give the whole story; just contextualize the quotation. Show me that you did the reading. 3. Analyze the quotation using key vocabulary words, themes, and concepts from the work that we discussed. Make use of materials from our class discussion boards and our course materials (videos, introductory readings, handouts, etc.) insofar as they relate to this passage. Write a three-paragraph response to the following questions. Make sure that your essay uses specific examples from the readings (quote, paraphrase, or summary) 1. And God spoke all these words, saying: “I am the LORD your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slaves. You shall have no other gods beside Me. You shall make you no carved likeness and no image of what is in the heavens above or what is on the earth below or what is in the waters beneath the earth. You shall not bow to them and you shall not worship them, for I am the LORD your God, a jealous god, reckoning with the crime of fathers with sons, with the third generation and with the fourth, for My foes and doing My commands. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain. Remember the sabbath day to hallow it. Six days you shall work and you shall do your tasks, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. 2. QUEEN: Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song? OPHELIA: Say you? nay, pray you, mark. [sings] He is dead and gone, lady. He is dead and gone, At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone. 3. On the very top of the pyre they placed his body, and on it flung the fire. And when Dawn born of the morning showed forth her fingers of rosy light, Then around the pyre of illustrious Hector the people gathered; first they extinguished the burning pyre with dark-gleaming wine entirely, all that retained the fire’s strength; and then his brothers and his comrades picked out his white bones as they wept, and the swelling tears fell from their cheeks. And taking the bones they placed them in a golden box, after covering them round with soft purple cloth; swiftly they placed these in a hollowed grave, and covered it from above with great stones asset close together. Lightly they heaped up the burial mound—lookouts were set all around, lest the strong-greaved Achaeans should attack before— and when they had piled up the mound they started back. Then having come together they duly gave a glorious feast in the house of Priam, king nurtured by Zeus. Thus they tended the funeral of Hector, breaker of horses. 4. And – strangely – many times, as they were performing their tricks over him, he was a hair’s breadth from shouting at them: “Stop lying! You know and I know that I’m dying, so at least stop lying.” But he never had the courage to do it. The dreadful, terrible act of his dying, he saw, was reduced by all those around him to the level of an accidental unpleasantness, partly an indecency (something like dealing with a man who comes into a drawing room spreading a bad smell), in the name of that very “decency” he had served all his life, he saw that no one would feel sorry for him, because no one even wanted to understand his situation. 5. The way that can be spoken of Is not the constant way: The name that can not be named Is not the constant name. The nameless was the beginning of heaven And earth; 6. The named was the mother of the myriad creatures Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to Observe its secrets; But always allow yourself to have desires in order To observe its manifestations. These two are the same But diverge I name as they issue forth. Being the same they are called mysteries, Mystery upon mystery— The gateway of manifold secrets. 6. Light breeze on the fine grass. I stand alone at the mast. Stars lean on the vast wild plain Moon bobs in the Great River’s spate. Letters have brought no fame. Office? Too old to obtain. Drifting, what am I like? A gull between earth and sky. 7. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wanned; Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! For Hecuba! What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? 8. JOCASTA: Why—what so particularly did you learn from my story? OEDIPUS: You said that he spoke of highway robbers who killed Laius. Now if he uses the same number, it was not I who killed him. One man cannot be the same as many. But if he speaks of a man travelling alone, then clearly the burden of guilt inclines towards me. JOCASTA: Be sure, at least, that this was how he told the story. He cannot unsay it now, for everyone in the city heard it—not I alone. But, Oedipus, even if he diverges from what he said then, he shall never prove that the murder of Laius squares rightly with the prophecy—for Loxias declared that the king should be killed by his own son. And that poor creature did not kill him surely, –for he died himself first. So as far as the prophecy goes, henceforward I shall not look to the right hand or left. 9. Explain how Hamlet explores the theme of seeming versus being. How does Shakespeare set up this binary and then go on to make it more complicated as the play progresses? Use specific examples in your answer. *** Write an essay (at least five paragraphs) in response to the following prompt. Your essay should include an introduction with a thesis (a three-part thesis is fine), at least three body paragraphs that begin with topic sentences, and a conclusion. Be sure to back up your argument with specific evidence from the works of literature you discuss (quote, paraphrase, and/or summary). Be sure to write about a different work of literature in each paragraph so that you are discussing three readings in all. 10. One of our goals in studying world literature is to encounter different cultures and time periods by reading the literature that they produced. That said, we usually connect to works of literature because of something that we relate to and find timeless and universal. Write an introduction to your essay that addresses a fellow student who has not yet taken this course. Explain the way that world literature can be both foreign and familiar. In your first body paragraph, describe how the Hero’s Journey applies to a work of literature that we studied and to a real-life situation. Be specific. In your second body paragraph, explain to your fellow student which work of literature you related to the most, and be specific about why. In your third body paragraph, describe which reading you think you will remember the longest, and tell your fellow student why