Lit Studies Final Study Guide

What is "soft censorship"?

Indirect restriction without official bans (quietly removing books from libraries, not ordering controversial titles, and having restricted access)

True/False: The authors of the PEN America report Booklash note that because major publishers are businesses whose goal is to make money, they have never signed a formal statement committing to publishing a diverse range of views

False

Ravitch argues that most test makers depict the world:

As interest groups and/or the test makers think it ought to be

True/False: Diane Ravitch maintains that conservative pressure groups advocate censorship in textbooks but that liberal pressure groups do not

False

Bias and sensitivity guidelines are designed to:

Preserve students' self-esteem, avoid controversy, change society

True/False: Riverside Publishing did not allow any passages on mice or rats to appear in its tests

True

True/False: The authors of the PEN America report Booklash express concern that in using the notion of "harm" to censure authors and publishers, progressives have handed conservatives a tool for their book-banning campaigns

True

MORE THAN ONE ANSWER MIGHT BE CORRECT. Which of the following subjects are common targets of book bans, according to PEN America?

Grief, sexuality, and race

MORE THAN ONE ANSWER MIGHT BE CORRECT. According to the authors the PEN America report Booklash, which of the following are true?

Even some proponents of the #OwnVoices campaign have expressed concern that the movement has gone too far, authors from marginalized communities frequently find themselves stuck in an "Identity Trap"

True/False: Ravitch observes that the "scrubbing" of controversial material from textbooks makes them more interesting to students

False

Amidst a Twitter uproar over Laurie Forest's The Black Witch, Kirkus gave the book a positive review. Many social media users reacted with outrage. Kirkus responded by:

Publishing a statement noting that offensive ideas in books are not necessarily endorsed by the author

True/False: Kat Rosenfeld refers to an author who suggested that the interactions in YA social media circles are more dysfunctional than prison relationships

True

True/False: According to a New York Times analysis, modern textbooks from Texas continue to whitewash the cruelties of slavery

False

Ravitch notes that two large states dominate the textbook market: liberal __________ and conservative __________

California and Texas

Why, in Ravitch's view, does the use of bias and sensitivity guidelines constitute a harmful form of censorship?

They force publishers to sanitize literature, removing complex realities to create bland and inaccurate materials, thereby robbing students of essential knowledge and preventing them from understanding the world

True/False: Diane Ravitch notes that scholarly experts review most textbooks in educational magazines and journals

False

According to the New York Times, which of the following topics do California and Texas textbooks handle differently?

Immigration, housing discrimination against African-Americans, LGBTQ+ issues, and environmental issues

True/False: According to a New York Times review, California and Texas textbooks used different language on the scope of the Second Amendment

True

Which of the following best describes the author Kate Clanchy's view of sensitivity readers' revisions to books in general and to her memoir in particular?

She went into the editorial process with an open mind but was dismayed to discover that sensitivity readers wanted to change core features of her memoir. While she understands the importance of avoiding harmful content in children's books, she argues that adult fiction and nonfiction should be held to a different standard

Describe Mildred Montag, Guy's wife, in a few sentences—her personality and her actions

Mildred characterizes shallowness and mediocrity. Unwilling and unable to analyze rationally, she lives a shallow life. She distances herself from real emotion by identifying with "the family," a three-dimensional fiction in which she plays a scripted part. To remove any doubts about her materialistic, robotic lifestyle, Mildred surrounds herself with friends like Clara Phelps and Ann Bowles, vapid and witless dullards who select a presidential candidate by his good looks. Unsurprisingly, Mildred betrays her husband and flees their marriage while mourning the loss of her TV family

Summarize Beatty's history of his society's relationship with books

Captain Beatty explains that

society's love for books died gradually, not by decree, but because people chose instant gratification, short media, and conformity over complex ideas, leading them to request censorship to eliminate offense and confusion; ironically, Beatty himself once loved books but chose ignorance, using his deep knowledge to burn them and maintain the superficial happiness of his world.

True/False: In her Tablet piece, "Confessions of a Sensitivity Reader," Marjorie Ingall notes that when she encountered resistance to sensitivity readers, she "was suddenly reminded of a line [she] saw on Tumblr: 'Civility' means treating white people with respect; 'political correctness' means treating anyone else with respect"

True

True/False: Conservatives in Idaho threatened librarians to tread carefully about book selection by citing Bible verses

True

What happens in the city in the book's final chapter?

It is destroyed by bombs

Who informs on Guy Montag for the crime of owning books?

Guy Montag is informed on for owning books by his own wife, Mildred Montag, and her friends, who report him to the fire department

What group of people does Guy Montag meet on the other side of the river, and how do they describe their "jobs," as they see them?

