ENG 252 FInal Exam

Postmodernism

After WW11-current, questions objective truth, traditional storytelling, and fixed meanings. Often use metafiction, irony, fragmentation, dark humor, unreliable narrators, and self-awareness to show that reality is shaped by language, media, and individual perspective rather than absolute truth.

James Baldwin

Homosexual, born in Harlem, moved to france. Giovanis room

James Baldwin - Sonny’s Blues

set in Harlem, New York, about two brothers who struggle to reconnect after years of separation. The unnamed narrator, a practical high school algebra teacher, learns that his younger brother Sonny, a gifted jazz pianist, has been arrested for heroin addiction. After the death of the narrator’s daughter, the brothers begin to reconcile, and the narrator finally understands Sonny’s suffering by listening to him perform jazz at a nightclub. The story explores themes of family, forgiveness, suffering, racial inequality, addiction, and the healing power of music, showing that art can transform pain into hope. The final image of the “cup of trembling” symbolizes both suffering and redemption.

Allen Ginsburg

Beat Generation and Beat Literature: rejected conformity, materialism, and traditional American values in the 60s

Allen Ginsberg - A Supermarket in California

the speaker imagines walking through a supermarket with Walt Whitman, contrasting Whitman’s vision of America with the consumerism and loneliness of 1950s America. The poem explores themes of alienation, materialism, individuality, and the search for spiritual and artistic connection.

Donald Barthelme

Houston Post writer, pioneer of “flash fiction” (an extremely short story, usually under 1,000 words, that tells a complete story with very few characters, a limited plot, and an emphasis on suggestion rather than detailed explanation).

Donald Barthelme - The School

a schoolteacher (the unnamed narrator) whose students experience an absurd series of deaths, including trees, animals, plants, and classmates. As the children repeatedly ask, “Is death that which gives meaning to life?” the teacher struggles to answer until he unexpectedly kisses the teaching assistant, Helen, suggesting that love and human connection offer hope in the face of death. The story uses dark humor and absurdity to explore death, meaning, innocence, love, and the search for purpose in an uncertain world.

Don Delillo

Consumerism, how media and technology shape life, “White Noise” satirizes American consumer culture

Don Delillo - The Most Photographed Barn in America

a chapter from White Noise in which Jack Gladney and his colleague Murray Jay Siskind visit a famous tourist attraction. Murray argues that people no longer experience the barn itself—they experience the idea of the barn because it has been photographed and publicized so many times. The chapter satirizes consumer culture, tourism, media, and the inability to distinguish reality from images, illustrating a central theme of Postmodernism: that media often shapes our perception of reality more than reality itself.

Grace Paley

metafiction, poet, political activist (female)

Grace Paley - A Conversation with My Father

metafiction, an unnamed daughter (the narrator) discusses storytelling with her elderly, dying father, who prefers simple, realistic stories with clear beginnings, middles, and endings. As the daughter repeatedly rewrites a story to satisfy him, the two debate the purpose of fiction, with the father favoring traditional realism and the daughter believing that people and stories continue to change rather than ending neatly. The story is a classic example of metafiction, exploring themes of storytelling, realism, aging, family, and the complexity of human life.

Amy Tan

cultural heritage, emotional conflicts between chinese american mother-daughter conflicts

Amy Tan - Half and Half

from the book The Joy Luck Club, narrated by Rose Hsu Jordan, a Chinese American woman reflecting on her childhood and her relationship with her mother. After Rose’s younger brother Bing drowns during a family outing, Rose struggles with questions of faith, guilt, and fate while her mother refuses to give up hope that Bing will return. As an adult facing the collapse of her marriage, Rose realizes she must stop passively accepting events and begin making her own choices. The story explores themes of family, grief, faith, cultural identity, fate versus free will, and finding one’s own voice.

Sandra Cisneros

latina, “The House on Mango Street”

Sandra Cisneros - Woman Hollering Creek

Cleófilas, a young Mexican woman who marries Juan Pedro and moves to Texas, hoping for a romantic life like the telenovelas she loves. Instead, she finds herself trapped in an abusive marriage and isolated from her family. With the help of Felice, an independent woman who literally shouts with joy while crossing Woman Hollering Creek, Cleófilas escapes her husband and returns to Mexico. The story explores themes of domestic abuse, gender roles, female independence, cultural expectations, and finding one’s own voice, while transforming the creek from a symbol of suffering into one of freedom and empowerment.

