Choose five of the following questions and answer thoroughly.   Use evidence from the text (quotes, paraphrases, and summaries) to support your claims.  You might also use your own observations and experiences for support.  For each entry, you will need to response with at least one 8-12 sentence paragraph.   Your responses must be in paragraph form and formatted according to MLA guidelines, and you should include an in-text citation as well as a works cited page. Failure to do so will result in the following automatic penalties:
One letter grade (10 points) for errors within your works cited
Two letter grades (20 points) for no in-text citations
Two letter grades (20 points) for no works cited

1.Name two elements of Post-modernism in either “Howl” by Alan Ginsburg or “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
2.Discuss the irony found in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and/or “Good Country People”.
3.Choose any poem by Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, or Sylvia Plath and analyze thoroughly (consider theme, tone, form, literary devices, etc.).
4.“An Agony. As Now” and “Will They Cry When You’re Gone, You Bet” are both poems about pain, mourning, and grief.  How does Amiri Baraka balance optimism with pessimism here?  How does he choose words and images that suggest both suffering and redemption?
5.Analyze Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” or Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” paying particular attention to the twentieth-century writer’s innovations in point of view or use of symbolism.
6.In “Babylon Revisited,” although Charlie is reformed and the “bad old days” are in the past, Fitzgerald still manages to recreate the sense of the Roaring Twenties. How does he do this?  What is the significance of the title? Why use the Biblical city of Babylon as part of the title? To what could that refer in this story?
7.Show the complex message in Sterling Brown’s “Strong Men” or Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son,” “I, too,” or “Let America Be America Again.” (Choose one of these poems and analyze. You may choose more than one of these poems to discuss if you wish.)
8.Robert Frost’s “Directive” advises its readers to get lost to find themselves.  How does this poem reflect Frost’s twentieth-century world view?  What are the relative values of disorientation and reorientation?  How does “Directive” offer a modern version of the American dream?
9.Describe carefully the persona of the speaker in T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by examining the way he sees the world.
10.What emotional or psychological impact does mythology bring to Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”?
The following poems all reflect the autobiography of the poet: Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room,” and Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus.” Discuss these two poems and the effect of these poems being autobiographical. Can we consider them to be the truth?
11.Explore the relationship of fathers in the twentieth century with Theodore Roetheke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy.”
12.White middle-class suburban life and marriage became a central subject for several contemporary writers. Discuss the treatment of these subjects in Updike’s “Separating.”

You may use the timelines below to help you identify readings that may not have been covered in the course.

1914 – 1945: http://wwnorton.com/college/english/naal8/section/volD/timeline.aspx
1945 – Present: http://wwnorton.com/college/english/naal8/section/volE/timeline.aspx

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