美国文学问题作业汇总

Questions on Whitman’s poems

Questions on “Song of Myself”

Recalling:

1. According to Line 1 of Section 1, who is the poet celebrating? Whom do lines 2-3 also

include in the celebration?

2. What facts about himself does Whitman reveal in lines 6-9 of section 1?

Interpreting

1. Describe the relationship Whitman sets up with the reader in the first section.

2. Name as many characteristics of Whitman’s “self” as you can. Which characteristics seem the

most prominent?

Questions on “Beat! Beat! Drums!” Recalling

1. What people do the drums and bugles disturb in each of stanzas 1, 2, and 3?

2. what verbs and adjectives are used to describe the sounds of the drums and bugles?

Interpreting

1. Based on the description of the drums and bugles and the effect they have, what do they seem

to represent? What does the simile in line 2 imply?

2. Are the people in stanzas 1 and 2 doing anything out of the ordinary? Why is this significant? 3. Why might the people in stanza 3 be praying, beseeching, and so on? What do the drums and

bugles do to their prayers and pleas?

4. Explain how rhythm and repetition reinforce the meaning of the poem. In particular, consider

the effect of lines 1, 8, and 15.

Extending

What images other than drums and bugles might Whitman have used to make his point?

General writing topics on Whitman

1. Why might Whitman have called his volume of poetry Leaves of Grass?

2. By associating himself with the grass, what does the poet suggest about himself? Summarize

Whitman’s attitude toward nature.

3. Why is free verse particularly suited to Whitman’s ideas? How do you think it relates to

Whitman’s democratic principles?

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Questions on Dickinson’s poems

Questions on “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” Recalling

1. Where does the “Funeral” take place? Who keeps treading to and fro? 2. What keeps beating? What do the mourners lift?

3. According to stanza 3, what begins to toll after the mourners leave? 4. What breaks, according to stanza 5? What happens then?

Interpreting

1. What is the “Service” in line 6? What is the “Box” in line 9?

2. Whose funeral is the speaker envisioning? What might the last two stanzas be describing? 3. Compare the images beginning in line 12 with the images of the funeral presented in lines

1-11. Which group of images is clearer? Why?

Questions on “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—”

Recalling

1. What does the speaker hear in stanza 1? When does she hear it? 2. According to stanza 2, what are the “Eyes” and “Breaths” doing?

3. According to stanzas 3-4, what interposes between the light and the speaker? What happens

then?

Interpreting

1. What is happening to the speaker/ who are the other people in the room?

2. What is unusual about the description of the people in lines 5-6? From whose pint of view are

they being described?

3. Why is the fly’s appearance somewhat ironic? What basic message about death is suggested

to the poet by the appearance of the fly?

4. What slant rhymes—also called off rhyme, near rhyme, approximate rhyme and imperfect

rhyme— occur in “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died”? What effects do they have? How are the slant rhymes related to the meaning of each poem?

Questions on “Because I could not stop for Death—”

Recalling

1. According to stanza 1, why did Death stop for the speaker? What did Death’s carriage hold? 2. What three things did the speaker and Death pass in stanza 3? Where did they pause in stanza

5?

3. According to stanza 6, how much time has passed since the day of Death’s visit? What does

that time feel shorter than?

Interpreting

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1. Is the speaker in this poem alive or dead? What day is she describing? 2. What do lines 1-2 suggest about human behavior?

3. What might the three things the speaker passed in stanza 3 represent?

4. What is the “House” in the ground in stanza 5? Is this the speaker’s final destination? Explain. 5. Why does the day described seem so long to the speaker?

General writing topics on Dickinson

1. One of Dickinson’s greatest talents was her ability to find universal meanings in everyday

events. Why do you think all great literature must be able to do this?

2. The scholar who edited the definitive texts of Dickinson’s poems, Thomas H. Johnson, tells

us: “Emily Dickinson loved words ardently. Her feeling about them amounted to veneration and her selection of them was ritualistic.” What evidence do you find to support Johnson’s contention? What unusual or well-chosen words add power to the poems you have read? How does Dickinson’s use of everyday words help make her abstract ideas more concrete?

Comprehensive questions

General writing topics

Comparing Whitman and Dickinson

1. Both Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were poets of great originality and intense emotion.

Yet in temperament and life style they were almost exactly opposite. What do Whitman’s and Dickinson’s poems suggest about the sources of poetic inspiration? Where do they suggest the truly imaginative life can be found? What do you think made the poetry of these writers so fresh and original?

