As promised, here’s the midterm (a little early).  It’s due via email on Saturday at 10am sharp.  No late work accepted; no tech excuses whatsoever.  Have fun, and feel free to go over the suggested 75 mins or so, but don’t be a wingnut and spend hours on this.

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SHORT ANSWER (30 mins/45% of grade):

choose 5 of 8 : be sure to write the corresponding # next to your answer!

1. Faulkner often claimed that TSAF grew out of a nearly obsessive image in his head: that of a young girl with “muddy drawers” climbing a pear tree to look in a window while her brothers looked up at her.  In what ways does this image, and the scene associated with it the novel, contain the major themes of the novel in a nutshell?
2. Why is incest with Caddy a fitting “solution” (if only in fantasy) to Quentin’s problems?  What does the obsession with incest tell us about Quentin’s character and about 1920s Southern society more broadly?
3. Compare and contrast the different sense of time of any two of the following characters: Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Dilsey.
4. We know the stated reason for the trip to Jefferson that drives the plot of AILD: Addie’s request, after Darl’s birth, to be buried with her relatives in town. But what other motives do family members have to hit the road?
5. Why is the gramophone such a bewitching object at AILDs end?  What does it represent for the Bundrens?  In what ways does this object help to bring the novel to closure?
6. Chapter 6 of LIA begins with the enigmatic statement, “Memory believes before knowing remembers.”  What is meant by the oppositions memory/knowing and believing/remembering in this statement?  Give one example of how the plot fleshes out this rather abstract statement?
7. Christmas claims, at the beginning of Chapter 7, “On this day, I became a man” (146).  What is entailed in becoming a man for Christmas?  How does Christmas’s refusal to memorize the catechism form a template for later decisions?
8. What does Hightower’s father’s cloak mean?  What kind of narrative of the Civil War emerges from it, as opposed to the “cavalier” image of Hightower’s grandfather raiding the Union Army’s commissary?  What is at stake in Hightower’s reexamination (recollection) of his relationship to his father and grandfather (and/or his mother and “mammy”) in Chapter 20?

ESSAY: (40 mins/55%):

choose 1 of 3**

1. We have often discussed the many ways in which Southern society in the early 20^th century is dominated by a set of patriarchal norms regarding women: the “cult of virginity” that idolizes sexual purity and demonizes any deviations from it; the expectation that women remain confined to the home and “household management”; and the association of women with “soft” sentimentality rather than the “hard” work of production and civic involvement.  Do the novels we’re read primarily run with the grain of these patriarchal norms, or do they primarily contest them?  There is plenty of evidence for either proposition, so I’m looking for well-selected evidence and a strong argument.  You may want to call particular attention to the use of characters that conform to or diverge from “typical” femininity, and you should also think about issues of narrative voice: who speaks in the novels, and who is spoken for by others.

2. Many of the characters in the novels we’ve read seem to be “arrested” in a prior state of development, stuck in an obsessive or traumatic past moment, or otherwise dislocated in time.  Why is “arrested development” so fascinating to Faulkner?  What does the preponderance of “arrested” figures tell us about Southern society in this period?  Be sure to use examples of at least two or three characters in your answer.

3. The South has traditionally been considered “backwards,” a laggard in the process of social, cultural, and economic “development” that constitutes modernization.  But numerous recent theoretical accounts for such development emphasize that development always progresses unevenly, creating juxtapositions and linkages between “backwards” peoples/regions/practices and their more “modern” counterparts.  What are some of the ways that Faulkner’s work reveals this unevenness of modernization in the South?  How does Faulkner show the close contact between “modern” and “folk” people, places, and practices?  What are some ways that “backwards” and “forwards” ways of being are mixed in his work?  AILD is especially useful here, but TSAF and LIA could also be brought to bear on this question.

** For god’s sake, don’t misread this and try to write about all of them!!

*** I’m obviously using the standard abbreviations we’ve used throughout: TSAF = The Sound and the Fury; AILD = As I Lay Dying; LIA = Light in August