Final Exam

Choose ONE of the following prompts and write a 3-5-page essay (typed and double-spaced) in response. You may use your book(s), notes, the internet, or any other materials you find useful. This exam is designed to take approximately 1 hour, but you can use the entire 3-hour exam period if you like. When you have completed your essay, please email it to dlupton@email.unc.edu.

1. One issue we have devoted a great deal of time to this semester is how authors rely on, and sometimes manipulate, our expectations about narrative. Choose any two plays and compare and contrast the authors’ approaches to narrative. How do they play to or against viewers’ expectations? How do their strategies help to underscore the larger point of their plays?

2. One of the things that makes plays different from prose fiction and poetry is that plays almost always use dialogue as their primary means of developing characters. Prose and poetry, with their ability to relate a character’s thoughts directly, tend to be better-suited to investigate deep psychology, but playwrights are often also interested in psychological issues. Choose any two plays and compare and contrast the authors’ approaches to portraying psychological depth. What solutions do they find for portraying characters’ inner lives? How do these solutions color the way we understand these characters?

3. Earlier this semester we read an excerpt from Aristotle’s Poetics, which is generally considered the foundational critical text for Western drama. Choose any two plays and compare and contrast how the authors approach the “rules” of drama that Aristotle laid out. Which ones do they adhere to and which ones do they violate? Why do they make these choices? 

End of Semester Peer Evaluations

These are due by Friday:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cvmzkd2w1JnyOcCARqlgJgkTgCxZVRw8iJVSpsUbhgQ/viewform?usp=send_form

Draft Workshop: Paper #2

Today you will complete THREE assignments, each of which count for 10% of your paper #1 grade. Please make sure you complete ALL THREE assignments.

#1: Submit a draft of Paper #2

I asked that each of you have at least three solid pages of your first paper. Please put your draft in a Google Doc and share that document with dlupton79@gmail.com. You should also share the document with the two group members who will read your draft. Once you have done so, turn in a link to the document here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1u9Se64yHsi4ryRZ6xpEaJ2ZBDDQMekac24ThUGKtDwo/viewform?usp=send_form

#2: Draft Workshop #1

You will complete TWO draft workshops today. For each workshop, read your partner’s draft carefully, then copy and paste these questions into the Google Doc for the draft, answering each question in detail with at least a few sentences each. If you find it more helpful to answer any of the questions with inline comments, please note this below the question:

1. Begin by identifying the paper’s thesis statement. Does it make a specific and surprising claim about the interpretation of the text? Does it identify specific formal features of the text that support that claim? Suggest any ways in which the thesis statement might be improved.

2. Based on your understanding of the play, is the draft’s argument surprising or interesting? Why or why not?

3. Do you notice anything about the play that you would have expected the author to write about, yet it wasn’t covered in the draft? This might be a prominent formal feature (diction, syntax, etc.), a powerful image or metaphor, or something else entirely.

4. Are there any parts of the play that do not seem consistent with the author’s argument? Can these parts be reconciled with the author’s thesis? If so, how?

5. Compose a brief retrospective outline of the draft in which you identify each paragraph’s main idea in 3-5 words. Note any paragraphs that do not have clear (or clearly expressed) topic sentences, any paragraphs whose main idea does not relate clearly back to the thesis statement, and any paragraph that seems to have insufficient support for its main idea.

6. Identify any parts of the draft that, as a reader, you have difficulty understanding or following. Try your best to determine the cause of this difficulty; is the passage obscurely or confusingly worded? Is it insufficiently connected to the paragraph’s or the paper’s main idea? Provide your partner with any feedback that you think could help sustain the reader’s attention.

When you have completed the workshop, please turn in your work here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ZdqLN22yaILeAl1dXMOQtfm5MCvuBN6qXseb17BdYZc/viewform?usp=send_form

#3: Draft Workshop #2

Next, you will workshop a second group member’s paper, using the same procedures you used for Draft Workshop #1. When you have completed Workshop #2, turn it in here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14cOjYFfPcINnyZ1wquqqzGDnz3m9iYxbhrTL3eUDsn4/viewform?usp=send_form

If you do not complete both draft workshops during the allotted class time, they are due by NOON on Wednesday, April 23. Late workshops will be severely penalized and may not receive any credit at all. Remember, your peers are relying on you for your feedback, so be thorough and prompt!

Activity: Fires in the Mirror

1. One of the key themes that Smith addresses throughout the play is the idea of difference. Work with your group to enumerate some of the many ways that the characters perform or exhibit their differences. What do you think Smith thinks about these differences? Do all of them matter, and if so how much? Further, how are these differences complicated by the fact that “Fires in the Mirror” is conceived as a one-woman show in which a single actor plays all of the roles?

2. One of the things I found most striking and interesting about this play is the language. Describe, in a few words, what the writing in this play is like. Why do you think that Smith chose to present her text in this manner?

3. Rather than being organized into acts or scenes like most of the plays we have read, “Fires in the Mirror” is organized as a series of monologues. Why do you think that Smith chose this organizational strategy? How is it appropriate to the events spoken about in the play? What might have been problematic about portraying these events as a more traditional psychological drama a la “A Doll’s House” or “The Glass Menagerie?”