Comparing Whitman, Dickinson and Twain

2. Whitman, Dickinson, and Twain all helped develop American literature as a singular

expression of American life. How do the styles and subjects of these three writers differ from those of the American authors who preceded them? What do you think makes Whitman, Dickinson, and Twain so distinctly American?

Writing topics on Jack London’s Martin Eden and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie

1. To some extent, both the title characters are American dream makers and achievers. Please

compare and contrast them two from any perspective you like, for example, success, tragedy, morality, love, the meaning of life, etc.

2. To some extent, Martin Eden, Sister Carrie, Richard Cory, Gatsby are American dream

makers and achievers. Please compare and contrast them two from any perspective you like, for example, success, tragedy, morality, love, the meaning of life, etc.

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Writing topics on The Portrait of a Lady

1. According to the novel, what do you think is James’s view of female independence? What do

you think is James’s view of marriage? How about your own understanding on the relationship between female independence and marriage? Are the two issues contradictory or not?

2. Make a contrastive comment on the endings of the two versions of The Portrait of a Lady — the original novel and the movie version.

Questions on Edwin Arlington Robinson

Questions on “Richard Cory”

Recalling

1. Which line in the poem identifies the speaker? Which lines tell you about the economic

condition of the speaker?

2. What is Richard Cory “from sole to crown”? What effect does he have when he says “Good

Morning”?

3. What, “in fine,” do the people think of Richard Cory (Stanza 3)? 4. What is the “surprise” ending?

Interpreting

1. How are the “we” of the poem different from Richard Cory?

2. What do “crown” (line 3) and “imperially” (line 4) indicate about the speaker’s impression of

Richard Cory?

3. What effect does Cory’s final action seem to have on everyone in Tilbury Town? What does

Tilbury Town’s reaction to Cory’s life and death suggest about human understanding?

Questions on “Miniver Cheevy” Recalling

1. For what does Cheevy sigh and mourn in the first five stanzas? What does Cheevy curse in

the sixth stanza?

2. What are Cheevy’s feelings about gold, according to the seventh stanza?

3. To what does Cheevy attribute his unhappiness in line 31? What does he keep on doing,

according to the last line of the poem?

Interpreting

1. What do lines 9-10 reveal about Cheevy’s character? Lines 17-18? Lines 25-26?

2. Basically, how does Cheevy see himself? How do we see him? What really causes his

unhappiness?

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General writing topics on Robinson’s “Richard Cory” and “Miniver Cheevy”

1. Could Richard Cory and Miniver Cheevy be found only in a small Maine town at the turn of

the century? Explain your answer.

2. Irony is a contrast or a difference between the way things seem and the way they really are. In

literature there are three kinds of irony.

? Verbal irony occurs when words that appear to be saying one thing are

really saying something quite different.

? Situational irony occurs when what is expected to happen is not what

actually comes to pass.

? Dramatic irony occurs when events that mean one thing to the characters

mean something quite different to the reader.

Irony is often accompanied by a grim humor. There is an element of dark humor, for example, in the mistaken ideas that the townspeople have of Richard Cory, while Miniver Cheevy is almost comical in his hypocrisy and self-delusion. Thinking about ironies in “Richard Cory” and “Miniver Cheevy”

1) How is the use of the adjective “calm” in the next-to-last line of

“Richard Cory” an example of verbal irony? 2) Explain the situational irony in “Richard Cory”

3) Tell why “Miniver Cheevy” is an example of dramatic irony.

3. Write a brief essay comparing and contrasting “Richard Cory” and “Miniver Cheevy”. Begin

with a statement of each poem’s theme. Then show what the characters have in common and how they differ. Conclude by discussing the tone of each poem and the general impression each leaves with the reader.

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Questions on Ezra Pound’s poems

Questions on “In a Station of the Metro” Recalling

1. Where does this poem take place?

2. What two images are juxtaposed, or placed next to each other, in the poem?

Interpreting

1. Does the poet supply you with any information about how you should think or feel about the

poem? What does the poem consist of? What makes it “poetic”?

2. Why does the poet use the word apparition rather than appearance? (consider the connotations

of apparition.)

