English 320:  The Short Story   |   Spring 05

Final Exam:  The Optional Essay -- Topics & Guidelines

Time and place of the Final Exam:  a reminder

Remember that the in-class final exam will take place in our regular classroom (Eisenhower 012).  The day and hour depends on which section you are enrolled in.

• The 1:30 MWF section takes the final on Friday, May 13, beginning at 11:50.  (You'll have until 1:40 to complete the exam.)
• The 2:30 MWF section takes the final on Tuesday, May 10, beginning at 4:10.  (You'll have until 6:00 p.m. to complete the exam.)
• Some of you will have conflicts of various kinds.  I can accommodate some switching and trade-offs. 
  • But you need to arrange this in advance with me by e-mail.  (Send a message to lyman@ksu.edu with "Request to switch final session" in the Subject line of the message header.) 
  • If there are not enough seats for everyone who shows up at one of the sessions, those of you from the other section will have to sit on the floor.  Be sure to bring some stiff surface with you to do your writing on, in case this unfortunate result should befall.

Be sure you find your way to the Prep Sheet for the in-class portion of the final exam!

General Guidelines for the Essay Portion of the Final Exam

• The criteria I'll be relying on in evaluating your essay are spelled out in both in a succinct summary and in a detailed explanation.  Two key points to keep in mind are:
  • The main body of your essay is to be organized as an expository analysis, not as a running summary of the story's plot.
  • Be sure to be specific in your references to the appropriate explicit details of the work, and in spelling out your interpretive inferences.
    • If there are especially relevant short passages from the text, it would be well to incorporate them in your essay.  (There's no need to give page references, however.)
• Think of yourself as addressing the kind of reader described in the memo on Writing with the Appropriate Reader in Mind.
• This essay will be worth 50 points -- equivalent to the one you've written (and possibly also revised) before.
• How long?  A rough guide might be
  • If you write it out-of-class, you should shoot for at least a page, single-spaced, with standard 1-inch margins, and 12-point Times Roman type.
  • If you write it during the exam session, you should allocate at least a half-hour of the exam period to this task.  Obviously, you should have done some thinking beforehand about what you want to say, so that you're not spending that half-hour trying to figure out on the spot what's relevant to include.

Topics to choose from

Write a well-developed, appropriately organized essay in which you carry out one of the following explanatory tasks.

Option One.  Show how the foil systems at work in Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" clarify the theme of the story as a whole.

For some detailed pointers on how to go about this, see this description of the writing assignment on Kafka.

This discussion assumes that you've already put yourself through the longer of the two study guides on this story.

Option Two.  Propose and defend a hypothesis about what the stoning-by-lottery in Jackson's "The Lottery" is appropriate to cover.

Basically, you'll be unpacking an extended analogy, treating the story as allegorical.  For some detailed pointers on ways to go about this, work through the series of study guides on this story: 

• SG1
• SG2
• SG3 and/or SG4

Option Three.  Explain how foil systems work to point the way to the overall theme of Achebe's "Dead Men's Path"

There are two study guides to this story.  If you're writing an essay on it, it would be well to work through both:  SG1, SG2.

Be sure to discuss both

• the foil relationship between the world of nature on the mission premises and the world of nature around it and
• the foil relationship between the headmaster and the village headman.
  • How do they differ systematically -- not merely in the positions they take in respect of the bone of contention, but in their manner of treating each other, and their ultimate values?

Option Four.  Explain in detail how the narrator of Lardner's "Haircut" probably makes an impression on his client that is quite different from what he thinks he's making.

Your focus should be upon several things we understand about his friend Jim that Whitey himself is oblivious to, even though our view of Jim is based entirely on what Whitey tells us about him.  You'll want at least in part to focus on our understanding of the deeper motives behind the pranks Jim pulls and the enjoyment his fans, and in particular Whitey himself, take in them.

Some issues you'll want to address are raised in the Study Guide  to this story.