Allen Ginsberg

Appears in Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

Bob Dylan

Masters of War, A Hard Train’s a-Gonna fall

On the road

Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel and the defining work of Beat literature, following young people traveling across America in search of freedom, meaning, adventure, and self-discovery through a spontaneous, jazz-inspired writing style.

Howl

Allen Ginsberg’s most famous poem and a defining work of Beat literature. It criticizes conformity, materialism, censorship, and modern society while celebrating individual freedom and rebellion.

Woody Guthrie

an American folk singer-songwriter whose music focused on workers, poverty, social justice, and ordinary Americans. He greatly influenced later artists, especially Bob Dylan.

The Postmodern Condition

a book by Jean-François Lyotard arguing that modern society no longer believes in universal truths or “grand narratives,” making it one of the foundational texts of Postmodernism.

Walt Whitman

Father of free verse, Leaves of Grass

F

T or F: Emily Dickinson Numbered her poems

volunteered as a nurse in military hospitals

What did Walt Whitman do during the civil war?

Leaves of Grass

few loved it, Whittier burned it, Whitman kept revising it.

Abraham Lincoln

Whitman's "Oh Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last Bloomed at My Doorstep were elegies to commemorate the loss of

true

In one of her poems, Emily Dickinson's speaker begins by stating

I like a look of Agony,
Because I know it's ___________ .

F.O. Matthiessen

an American literary scholar who wrote American Renaissance (1941), an influential study of major 19th-century American writers, including Walt Whitman.

it excluded women writers

According to the editors of your text what was one limitation of F.O. Matthiessen's The American Renaissance?

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

a writer and editor whom Emily Dickinson contacted for advice about her poetry, asking whether her “Verse is alive.” He later helped edit and publish her poetry after her death.

cadence

 the rhythm or natural flow of language, created by patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables, sounds, and pauses. It is not the same as rhyme

Mark Twain - Notorious Frog of Calaverus County

Local Color/Regionalism. Set in a California mining camp, the story uses regional dialect, humor, and exaggerated storytelling to portray the culture of the American West. An unnamed narrator visits Simon Wheeler looking for information about Leonidas W. Smiley, but Wheeler instead tells him about Jim Smiley, a man obsessed with gambling who will bet on almost anything. Smiley trains a frog named Dan’l Webster and bets a stranger that his frog can out-jump any other frog. The stranger secretly fills Dan’l Webster with quail shot, making him too heavy to jump, and Smiley loses the bet. The story emphasizes humor, trickery, gambling, exaggeration, regional dialect, and frontier culture, making it more strongly associated with Local Color than traditional Realism.

William Dean Howells

The dean of american letters, truthful treatment of material, the atlantic monthly

William Dean Howells - Editha

A Realist short story in which the author criticizes Romanticism and jingoism (extreme patriotism). Editha, a passionate jingoist, romanticizes war and pressures her reluctant fiancé, George Gearson, to enlist; he goes to war and is killed. George’s grieving mother, Mrs. Gearson, confronts Editha and condemns her romanticized view of war. The story exposes the difference between the glorious fantasy of war and its brutal reality, supporting the author’s Realist philosophy.

Brett Harte - The Outcasts of Poker Flat

A Local Color Western set around a small California mining town that contrasts the supposedly civilized East with the “wild” West and challenges society’s judgments of supposedly “bad” people. After being exiled from town, John Oakhurst, an honorable gambler and leader of the group, travels with the Duchess, a kindhearted prostitute; Mother Shipton, an older prostitute who secretly sacrifices herself by giving her food to another; and Uncle Billy, a drunken thief who proves to be genuinely selfish. They become stranded in a snowstorm and encounter Piney Woods, an innocent young woman, and her fiancé Tom Simson (“the Innocent”), who tries to find help. Despite society labeling the outcasts as immoral, several demonstrate kindness, courage, sacrifice, and honor, while the supposedly respectable characters are not necessarily morally superior. The story combines Western humor and tragedy and uses Local Color to explore the more universal theme that people cannot be judged simply by their social reputation or status.

