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