4. Like “The Glass Menagerie,” “Fires in the Mirror” presents a heavily filtered perspective; that is, we do not see an (ostensibly) objective depiction of the main events of the play (that is, the car crash, its aftermath, and the riots), but rather we see those events through particular characters’ limited perspectives. Do you think that there is a definitive “truth” about the events that inspired the play? What do you think Smith thinks? Is finding this “truth” important? Why or why not?

Reading Quiz 4/17

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1AxBtdnfexzrOqa2DwjulAE8anutqqTff0X_tzE6SWAc/viewform

Blog Post #5

         Rather than purposefully conveying a life lesson, Tennessee Williams uses The Glass Menagerie to showcase the struggles that an average family has during the Great Depression. Through the use of objects such as the abnormal images on the screen, the music that plays on cue, and the fourth wall, Williams pushes the boundaries of the traditional play. By setting up the play as a flashback to one of Tom’s memories as if it occurs in real time, the reader is left to wonder if having Tom serve a dual role as both the narrator and participant in the play affects the information that is presented to the reader. However, upon the conclusion of the play, the reader leaves frustrated with the ending. While not the ending the reader wanted or expected, by setting up the play as a "memory play" Tennessee Williams challenges the traditional structure of most modern plays.

         From the very beginning, Tom directly addresses the audience and breaks the imaginary fourth wall. In Tom’s opening line, he states “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” This immediately sets the stage for the remainder of the play and violates a reader’s expectation because Tom breaks the invisible fourth wall by addressing the audience. In addition to Tom breaking the fourth wall, by setting up the play in this memory format, the reader is left dumbfounded as to how Tom can reproduce the play in so much detail. When we think of memory, we generally compress certain events into short stories that can be related in one or two sentences. However, for Tom, this particular memory is very detailed. In this sense, the use of this play as a memory proves to be rather strange, until the ending that is. Because Tom reveals how the memory of Laura and Amanda haunts him, it is not surprising that he then retains so much information about the last time he saw them. So not only does the play defy a reader’s expectations in that the play is one of Tom’s memories, but also that he can recall this particular event in so much detail.

In addition to changing our initial expectations of the play, the use of the screen to display various images and the playing of music at certain times also sticks out to the reader. In reality, the music and images will not suddenly appear to reinforce the actions that occur at that time in the play. By using these various effects, reality is altered in order for Tom to express the certain parts of his memory. At times when music plays or an image appears, the reader’s attention is drawn to this particular aspect of the play. While in most plays, a certain monologue or climactic action draws the attention of the reader, in The Glass Menagerie, a reader’s attention is drawn to the music or screen as opposed to the actions of the characters.

        

By setting up the play in such a way, Williams not only dumbfounds the reader and breaks the traditional structure of most plays, but also achieves his purpose. Because the play breaks the traditional structure and is one of Tom’s memories, the reader wonders whether or not certain aspects are exaggerated or even occurred at all. Even upon the conclusion of the play, the reader does not end the play satisfied with the ending. Most plays would have Laura falling in love and marrying Jim, but The Glass Menagerie does not. Rather Jim goes back to his fiancé, Tom leaves his family, and Laura and Amanda are left in an apparent more hopeless situation than when the play started. Thus then the reader ends the play utterly frustrated with the outcome. However, the conclusion of the play solidifies William’s goal. Because the play is a memory, when the memory is over so is the play. There will not be an alternate, “happy” ending to satisfy the reader. So by breaking the traditional structure, Williams also challenges the reality of traditional plays. When readers think about the structure of most plays, the majority of events and themes are unrealistic. By having the play be more in line with reality, Williams uses The Glass Menagerie to simply showcase the lives of an average American family and the struggles that they face during a difficult time.

By establishing that this play is a memory, using the screen and music to draw attention away from the characters, and having an unhappy ending, Tennessee Williams continually violates the expectations of both a traditional play and the reader. In the end, he even has the reader questioning whether or not they received the true story after all. I mean, most plays have a happy ending, so when Tom leaves, the reader waits for Williams to resolve the play. However, because the play is one of Tom’s memories, when the memory ends so does the play. So while the ending is not what the reader wants nor expects, Williams achieves his purpose in challenging the reality of the traditional structure of most plays. 

The Glass Menagerie Part II

1. What do you make of the racial epithets that Amanda uses at the beginning of scene one? What is her tone when she uses these words? What do you think Williams intended the audience to make of this language? 

2. What does the fact that this is a “memory play” mean for the work formally? Aside from telling us up front that this is a memory play, how does the play reinforce the notion that it depicts memories and not real lived experience? Why is this important to how we understand the point of the play?

3. Not only is the play depicting memories, they are depicting Tom’s memories. Do you think that Tom remembers things the way they actually happened? The play depicts some scenes in which Tom was not even present. Can we trust his “memory” of these events? Are there any events or passages in the play that you are suspicious Tom may not be remembering accurately?

4. Do you think that Tom is blameworthy for leaving his family? Why or why not? Do you think that Williams guides us toward a certain reaction to Tom’s leaving? If so, how?