Sarah Orne Jewett - A White Herron

A Regionalist short story set in rural Maine about Sylvia, a shy nine-year-old girl who loves nature and lives with her kind grandmother, Mrs. Tilley. A young ornithologist/hunter arrives searching for a rare white heron and offers money to anyone who can reveal its location. Sylvia is attracted to the young man and initially wants to help him, but after climbing a tall tree and discovering the heron’s nest, she chooses not to reveal its location, sacrificing the possibility of human connection in order to protect the bird. Her choice represents loyalty to nature over civilization and marks an important moment in her coming of age. The story emphasizes nature vs. civilization, conservation, innocence, loyalty, and personal identity and is strongly Regionalist because the specific landscape and wildlife of Maine help shape Sylvia’s character and identity.

Mary E Wilkins Freeman - The Revolt of Mother

set in rural New England about Sarah Penn (“Mother”), a quiet but strong wife who finally challenges the authority of her stubborn husband, Adoniram Penn. Years earlier, Adoniram promised Sarah a new house, but instead he decides to build another barn, despite the family’s inadequate home. Their son Sammy largely sides with his father, while their daughter Nanny represents the possibility of changing traditional gender expectations. When Adoniram leaves town, Sarah stages her quiet “revolt” by moving the entire family into the new barn, transforming it into their home. When Adoniram returns, rather than becoming angry, he is emotionally affected and finally agrees to improve the house. The story explores gender roles, marriage, male authority, female independence, and quiet resistance. Its rural New England setting directly shapes the characters and conflict, making it strongly Regionalist while its ordinary characters and believable domestic conflict reflect Realism.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper

An autobiographical and Realist short story about an unnamed woman who has recently given birth and is suffering from what would now be understood as postpartum depression. She and her husband John, a physician, stay in a large, isolated country mansion, where he prescribes the “rest cure,” forbidding her from writing, working, or engaging in intellectual activity because he genuinely believes this will help her recover. She secretly keeps a journal and gradually becomes obsessed with the room’s yellow wallpaper, eventually believing that a woman is trapped behind its pattern. The trapped woman can be interpreted as a reflection of the narrator herself and of women confined by restrictive gender roles. Jennie, John’s sister and housekeeper, serves as a contrast to the narrator because she appears comfortable with the obedient, traditional domestic role expected of women. By the end, the narrator believes she has freed the woman from the wallpaper, but she has experienced a complete psychological breakdown and crawls around the room while John faints. The story criticizes the treatment of women, restrictive gender roles, male authority, and nineteenth-century medical practices, showing how denying women independence, creativity, and intellectual freedom can be destructive.

Mark Twain

Roughing It, Innocents Abroad, Life on the Mississippi were written by

a tendency towards nostalgia/sentimentality

According to the editors of your text, often what prevents Regional writers from falling into the category of "Realist" is 

F

T or F: Bret Harte's success rested on his ability to portray distinctive characters whom he connected to the increasingly urban cites of the East coast.

A

Multiple Choice: In the story "Editha," which sentence below best describes Mrs. Gearson’s perception of war?

 

A. She is vehemently opposed to all war.

 

B. She finds war “glorious.”

 

C. Because she is from the Netherlands, Editha remains decidedly neutral

 

D. Editha was the “Hanoi Jane” of her day, placing daisies in the gun barrels of the soldiers’ muskets.

 

E. none of the above

fear

In "A White Heron" what is Sylvia's first response after hearing the hunter?

Freeman

This author's work is deeply connected to the state of Maine.

Gilman

At the advice of her mother and husband, this writer sought treatment for her depression from Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, the most famous American neurologist of the day. 

S. Weir Mitchell

developed the “rest cure,” a treatment commonly prescribed to women suffering from nervous conditions

educated

In Twain's "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," according to Jim Smiley, a frog can become a great jumper if it is __________.

Emerson

Whitman once said, "I was simmering, simmering, _______________ brought me to a boil."

yawp

At the end of Whitman's "Song of Myself," the speaker states, "I sound my barbaric _______________ over the rooftops of the world."