3. Ezra Pound’s own comment on “In a Station of the Metro” shows the poet at work:

Three years ago in Paris I got out of a “metro” train at La Condorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all day to find words for what his had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home . . . I was still trying and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but here came an equation . . . not in speech, but in little splotches of color . . . . that is to say, my experience in Paris should have gone into paint.

What does Pound mean when he says that an “equation” can be a poetic experience? Do you think “In a Station of the Metro” would have made a good painting? Why or why not?

Questions on “The River-Merchant’s Wife” Recalling

1. What form does the poem take? Who is writing it?

2. At what age did the river-merchant’s wife marry? What did she stop doing at fifteen, and what

did she desire? What happened when the wife was sixteen?

3. What do the monkeys do in line 18? What do the butterflies do in line 25? What does the wife

do in line 25?

4. If her husband tells her when he is coming through the narrows of the river Kiang, what will

the wife do?

Interpreting

1. How have the wife’s feelings for her husband changed since she married him? How does she

feel about her husband’s absence?

2. Is monkeys’ chattering usually described as it is here? What do the negative descriptions of

the monkeys and butterflies reflect?

3. Is the tone of this poem sentimental or matter-of-fact? Cite lines to support your answer.

Writing topics on “The River-Merchant’s Wife”

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1. Although longer and more narrative than a pure imagist poem, “The River-Merchant’s Wife”

uses many of the devices of Imagist poetry. In a brief essay discuss these devices and their relation to the poem’s subject matter. First explain the meaning of the poem. Then consider the poem’s use of

1) Simple, direct language 2) Free verse

3) Sharp images to convey emotions

2. Comparing

How is the attitude of the wife in “The River-Merchant’s Wife” different from the attitude expressed in nineteenth-century Romantic poetry that you have read? Compare this poem to Poe’s “To Helen”.

Questions on T. S. Eliot

Questions on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Recalling

1. According to lines1-14, what are “you and I” going out to “make”? To what do the streets lead?

For what does Prufrock say there will be time in line 27? In lines 32-34?

2. According to lines 37-46, what would Prufrock “disturb” if he dared to ask his question? Why

“in short” doesn’t Prufrock “force the moment to its crisis” (lines 75-86)? What remark by someone “settling a pillow” would make asking the question not worthwhile (lines 87-98)? 3. After he fails to ask his question, who does Prufrock say he is and is not (lines 111-119)?

4. Whom has Prufrock heard singing, according to lines 124-131? What does he think these

creatures will do?

Interpreting

1. What do the opening quotation from Dante, the descriptions of the fog, and the simile in line

3 suggest about Prufrock’s mood or feelings?

2. Reread lines 10-11, 45-46, 80, and 93-94. What do these lines suggest about Prufrock’s

opinion of the question he considers asking? What does the title suggest about the question? What is Profrock trying to avoid when he keeps saying “there will be time” in lines 23-48? 3. Why would Prufrock think of himself as “you and I”, or “we”? What do the following lines

reveal about Prufrock’s view of his life and his self-image: the opening quotation, lines 51, 73-74, 82, and 85?

4. How would Prufrock be like Lazarus if he asked the question? In not asking the question,

why is he unlike Hmalet?

5. What do the images in lines 121-123 suggest about the future Prufrock foresees for himself?

Is this future different from his past?

6. How are the mermaids unlike the women Prufrock visits? Why is it significant that Prufrock

hears the mermaids? That they will not sing for him?

Writing topics

1. In what ways are we all like Prufrock some of the time? Why might a middle-aged person in

particular identify with him?

2. Tell how this poem helps explain why the young Eliot called the modern world a “waste

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land” and why Gertrude Stain called the young generation who had fought in World War I a “lost generation”.

3. Although Prufrock says he is not Hamlet, the Eliot critic Grover Smith believes that

“Eliot’s Prufrock is a tragic figure . . . . The plight of this hesitant, inhibited man, an aging dramer trapped in decayed, shabby genteel surroundings, aware of beauty and faced with sordidness, mirrors the plight of the sensitive in the presence of the dull”

—T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays

What evidence supports Smith’s view? What evidence suggests that Prufrock is not tragic but comic? Do you believe he is either one or the other? Explain.

4. Although “The Love Song of J. Afred Prufrock” is written in free verse, some sections have distinct rhythms, and there is a good deal of rhyme. In a brief essay, discuss the use of rhyme and rhythm in the poem. First show how Eliot prevents his rhymes and rhythms from falling into a predictable pattern. Then explain how the lack of pattern relates to the tone and content of the poem.

