A sample midterm

Part 2: ID’s; SHORT ESSAY RELATING PART to WHOLE (Suggested: 20 min.) 40 points

Directions: for ten of the twelve passages listed below, supply

A) the author’s first and last name, correctly spelled (1 point)
B) the title of the novel, poem, etc., correctly spelled (1 point)
Total: 20 points

Underline book titles. Put poem and short story titles in quotation marks.

C) Choose one of the ten passages. Write a short essay explaining how the style and/or content of the excerpt relates to the whole work. If a character is speaking a portion of dialogue, it would be wise to identify the character, and perhaps the dramatic situation within the novel/story/poem. You’re expected to know the whole work in a general way, and to offer concrete, specific insights about the excerpt.
Total: 20 points

1. What need you, being come to sense,
   But fumble in a greasy till
   And add the halfpence to the pence
   And prayer to shivering prayer, until
   You have dried the marrow from the bone;
   For men were born to pray and save;
   Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
   It's with O'Leary in the grave.

2. I made it on the bevel
   1. There is more surface for the nails to grip.
   2. There is twice the gripping-surface to each seam.
   3. The water will have to seep into it on a slant. Water moves easiest up and down or straight across.
   4. In a house people are upright two thirds of the time. So the seams and joins are made up-and-down. Because the stress is up-and-down.

3. Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
   Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
   Their boistrous devotion to the sun,
   Not as a god, but as a god might be,
   Naked among them, like a savage source.

4. While the bombardment was knocking the trench to pieces at Fossalta, he lay very flat and sweated and prayed oh jesus christ get me out of here. Dear jesus please get me out. Christ please please please christ. If you'll only keep me from getting killed I'll do anything you say. I believe in you and I'll tell every one in the world that you are the only one that matters. Please please dear jesus.

5. Then the theatre was changed
   To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
   It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
   It has to face the men of the time and to meet
   The women of the time. It has to think about war
   And it has to find what will suffice.

6. Dropping dead down the aeroplane soared straight up, curved in a loop, raced, sank, rose, and whatever it did, wherever it went, out flutter behind it a thick ruffled bar of white smoke which curled and wreathed upon the sky in letters. But what letters? A C was it? an E, then an L?

7. That girls at puberty may find
   The first Adam in their thought,
   Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,
   Keep those children out.
   There on the scaffolding reclines
   Michael Angelo.
   With no more sound than the mice make
   His hand moves to and fro.

8. Outside now the Marge business was no longer so tragic. It was not even very important. The wind blew everything like that away.

9. No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
   Am an attendant lord, one that will do
   To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
   Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
   Deferential, glad to be of use,
   Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
   Full of high sentence, almost ridiculous--
   Almost, at times, the Fool.

10. So we set in the wagon, but the music wasn't playing now. I reckon it's a good thing we aint got ere one of them. I reckon I wouldn't never get no work done a-tall for listening to it. I dont know if a little music aint about the nicest thing a fellow can have. Seems like when he comes in tired of a night, it aint nothing could rest him like having a little music played and him resting.

11. And no more turn aside and brood
    Upon love's bitter mystery;
    For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
    And rules the shadows of the wood,
    And the white breast of the dim sea
    And all dishevelled wandering stars.

12. If there were water
    And no rock
    If there were rock
    And also water
    And water
    A spring
    A pool among the rock
    If there were the sound of water only
    Not the cicada
    And dry grass singing
    But sound of water over a rock
    Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
    Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
    But there is no water