English 370, Spring 2015
Final: Monday, June 8, 2015, from 10:30 am-12:30 pm. Write
your essay in any word processing program you'd like, and then Block,
Copy and Paste your essay into a standard email, and send it to me AT
or BEFORE 12:30 pm. Late papers will be penalized at the rate of 1 point
per minute!
Below are four passages from four different authors. Choose ONE of the four passages for your analysis, and then
go to work.
In your answer I will be looking for pretty much exactly what we have been doing in class for the past 2+ weeks:
Word limit: 1000 words.
Passage 1: From Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, by Richard Rodriguez
I have taken Caliban's advice. I have stolen their books. I will have some run of this isle.
Once upon a time, I was a 'socially disadvantaged' child. An enchantedly happy child. Mine was a childhood of intense family closeness. And extreme public alienation.
Thirty years later I write this book as a middle-class American man. Assimilated.
Dark-skinned. To be seen at a Belgravia dinner party. Or in New York. Exotic in a tuxedo. My face is drawn to severe Indian features which would pass notice on the page of a National Geographic, but at a cocktail party in Bel Air somebody wonders: "Have you ever thought of doing any high-fashion modeling: Take this card." (In Beverly Hills will this monster make a man.)
["pass notice" here means "escape notice"]
[Note: Caliban is the half-monster/half-man inhabitant of the island of Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Son of the witch Sycorax, he is usually read as the dark opposite to the play's young hero (and suitor to Miranda) Ferdinand.]
Passage 2: From "To Build a Fire" by Jack London
As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but the spittle had cracked in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson creek, where the boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.
Passage 3: From Orlando, by Virginia Woolf
He--for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it--was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. It was the color of an old football, and more or less the shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse, dry hair, like the hair on a cocoanut. Orlando's father, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him.
Passage 4: From Celtic Illustration: 600-1100
Unlike the cramped image of Man, the Lion of Saint Mark conveys an impression of freedom and power. Not walking calmly like the lion in the Book of Durrow, but rising up in a prancing leap, the beast is give a forward impetus by the inscription IMAGO LEONIS behind its neck.
This image, too, derives in posture from the Diatessaron model, as we see it nervelessly reflected in the Persian version. The splendid heraldic quality of the Lion, however, is new – linking it with representations of animals in Pictish art.
The beast is caught in a rectilinear labyrinthine framework, consisting of two diagonally corresponding partitions. They create a sounding board for the rampant Lion, whose curvilinear forms contrast sharply with the straight lines of the frame. Since the feet of the Lion cut into the borders, it is probable that they were intentionally left without a filling.
This is perhaps the greatest masterpiece of all designs in Hiberno-Saxon books.