Questions on Robert Frost

Question on “The Road Not Taken” Recalling

1. What diverged in the yellow wood? About what was the speaker sorry in the first

stanza? Where does the speaker stand and look?

2. According to line 7, why did the second road have the better claim? 3. For that did the speaker “keep” the first road? What did he doubt?

4. How does the speaker think he will be telling this story “ages and ages hence”? what

has “made all the difference”

Interpreting

1. Considering lines 9-10 and 11-12, how different were the two roads? What is Frost

therefore saying?

2. What might the roads represent? What does his choice indicate about the speaker? 3. Does the speaker think he made the wrong choice? Why or why not? How is his

attitude related to the title?

Extending

Suggest other dilemmas comparable to the speaker’s.

Questions on “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” Recalling

1. Where does the owner of the woods live? What will he not see, according to the first

stanza?

2. According to the speaker, what must the horse think? According to the second stanza,

when is the event in the poem taking place?

3. According to the final stanza, what must the speaker do before he sleeps? What does

the speaker say he must keep?

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Interpreting

1. What causes the speaker to stop?

2. What do the owner and the horse have in common? How do they differ from the

speaker?

3. Why does the speaker leave the woods? Does he regret leaving?

4. What might the incident in the woods represent? What might lines 15-16, especially

“sleep” mean?

5. Describe the rhyme scheme of the poem. How is the poem “knit” to a close?

Writing topics on A Farewell to Arms

1. Do you think whether Henry has done the right thing to run away from the battle? 2. Is Catherine too good to be true?

Questions on The Great Gatsby

1. What is so fascinating about Gatsby? In what ways does he exemplify the \

Has Jay Gatsby attained what he believes the dream promises? Is there

anything tragic about Gatsby?

2. What is the American dream? Does it mean the same thing for different

characters in the book?

3. Read a story or novel by Ernest Hemingway and compare it to a

Fitzgerald story or novel written at the same time. What are the stylistic differences? How does each author's style reflect his choice of subject material?

Questions on The Grapes of Wrath Ch. 23

What forms of entertainment are available to the working people? What is the significance of the storyteller? How do these passages relate to the songs of the guitar player in Ch. 17? What is the significance of the story told? Why is it about the Indians? What does the storyteller suggest? How do these issues relate to what the workers and the country as a whole is experiencing in the novel's present? Who is responsible? Consider the significance of the following passage:

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\was a brave on a ridge, against the sun. Knowed he stood out. Spread his arms an' stood. Naked as morning, an' against the sun. Maybe he was crazy, I don't know. Stood there, arms spread out; like a cross he looked. Four hundred yards. An' the men--well, they raised their sights an' they felt the wind with their fingers; an' then they jus' lay there and couldn' shoot. Maybe that Injun knowed somepin. Knowed we couldn' shoot. Jes' laid there with the rifles cocked, an' didn' even put 'em to our shoulders. Lookin's at him. Head-band, one feather. Could see it, an' naked as the sun. Long time we laid there an' looked, an' he never moved. An' then the captain got mad. 'Shoot, you crazy bastards, shoot!' he yells. An' we jus' laid there. 'I'll give you to a five-count, an' then mark you down,' the captain says. Well, sir--we put up our rifles slow, an' ever' man hoped some-body's shoot first. I ain't never been so sad in my life. An' I laid my sights on his belly, cause' you can't stop a Injun no other

place--an'--then. Well, he jest plunkered down an' rolled. An' we went up. An' he wasn' big--he'd looked so grand--up there. All tore to pieces an' little. Ever see a cock pheasant, stiff and beautiful, ever' feather drawed an' painted, an' even his eyes drawed in pretty? An' bang! You pick him up--bloody an' twisted, an' you spoiled somepin better'n you; an' eatin' him don't make it up to you, 'cause you spoiled somepin in yaself, an' you can't never fix it up\

Questions on “A Rose for Emily”

1. What details foreshadow the conclusion of the story? Could the ending be anticipated? 2. Develop a list of the descriptive details associated with Emily: her appearance, surroundings,

the way in which she appears to the townspeople, etc. 3. At first glance, “A Rose for Emily” seems to be quite a peculiar title for this story. Why do

you think the story bears that title? What does the title mean, in your opinion?

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4. Miss Emily is described as a monument at the first of the story? What is she a monument to?

Why does she deserve a rose?

