Midterm Study Guide Engl 106

The purpose of this study guide is not to indicate exactly what will be on the midterm exam. The ideas below (which we've discussed in class) are intended to help you to organize your studying and to think about the works we've read and studied so far this semester.  Use these study guide ideas with 1.) your notes from class discussions and your own notes/ideas to think about the stories we have read along with 2.) your review of the stories. Don't forget the author bios, the study questions at the end of each story, and the critical introduction and notes for TIDM.  Also, our Course Notes page has notes for some stories.  All of these will give you helpful context and background about specific works.

The midterm will be based on works from the beginning of the semester through all of TIDM

No notes or books will be used during the exam.

You should review your quizzes and write out practice responses to questions you make up, e.g., What is a theme of the story . . . ?  Be sure to review your in-class card.

Question types:

  1. Identifications: You will identify an unmarked passage from a story:  You will state the title and explain the passage's significance along with its relationship to the story as a whole. You should consider content and style.  I will not give you short, obscure passages. 
  2. Multiple choice, fill in the blank, true or false, or matching*
  3. Short Answer*  Think of individual works as well as connections among works.*

*Like quiz questions. 

Also, you will have some choices.

Time for midterm: 75 mins--the entire class period--for thinking, writing, and reviewing.  You will write the exam on notebook paper.

**There is class right after ours, so you will have to watch time carefully.  However, I can give you an extra five minutes if needed.

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Key terms: four elements of fiction we began the semester with, short story, novella, grotesque, storytelling, game theory (games--sports/hunting, baseball), income inequality (or the income gap--social and economic inequality), horror, invisibility, scientific method, scientific romance.

The Individual and Society

1. Individualism & The Need for/Dangers of Society/Community: How does one balance one's individual desires and needs with the demands/requirements of belonging to society or a community?  Is this possible without selling out or compromising one's own values, beliefs, and feelings?  What if society creates unjust or unfair conditions?  Or shapes an individual in negative ways?  What responsibility does one have to society? Is withdrawing from society a feasible solution sometimes?  Can an individual just reject society and do his or her own thing?  What would happen if everyone did this?  Do we need society to establish moral and ethical values to keep our humanity?  We also discussed the significance of passing down legacies, which provide order, stability, and meaning on personal and societal levels.  Consider these questions in stories such as "Saboteur," "Two Questions," and TIDM.  Is this theme particularly poignant for matters of race and ethnicity, e.g., "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona"?

2. Game playing:  "The Most Dangerous Game" and "Shoeless Joe" are examples of stories that discuss game playing (or more broadly "play.")  What does it mean to play a game?  Games of skill versus games of chance? Are games always playful?  Why do these stories invoke game playing?  As a metaphor?  Or some stronger connection/attraction--our individual desire for purpose, meaning, control, and order (sports as a microcosm of life)?  The differnce between viewing life as a game vs believing it is a game/contest?  What does our attraction to/obsession with game playing reveal about the societies in these stories?  Our own society?

3. Gender:  What is the role of men and women in these stories?  What can you say about the nature of masculine worlds? Does masculinity tie into other issues--individualism, game playing, social and ecomonic systems, e.g., capitalism?  What about the role and position of women in the stories we've read?  Consider "A Rose for Emily," "Two Questions," and "The Most Dangerous Game."

 4. Storytelling:  Why do we love stories--narratives?  What role do stories serve?  What ways are there to tell stories (e.g., plot, structure/narrative voice and language), and how do these ways each affect how a story is told and received?  Consider "The Lesson" and "Shoeless Joe."  TIDM?  Also consider the effects of the stories you have read this semester on you!

Extraordinary and Fantastic

1. Understanding the Mysterious and Fantastic--How do we react to the mysterious? Unusual? What do mysterious events or occurences reveal about how we understand our society? About what we really can know?  Look up "extraordinary" and "fantastic." How do we view people and situations who/that are extraordinary?  Consider these questions using, for example, TIDM and "Shoeless Joe."

2. Scientific Method:  How does TIDM present ideas about scientific method?  Why is scientific method an important concept in the novella?

3. This theme also raises questions about human nature, e.g., Evolution and ethics, the (fluid?) line between "animal" and "human."

Other ideas/themes you can think of that fall under our two main themes?

How Short Stories are Written

1. Consider how a well-crafted short story integrates plot (and setting), character, point of view, and theme.  One example is "The Most Dangerous Game."  Consider Poe's defintion of a short story (Course Notes--excerpt from his review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales).  Be able to discuss the relevant ideas concerning the four main elements of a story listed above.  How is TIDM, a novella, related to a short story:  Its similarities and differences?