Women and Economics

The author of "The Yellow Wallpaper" went on to write ___________, a feminist text that earned her immediate celebrity and is still considered her most important nonfiction work. 

didactic

intended to teach or convey a moral lesson to the reader

sylvan

related to, characteristic of, or located in the woods or forest

Stephen Crane - The Open Boot

The story follows four survivors—the Correspondent, the Captain, the Cook, and Billie the Oiler—as they struggle to survive in a small lifeboat off the coast of Florida. Throughout their journey, they battle the indifferent forces of nature while forming a strong sense of brotherhood and cooperation. Although Billie is the strongest and hardest-working member of the group, he is the only one who dies, emphasizing the Naturalist belief that human fate is determined more by chance, heredity, and environment than by virtue or effort. The ocean symbolizes nature’s immense power and indifference, making the story one of the classic examples of American Naturalism.

Theofore Dreiser - The Second Choice

explores how social class, economic pressures, and limited opportunities shape human decisions. The story follows Emma, a young woman who dreams of marrying for love but gradually realizes that financial security is more important to her survival than romance. Forced to choose between her ideal desires and the realities of life, she settles for her “second choice” in marriage. Dreiser suggests that people’s lives are often determined less by free will than by their environment, social expectations, and economic circumstances, making the story a classic example of American Naturalism.

Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud

These two individuals greatly influenced the literary period known as naturalism:

Jack London

He attributed his literary success largely to hard work -- to "dig," as he put it. He tried never to miss his early morning 1,000-word writing stint. He entered the University of California at Berkeley at age 20. He quit after one semester, at the same time unsuccessfully attempting to support himself by writing, eventually settling on work in a steam laundry to make ends meet. In 1897 he joined the gold rush to the Klondike. After his return from the Klondike in 1898, he attempted to write again for a living.

Stephen Crane

This naturalist writer died from tuberculosis before reaching the age of twenty-nine.

hubris

excessive pride

Theodore Dreiser

The 500 sold copies of his first novel and family troubles drove _______ to the verge of suicide. He worked at a variety of literary jobs, and as an editor in chief of three women's magazines until 1910, when he was forced to resign, because of an office love affair.

E.A. Robinson

tilbury town, Richard Cory, Miniver Cheevy, Mr. Flood’s Party

Edgar Lee Masters

Spoon River Anthology (collection of stories about connected small town lives), Elsa Wertman and Hamilton Green, inspired by a conversation between author and his grandmother

T.S. Eliot

“The Waste Land”, The Love song of J alfred prufrock: measured out his life in coffee spoons, mermaids singing but they wont sing to him

Robert Frost

Mending wall (good fences make good neighbors)

William Carlos Wiliams

Tract (funerals are overdone like literature, it should be simple)

Langston Hughes

Harlem Renaissance, Christ in Alabama, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Theme for English B

Susan Glaspell

Trifles (play, husband John Wright kills her bird so Minnie Wright strangles him) A Jury of her Peers is the short story version

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Babylon Revisited (Charlie wales wants his daughter Honoria back after defeating alcoholism but he cant.

William Faulkner

The sound of fury with 4 narrators telling the same story, Barn Burning: Sarty’s father Abner burns barns and Sarty decides between telling on his father for justice or keeping his family together.

John Steinbeck

The Chrysanthemums: Elisa makes flowers for a traveling tinker and she later finds that he threw them away

William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

______________________ began to incorporate modernist literary techniques such as
stream-of-consciousness narration and non-linear plotting into his already lofty style. The novel
__________________ describes the fall of the Compson family through four distinct psychological points
of view, one of which is that of a young man who commits suicide, and another
belonging to an illiterate who is severely mentally handicapped.

T.S. Eliot

In 1927, he became a British citizen, declaring himself a "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion."

Langston Hughes

When growing up this writer/activist lived variously
with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas, his
father in Mexico, and his mother in Washington,
D.C. After just one year at Columbia University,
Hughes left college to explore the world, working
as a cabin boy on ships bound for Africa and as
a cook in a Paris kitchen.