5. Describe and discuss the symbolism of Miss Emily’s house.

6. How do the townspeople know what they know about Miss Emily’s life? What is the source

of their information?

7. Consider the mixed quality of the townspeople’s reactions to Miss Emily’s “failures.” 8. What is the significance of Miss Emily’s actions after the death of her father?

9. What role does Homer Barron play in the story? Is there anything ironic about a match

between him and Miss Emily?

10. Look closely at the second paragraph in section five. What does this paragraph suggest

about the nature of people’s memories of the past?

Writing topic

Write a story accounting what happened between Emily and Baron and how Baron died.

Questions on Carl Sandburg’s poems Questions on “The People, Yes” Recalling

1. According to lines 1-8, what will the “learning and blundering” people do? In

what are the people “so peculiar”? According to lines 8-20, what would the people do if they had more time? What do they wish?

2. According to lines 21-28, what do the people know? With what are they “in

tune and step”?

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3. According to lines 29-31, with what bundle do the people march? What do

they ask?

Interpreting

1. Citing details to support your answer, tell what kind or class of people this poem

is about. What aspects of “the people” are celebrated? (Consider especially lines 2, 5, 25, and the questions the people ask in the final line.) 2. Explain the “yes” in the poem’s title.

Writing topics

This poem was written during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Explain how knowing this affects your interpretation of the poem.

Questions on “Chicago” Recalling

1. What is Chicago called in the first three lines?

2. What three things do “they” tell the speaker in lines 6-8? What does the speaker

say Chicago is like in line 10? In lines 13-17?

3. How does Chicago laugh in line 19? In line 20? What does it laugh in line 22?

Interpreting

1. What does the poet like about Chicago? What negative aspects does he

recognize? Explain how the good and bad are related.

2. In what ways does the form of the poem relate to its content?

Writing topics

1. What qualities of Sandburg’s Chicago do you think are still reflected in urban

life? Do you find big, bustling cities like Chicago as exciting as Sandburg does? Why or why not?

2. In his biography of Sandburg, Professor Richard Crowder comments:

Whether consciously or not, Sandburg sensed that the spirit of Chicago could not be expressed totally in the confines of the usual lyric verse . . . . “Chicago” unlocked language, form, and subject matter in a way that some critics found distasteful, some puzzling, and some invigorating.

— Carl Sandburg How does Sandburg’s free-verse form relate to the spirit of Chicago that he wishes to convey? Why do you think some critics in Sandburg’s day might have found the language and subject matter of “Chicago” distasteful or puzzling?

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Questions on Wallace Stevens

Questions on “Anecdote of the Jar” Recalling

1. What shape is the jar? Where does the speaker place it?

2. According to the second stanza, what happens to the wilderness around the jar? 3. What does the jar “take” everywhere? Of what does it “not give”?

Interpreting

1. Explain in your own words the effect of the jar on the Tennessee wilderness. Does

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its effect seem positive in the first two stanzas? In the third? Why is “jar” an appropriate word?

2. How is a jar different from the wilderness? What might the jar represent?

Writing topics

Luck Beckett writes in Wallace Stevens that the first lines of Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar” “define lightly Stevens’ hope for poetry, his belief that through it the slovenly wilderness of the modern world can be made, for however transient a time, to yield modern man something that will satisfy his need”. Tell in your own words what need it is that the poem attempts to satisfy. Describe how poetry and all the arts attempt to meet that need.

General writing topic

Tone in literature is the author’s attitude. An author can demonstrate an attitude toward characters, toward subjects, and toward the reader. Some tones are clearly defined and easy to notice, such as a humorous tone or an angry tone. Some tones are more complicated, reflecting a combination of emotions in the writer. An ironic tone, for example, can suggest that a writer is both sympathetic toward and critical of a character or a subject.

Tone is often crucial to understanding a poem or a story. It is sometimes necessary to read a passage several times, sometimes aloud, to try to hear the voice of the author and decide what tone is being conveyed. Mark Twain’s stories, for example, convey much of their wry humor and irony only through the tone adopted by the author.

1. Describe the tone in one poem by each of the following: Edwin Arlington Robinson,

Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens. Which tone seems most like the tone of a poem by Robert Frost? Why?

2. Write a brief essay analyzing the relationship between the theme and the tone in one

of Robert Frost’s poems. Begin with a statement of the theme. Then describe the tone, and show how the tone supports or brings out the theme.

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