This exam asks you to write five mini-essays. All questions are compulsory and are weighed equally. The number of words is indicated per question; within a margin of 10% you are required to stick to this work limit.

Question 1: William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying.

Using one article that you have located through JSTOR or MUSE or (a chapter) from a book from inside our own library, describe what you consider a key aspect of Faulkner’s novel.

The first paragraph of your essay must be devoted to 1) an outline three articles or chapters that you considered and 2) the reasons why you chose to use the article that you did.

In the remaining paragraphs of your essay, outline and discuss the theme that you selected, including such questions as: what role or relevance does the theme have in the novel as a whole? How does the theme develop in the course of the novel? Which character(s) or situation(s) carry this theme forward or illustrate its relevance and development? How does the novel’s form/or and style shape or influence the presentation of the theme?

Number of words: 750.

Question 2: Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.
Read and study Ann Rigney’s “All This Happened, More or Less: What a Novelist Made of the Bombing of Dresden,” History and Theory 48: 2 (May, 2009), pp. 5-24, and choose one theme that you consider a key aspect of Vonnegut’s novel.
In your essay, outline and discuss the theme that you selected, including such questions as: what role or relevance does the theme have in the novel as a whole? How does the theme develop in the course of the novel?Which character(s) or situation(s) carry this theme forward or illustrate its relevance and development? How does the novel’s form/or and style shape or influence the presentation of the theme?

Number of words: 600

Question 3: Art Spiegelman, Maus I and II.

Using one article that you have located through JSTOR or MUSE, or (a chapter) from a book from inside our own library, describe what you consider a key aspect of Spiegelman’s novel. How does the novel’s graphic form shape or influence the presentation of the theme?

The first paragraph of your essay must be devoted to 1) an outline of at least three articles or chapters that you considered and 2) the reasons why you chose to use the article that you did.

In the remaining paragraphs of your essay, outline and discuss the theme that you selected, including such questions as: what role or relevance does the theme have in the novel as a whole? How does the theme develop in the course of the novel? Which character(s) or situation(s) carry this theme forward or illustrate its relevance and development? How does the novel’s form/or and style shape or influence the presentation of the theme?

Number of words: 750.

Question 4: Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness

Select two short stories which you considered very successful in their treatment of the themes at hand, and two short stories that you considered less successful: per story, outline the story’s main theme, outline one of the main characters of the story, and explain why this story was (un)successful, according to you. Use 150 words per story to explain your choices.

Number of words: 600 words

Question 5:

Consider Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison’s A Mercy. Which text would you consider the best choice to include in a course of American literatures of the 20th and 21st century? Why?
Use 200 words per story to explain your choice.

Number of words: 600