English 320:  The Short Story

Examples of the types of questions to be prepared to address on Exam 1

[Note:  If you print off this prep sheet for use off-line, remember that anything that shows up as underlined is not being singled out for special emphasis, but represents a link that you can follow-up only by going back online and clicking on it.]

This exam is worth 100 points.  It will be an in-class closed-book exam.  You will write a series of 6 to 8 short answers).  Then you'll write a series of very short answers on the stories you haven't written on yet.  In the course of the exam, you will write upon any given story only once.

The following information should help you prepare thoroughly for the exam.  (You should also consult the General Prep Sheet for the Short-Answer Exam, which lists the stories and critical concepts that you will be responsible for on the exam, and points you to resources for getting clear on those critical concepts.)

Section A.  (60-80 points) You will write short responses to 6 or 8 questions.  Each question will be worth 10 points.  You shouldn't need more than a couple or three sentences for each item you take up.  

Here are some examples of the kinds of questions you might expect to encounter in the exam.  You should use them as models for fashioning corresponding questions about other stories.  (Some of the questions provided here as examples only may actually show up on the exam..)  One the exam, the questions will be divided into groups from which you will be allowed to pick one to write upon.  (You can expect, then, that you won't be addressing the same critical concept in all of your answers.)  The purpose of this section is to enable you 

• to show your awareness of how a variety of critical concepts bring us to frame relevant curiosities.  
• to show you know how to ground a claim in relevant evidence
• to show you know how to follow up an observation with a successful inquiry into its significance
• to show that you have practiced doing these things with the stories in our reading assignments

Here are some typical questions.  In all but a few cases (1, 2, 7 & 11), I've posed them around stories that you've read, and we've discussed in detail in class, but that will not appear upon the exam.  (In 10 & 20, I've mentioned, in the variations, stories you've not read and that won't be on the exam.  Ignore these references -- unless, on some occasion, after the exam, you're moved to read those stories.)  

Your job, in rereading the stories that will be on the exam, is to practice bringing analogous questions to bear, and seeing how the story provides materials for arriving at insightful answers.

1. What point does Freud use the story of the horse of Schilda to make about the demands of civilization and the psychological health of the individual?  (What moral does he use it to draw?)  How does he use the story to do this?
   • In this kind of question, you're given a prompt about the overall theme of the story, and asked to explain something about how the facts or structure of the story supports that reading.
   • Comment.
2. Pick a story that is structured as a story of initiation.  Then explain how the way in which this works in the case you choose functions to raise certain issues that you take to be key to the story's overall theme.  OR:  Spell out a couple of key ways in which the protagonist's reaction to this experience contributes to our understanding of the protagonist's character?  (Note that here we're not using the term "character" to refer to personage or person with a particular role, but to the complex of psychological and ethical features that constitutes such a personage's personality.  For more on this see the article on Character and Characterization.)
   • What other stories would it make sense to expect a question of this form upon?
3. How does Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" not serve as an example of a story of initiation?
   • What other stories would it make sense to expect a question of this form upon?
   • Comment.
4. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," does Poe's characterization of his protagonist flat or round?  And is it dynamic or static?  Explain your answer in each case.  Then explain how our taking stock of these facts helps us to appreciate something specific that's important about the protagonist's deeper motivation.
   • Comment.
5. What is some fact that plays a role as exposition in Walker's Everyday Use."  Explain a couple of ways in which this is essential to the audience's appreciation of what follows.
   • Comment.
6. What best qualifies as the precipitating incident in the plot of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"?   Explain how what it sets in motion is crucial in the overall plot of the story as a whole.  OR:  Explain how we eventually come to understand it in light of the protagonist's deeper motivations.
   • Note that in this case there are two good answers, depending on which of the two plots -- the story told (the narrative past), or the story dramatized in the course of the telling of that story (the narrative present).  Depending on which one we pick, our answer to the follow-up question will follow different lines of analysis.
7. What is some important element of foreshadowing in the plot of Walker's "Everyday Use"?  What does it foreshadow, and how?  When we reread the story, how do we come to see this as important in the portrayal of the protagonist's character?  
   • What other stories would it make sense to expect a question of this form upon?
8. What is some instance of foreshadowing in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"?  The narrator knows where this is leading, but why doesn't he disclose this to the reader at this moment?
   • Why did it make sense to follow up the answer to the first question in this case by a different sort of question than appears as a follow up in the previous item?  Do we nevertheless in this case eventually also come round to issues about the protagonist's motivation?  
9. What are we to understand as the climax of "The Storm"?  How does it qualify as the climax?  Does it also qualify as an epiphany?  What's supposed to be our reaction to this event?
   • See how a question of this type would be appropriate for several of the short stories we have taken up? 
10. What is the denouément of "The Storm"?  Point out some way in which it contributes to the overall theme of the story.  OR:  Point out some way in which it leads us to a deeper insight into the character of the protagonist?
    • Are there any short stories we have read so far for which this question would lead to a dead end?  Here's a variation:
      • What constitutes the dénouement of Mansfield's "Miss Brill," and what of importance would be lost if it were eliminated?
        • See how the sort of "thought experiment" exploited in the follow-up here amounts to a special way of exploiting the general concept of foil?
11. "A Rose for Emily" is an example of a story that begins in medias res.  What does this mean?  What are some important events of the story that the narrator loops back to tell us?  How are they important to understanding the story's climactic episode?
    • Are there any other stories we've read so far that invite us to pursue this agenda of curiosity?
12. Pick a story that turns on epiphany.  Specify the epiphantic moment.  Explain how it functions as an epiphany.  Explain how our taking stock of these serves either our evaluation of the protagonist or our understanding of the story's overall reason for being.  (For example:  what thematically important issues does it eventually set us to unpacking?) 
    • Which of the stories we've read so far offer payoff for this line of curiosity?  (Are there any that don't?)
    • Comment

13. Pick a story that exploits participant narration, and explain how the author leads us to resolve the central issue that choice always raises.  Then point out some way in which the specific facts that we're brought to attend to in resolving this issue point to something important within the overall theme of the story as a whole.