He met people that identify themsleves based on which books they remeber. They don't believe they're better or smarter than others, but they know that books will need to be rewritten. They see remembering the knowledge of the past to create an educated future as their purpose.

When Guy reads the poem "Dover Beach" aloud to his wife Mildred and her friends, Mrs. Phelps responds by __________

Crying

True/False: Toward the end of the novel, Guy Montag discovers that Clarisse McClellan survived after all

False

Why does Mustapha Mond say to Helmholtz, before exiling him, "I almost envy you, Mr. Watson"?

Mustapha Mond envies Helmholtz because

Helmholtz gets to go to the Falkland Islands to be with other intellectual dissidents, pursuing pure science and art freely, something Mond sacrificed for power, preferring stability over passion

John the "savage" detests (MORE THAN ONE ANSWER MIGHT BE CORRECT):

His mother's lovers and Lenina's forwardness

Bernard Marx works in which profession?

Psychology

True/False: John returns to the "Savage Reservation" at the end of the novel

False

True/False: Lenina and Fanny share the same last name

True

True/False: Charrington, the proprietor of the small apartment that Winston rents, is arrested along with Winston and Julia

False

True/False: During their respective torture sessions, Winston betrays Julia, but Julia does not betray Winston

False

True/False: After their arrest, Winston and Julia never see each other again

False

For Winston, in Room 101, the worst thing in the world is the threat of being attacked by __________

Rats

True/False: The Appendix on Newspeak appears to have been written after Big Brother's reign has ended

True

Emmanuel Goldstein's book confirms much of what Winston suspected but was more systematic than his own inklings on Oceanic history and society

True

When she skips class with her fourteen-year-old friends, Marji comes home to an angry mother who has been told of her conduct. In order to appease her mother, Marji says that she has skipped her __________ class , when in fact she skipped her __________ class

Religion, grammar

How do the Satrapi parents smuggle rock posters from Turkey into Iran?

They used a technique of sewing the posters inside of clothing.

What joke did Marjane's disabled friend Kia tell her upon her return from Vienna? Draw a few pictures if it helps

The joke involved a soldier getting blown up or otherwise injured and the surgeons reattaching his penis in the incorrect place

Why was Marji expelled from her school in Iran (not the boarding house in Vienna, Austria)?

Marji was expelled when she got into an argument with and hit her principal

What kept Marjane and her husband Reza together for over six months even after she had realized that the marriage was not going to work?

They were too deeply invloved in a project together to actually separate

Outline EITHER Will Self's argument that Huxley better predicted the future OR Adam Gopnik's argument that Orwell better predicted the future

Will Self: Self's position aligns with the argument that contemporary society is controlled not by state oppression and information restriction, but by distraction, consumerism, and the willing consumption of entertainment

Adam Gopnik: Nineteen Eighty-Four better predicted the nature of modern authoritarianism, particularly the use of blatant lies to assert power and control the narrative, rather than Aldous Huxley's vision of control through pleasure and distraction in Brave New World

Which of the following best characterizes the Intelligence Squared debate between the American essayist Adam Gopnik and the British novelist Will Self on Brave New World and 1984?

Adam Gopnik argues that Orwell better predicted our post-truth future

"We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So!"

Fahrenheit 451

"Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?"

Brave New World

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past"

1984

"We had demonstrated on the very day we shouldn't have: on 'Black Friday.' That day there were so many killed in one of the neighborhoods that a rumor spread that Israeli soldiers were responsible for the slaughter. But in fact it was really our own who had attacked us"

Persepolis

"Every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn't do without Epsilons. Every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one. . . ."

Brave New World

"The masking tape is to protect against flying glass during a bombing and the black curtains are to protect us from our neighbors [...] Across the street. They're totally devoted to the new regime. A glimpse of what goes on in our house would be enough for them to denounce us!"

Persepolis

"We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal . . . A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind"

Fahrenheit 451

"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy"

1984

"They eventually admitted that the survival of the regime depended on the war. When I think we could have avoided it all ... it just makes me sick. A million people would still be alive"

Persepolis

"It's perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. . . . It's a mystery. . . . Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences . . . clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical"

Fahrenheit 451

"And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself"

1984

"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness"

Brave New World

"If you don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none"

Fahrenheit 451

"'For a revolution to succeed, the entire population must support it.'

'You can participate later on.'

'Sure, sure! When it's all over. Mom, please.'

'Oh no! Come on, you're going to bed now'"

Persepolis

"It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes—make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness"

Brave New World

"Within twenty years at most, he reflected, the huge and simple question 'Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?' would have ceased once and for all to be answerable"

1984