English 102 Midterm Exam [Total of 100 Points]
Part One. Fiction. Respond to eight of the 10 quotations.

Five points per question.

Explain the significance of each excerpt, especially the section in bold, as it relates to each story's theme (NOT PLOT) or to the story's main character.

1. "Jupiter was an anomaly. His retrieving instincts and his high spirits were out of place in Shady Hill. ... Jupiter went where he pleased, ransacking. ..." ("The Country Husband")
2. "I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I re-echoed, I aided, I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still." ("The Cask of Amontillado")
3. "Her poems are always cool and intellectual; that is their form, which is contradicted or supported by a gravely sensuous texture." ("Our Friend Judith")
4. "She believes in those signs: Speed Monitored by Aircraft. It doesn't matter that you can look up and see that the sky is empty." ("No One's a Mystery")
5. "'I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.'" ("Hills Like White Elephants")
6. "You will have a full bag. People will seem to know what you have done, where you are going. They will have his eyes, the same pair, passed along on the street from face to face, like secrets, like glasses at the opera." ("How")
7. Gurov has just alluded to the "charming woman" he had met in Yalta to one of his card-partners. The card-partner replies. "'You were quite right, you know — the sturgeon was just a leetle off.' These words, in themselves so commonplace, for some reason infuriated Gurov, seemed to him humiliating, gross." ("The Lady and the Dog") Explain Gurov's reaction.
8. "On errands of life, these letters speed to death." ("Bartleby the Scrivener")
9. "The flat is shabby and badly heated. The furniture is old, was never anything but ugly, is now frankly rickety and fraying. ... She ... eats very little, from preference, not self-discipline." ("Our Friend Judith")
10. "Besides casual onlookers there were also relays of permanent watchers selected by the public, usually butchers, strangely enough. ..." Why would the narrator seem to think it strange that butchers should be watchers?
    ("The Hunger Artist")

Part Two. Poetry. Respond to five of the seven quotations.
Five points for each one.

Explain the significance of the excerpted lines, focusing especially on the words that are in bold type.

1. "Back from the hospital, his mind rattling/Like the suitcase, swinging from his hand,/That contains shaving cream, a piggy bank,/A book he sometimes pretends to read," ("Alzheimer's," p. 637)
2. "My mother, after a life/of it, says, 'This is the last straw.'/And it is. We're all clutching." ("You Didn't Fit," p. 635)
3. "— and, if God choose,/I shall but love thee better after death." Explain how one can love someone better after one is dead. ("How Do I Love Thee?" p. 601)
4. "and in one another's blameless eyes go blind." ("The Tally Stick," p. 602) Explain the paradox in this metaphor — in what way blameless? In what way blind?
5. "It lies/among keys to abandoned houses,/nails waiting to be needed and hammered/into some wall,/telephone numbers with no names attached;/idle paperclips." ("Wedding-Ring," p. 606) What does the ring have in common with these other items? Explain the logic.
6. "When I came in, and I was embarrassed/By old men standing up to shake my hand …" ("Mid-Term Break," p. 610) Explain. Why should the speaker be embarrassed?
7. "Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;/Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood" ("Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone," p. 615) What is the effect of these particular images (especially as compared to the earlier images of the first and second stanzas)?

Part Three. Essay question.
35 points.

Refer to stories we have read ("How," "Hills Like White Elephants," "No One's a Mystery," "The Country Husband" and "Our Friend Judith") as well as several poems ("The Tally Stick," "love poem," "Wedding-Ring," and "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" or any other 20th century poem we have read) and write an essay on the following topic:
The nature of love and marriage (these are TWO topics), as depicted in 20th century fiction and poetry, IS or IS NOT consistent. (Choose whichever point of view you think you can best defend by using the above stories and poems as your "support.") You will first have to identify WHAT IS the nature of love and the nature of marriage and state each definition. You also need to explain how you understand the term "is consistent" or "is not consistent."