    • Comment

14. Pick a story that exploits omniscient narration.  Point to a couple of key facts that this choice of narrative point of view gives us access to that would be be inaccessible to us (and thus not a fact of the story) if the author had chosen some other point of view (e.g., objective narration or participant narration).  For one of these, explain what makes it a key fact -- i.e., how it contributes something important (important how?) to the characterization of a main character, and/or raises some specific issue of thematic importance.
    • Comment
15. What happens to the narrator of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" as he approaches the telling of climactic moment of the story he is telling us?  What motivates this?  
    • Note that this question turns upon the distinction between what is told (described) by a dramatized narrator and what is exhibited (shown) by that narrator in the present.  Dramatized narrators are a special possibility when we have a participant narrator.  Hence this question would be useful to pose for any story in which we have a dramatized narrator.  For which of the stories we've read so far is this the case?
    • A variant of this question might be:  how does Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" function as a dramatic monologue?
16. How does the title of Alice Walker's story connect with the story's epiphantic moment?  What issues does this raise for us to consider?
    • Does this question invite being adapted to some other stories covered on this exam?
17. What sort of "everyday use" do we figure Dee would put the quilts to if she were to be given them?  What does this tell us about the values that are most important to her?
    • Here we find ourselves getting curious about some kind of action we could predict for a character beyond the action actually portrayed in the story.  Can you remember what, in our class discussion, prompted us to pursue this kind of thread in the cases of Dee and Maggie?  (What could we come up with if we were to ask the corresponding question about Maggie?)  Would this work with any other stories we've read so far?
18. What is some crucial decision the protagonist of "Everyday Use" takes at an important moment in the plot of the story?
    • Are some other stories we have met with structured around a crucial decision on the part of the protagonist?  (Note that this can be, but need not be, in the climatic moment; in some cases crucial decisions show up elsewhere -- in the rising action, or even in the denouément.)  In cases where this is so, are we led to be curious about the motivations behind whatever decision results?   Do we find the motivation to be simple, or are multiple factors at work?  Does the understanding we reach of the character's motivation affect our sense of that character's character?  [Note the double sense of this term "character" in our vocabulary.]  Note that the occasion for such a decision, depending on the circumstances, might present an opportunity, or a temptation, or a trial -- quite different kinds of situations.
19. How is the characterization of the victim important to the overall effect of Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart"?  OR:  how is the characterization of Bobinôt important to the outcome and theme of Chopin's "The Storm"?
    • What is the recipe that generated this question?  Can we follow that recipe to good effect with some other stories on our list?
    • Comment
20. Explain how the setting (natural and social) in Chopin's "The Storm" [OR:  Erdrich's "The Red Convertible"] relates to the main action of the story.  Conclude by pointing out how the behavior of the storm contributes to the story's theme.
    • Note that setting frequently plays a causal and/or conditional role in a story's plot (and that, when this is so, it can be in several distinct respects).  But we have to be careful not to force a symbolic role upon elements of the setting.  What are the clues that some feature of setting is playing a symbolic role, when it is, as it is in the conclusion of Erdrich's "The Red Convertible"?  (Cf. the fur piece in "Miss Brill."  Why is the P.O. a better choice for Welty to have fallen upon than, say, a Conoco station, or an antique shop?)
    • Comment.
21. What are some features of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" that retain their interest for us enough to motivate us someday to reread it, and that hold our interest during rereading?  Explain. 
    • Obviously, we undertake this question only if we think there are some features that work this way!  (But there are lots of different sorts of features that can work this way.  Can you think of how this works in a couple of the stories we've read so far?)
22. Pick a story that exploits allegory and show how this works.
    • Comment.
23. What are a couple of ways in which short stories differ from some genre (your pick) of traditional short fiction?  [Examples of these genres:  folk tales, parables, fables, nouvelles (also known as novellae).]
    • Comment.
24. How does Maggie function as a foil to Dee?  What's the thematic importance of some of the facts this relationship highlights?  OR:  How does our taking stock of these help clarify the motivation of the mother in the story's climactic moment?  

Section B.  (40 to 20 points)  You'll write a single sentence (or even just a phrase) on each story you did not address in Section A.  You'll need only to be specific enough to convince me that you deserve credit for having read that story, which was part of the required reading for the course, and that you understand the critical concept on which the question turns.

Thus I might ask you to specify the climactic moment for two of the stories, the precipitating incident for one, the denouement for one, an epiphantic moment for one, etc.  You may have written on that critical concept in Section A, your may not.  But here you need not explain your answer.  Nor need you explain why the answer is important.  Your job is merely to "show you were there."

    Remember to consult the General Prep Sheet for the Mid-Term.