Engl 20923, Lit and Civ II
Williams, Spring 2014
Take-Home Final Exam
There are two parts to this exam. You are required to complete both parts. In Part I there are five essay topics, and
you are required to write on two of the topics.
Your essay should be typed, double-spaced, and follow the formal
conventions of writing. Quality of
expression does count. You will be
penalized for mistakes in grammar, spelling, syntax, and punctuation. Each of your essay should be two to three
pages in length.
Part I. Essays
1.
To Laugh or Cry. Consider the following quotations:
Your race, in its poverty, has
unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter . . . Against the assault
of laughter nothing can stand.
--Mark
Twain
Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the
surcease for pain. (surcease is consolation)
--Charlie
Chaplin
A day without laughter is a day wasted.
--Charlie
Chaplin
Perhaps I know best why is it man alone who
laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
--Friedrich
Nietzsche
Laughter and tears are both responses to
frustration and exhaustion. I myself
prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
--Kurt
Vonnegut
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
--William
Shakespeare
All of the above quotations emphasize the necessity of
laughter as a means of coping with all of the sadness, tragedy, pain, regret,
disillusionment, and loss that inevitably are a part of human existence. Generally, when confronting misfortune and
tribulation, people often use laughter as a defense.
How has laughter helped you?
Defended you? Write an essay
describing one of several specific incidents when you have used laughter as a
means of responding to life’s adversities.
2. Comedy Creation.
Create a descriptive outline and sketch for a humorous story
using one of the following comic story types from Vorhaus’s The Comic Toolbox: the fish-out-of-water
story, the center and eccentric story, or the character comedy story. You must describe the comic premise, characters,
setting[s], and conflicts. For the
primary characters, you must specifically identify their comic perspective,
flaws, humanity, and exaggeration. Also,
identify the specific comic tools that you would use in your storyline. How and where would you use these tools? You should also explain how you would use or
adapt the various stages in the comic throughline. Please note: I am asking you to describe how
you would write a humorous story by identifying its elements—and not write a
humorous story. Extra Credit: use TCU as
your overall setting.
3.
The Great
Debate. Consider the following
quotations:
Laughter often gives to foul discourse, and
foul discourse to actions still more foul.
Often from words and laughter proceed railing and insult; from railing
and insult, blows and wounds; and from blows and wounds, slaughter and
murder. If, then, you would take good
counsel, avoid . . . unseasonable laughter.
--Bishop
John Chrysostom
Laughter should be condemned as a moment of
indifference.
--Bishop
John Chrysostom
Laughter is our enemy because it is neither
a word nor an action ordered to any possible goal.
--Gregory
of Nyssea
The mother of laughter is insensibility.
--Bishop
John Climacus
Impurity is touching the body, laughing,
and talking without restraint. People
without temperance have a shameless gaze and laugh immoderately.
--Bishop
hohn Climacus
A man who deceives another and then
says, “It was only a joke,” is like a
madman shooting at random his
deadly darts and arrows.
--
Proverbs 26: 18-19:
Raucous laughter and uncontrollable
shaking of the body are not indications of a
well-regulated soul, or of a person
of dignity and self-mastery.
--
Basil the Great
Laughter is the beginning of the
destruction of the soul . . . the depth of evil
--
Abbot Ephraem
Early Christian theologians were decidedly opposed to humor
and laughter. Generally, they believed
that humor and laughter causes someone to lose control, is often crude, vulgar,
and obscene, expresses hostility, contempt, and disdain, leads to insensitivity
and disregard, promotes insincerity, irresponsibility, and idleness, and
diminishes the capacity to feel or express compassion. How would you refute these accusations? Write an essay countering the arguments of
the early Christian theologians.
4. Channeling Dave Barry: Humorous Dating Tips
There are two parts to this topic. In the first part you are asked to transpose
the Elaine and Roger dialogue from Dave Barry’s “Tips for Women” to a TCU
setting with TCU characters. Create a
dialogue in which two students on a date have a “serious” conversation,
although one is not quite sure what the other is talking about and actually is
thinking about entirely different subjects and issues. Include both their actual dialogue and their
thoughts. This is Venus trying to have a
“relationship” conversation with Mars.
In the second part you are asked to offer three or four dating tips
(with brief descriptions about why these tips are important). Use the Dave Barry essay we read as a model,
but please create your own TCU-related dialogue and tips
5. Self And Other.
Since the 1930s, cultural theorists and philosophers have
generally accepted that self-identity is related to Otherness, that we come to
know ourselves by distinguishing how we are different from others. Some theorists, such as the Russian critic
Mikhail Bakhtin, declared that the
very capacity to have a consciousness is based on otherness, that consciousness
is in essence multiple. Consider
Bakhtin’s statement below:
I
am conscious of myself and become myself only while revealing myself for
another,
through another, and with the help of another.
The most important acts
constituting
self-consciousness are determined by a relationship toward another
consciousness.
. . . The very being of man (both internal and external) is the
deepest
communion. To be means to communicate .
. . .To be means to be for
another,
and through the other, for oneself. A
person has no internal sovereign
territory,
he is wholly and always on the boundary: looking inside himself, he
looks
into the eyes of another or with the eyes of another . . . . I cannot manage
without
another, I cannot become myself without another; I find myself in another
by
finding another in myself.
The basic idea here is that we use the Other to assert our
own identities, that without reflecting ourselves against the Other (someone
who is different from us and who we use to develop our self-definitions) we can
never know who we are. The Other may be
a different age, race, gender, class, region, nationality, or even someone with
an odd appearance. The othering of
people is imperative to identity formation, requiring practices of admittance
and segregation that form and sustain character and boundaries (both personal
and national).
How have you come to know yourself through confrontations
with others? This topic requires you to
write an essay describing moments or situations of discovery in your life when
you realized the difference between you and another [or others]. These can be moments or situations of
discovery when you encountered someone [or several people] from another country
or culture, or another race or gender, or even another social clique. Describe what occurred during these
encounters with otherness and how they affected you.
(Tips for appeasing the Grader:
Do not use the four-letter word that does not exist. Do
not confuse noun/pronoun references. Do
not misuse punctuation. Be
descriptive—offer vivid details and examples.
Show—Don’t tell. Use an engaging
hook in your introduction. Don’t be repetitive or redundant in your
conclusion. Develop a tight, organized
structure. Polish your prose. Do not rely
on your spell-check program! Do not
confuse loose and lose, its and it’s, and they’re, their, and there!)
Part II. Write a Letter!
You are required to write me a letter five years from now (Spring
2019). Please let me know how your life
has progressed during the years since our class. Also, please reflect back on your TCU
education. What are the good memories
and the not-so-good memories? What of
your TCU education has proven advantageous, or less than advantageous? What of your college experiences is/are the
most meaningful? More specifically,
which of your courses has/have proven the most useful? What do you remember from our class?
So that you will not forget, you may tear off the handy
address reminder given below!
*******************************************************************
Dr. Dan Williams
Director, TCU Press
Honors Professor of Humanities
The John V. Roach honors College
TCU Box 297022
Fort Worth, TX 76129
