Discussion Response on Fitzgerald, Stevens, and Hemingway's Works

(100 pts.)  Write a short discussion response (full sentences and paragraphs, but only two-three paragraphs) to ten of the following topics.  (Answer ONLY ten!)  You may use the book and any of your own notes; but please do NOT use the D2L site (or even go on there during the exam period until you are ready to submit your exam) or other outside sources. (D2L will check for plagiarism.) Remember, you are discussing in analytical terms, not simply summarizing the work.

1) The Great Gatsby often is characterized as one of the so­ called "Wasteland novels." Choose a particular image from The Great Gatsby and explain its allusion to The Waste Land.

2) What is the significance of the past in "Babylon Revisited"?  Does Fitzgerald use the idea of time or the past in the same way there as he does in The Great Gatsby?   In effect, how is it similar or how is it different?

3) What does Wallace Stevens mean by a "supreme fiction"? Discuss the idea of this "fiction" as it functions in one of his poems.

4) Discuss the significance of "the question" in one of the works we have read this semester.  Why is "the question" so important in Modernist literature?

5) How does Sarty in Faulkner's "Barn Burning" epitomize the Modernist Dilemma?  Discuss his success or failure in relying upon codes of transcendent value to guide him.

6) Discuss the thematic effectiveness of the title The Great Gatsby.  How does the title reflect Nick's struggle with jud ging others throughout the novel?

7) In Hemingway 's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," what is the central conflict of the story?  How is that related to the difference(s) between the older and younger waiters?

8) In Ellison's Invisible Man what is the significance of the protagonist's mixing up the terms social responsibility and social equality during his speech? What does the reaction of the men in the audience suggest about their acceptance of one term and

their hostility to the other?

9) How does Harry in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" OR Krebs in "Soldier's Home" represent the typical Hemingway hero? Explain the closing of the story (Harry's death or Krebs's alienation) in relationship to that position .

10) Judging from The Bear or "An Odor of Verbena," discuss the relationship of the Modernist landscape of Faulkner's setting to the transcendent value systems of the past.

11) In Fitzgerald's fiction, what do Judy Jones, Daisy Fay Buchanan , and Honoria Wales have in common? How is what they represent central to Fitzgerald 's fiction?

12) How and why does Fitzgerald contrast the East and West in The Great Gatsby? How does the conclusion of the novel reinforce that idea?  (Don't stop with the obvious.)

13) How does Countee Cullen's "Heritage" demonstrate what W.E.B. DuBois defined as "double-consciousnes s"?

14) In Hemingway' s "Hills Like White Elephants"Jig eventually says to the American: "Will you please please please please please please please please stop talking." In a story so heavily dependent upon dialog and the dialogic, what does such a statement suggest?

15) In Faulkner's Requiemfor  a Nun, Gavin Stevens says, "The past is never dead.  It's not even past."  Discuss the importance of the past and how it impinges upon the present and future in The Bear.

16) How would the poetic style of one of the poets of the Harlem Renaissance illustrate DuBois' concept of "double-consciousness" ?