John's English 2200 Midterm Study Guide

Ernest Hemingway, 1927
"Hills Like White Elephants" (142-47)

Biography: Hemingway killed himself with a shotgun in 1961, as had his father before him with a Civil War pistol.

Style: Hemingway wrote in short, explosive sentences, and compared his own writing to an iceberg, where most of the mass is found below the surface.

Quote: "All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the very first time."


William Faulkner, 1930
"A Rose for Emily" (93-103)

Biography: Born in Mississippi, but enlisted in the British Royal Flying Corps in Canada, which is when he added the "u" to his surname so it appeared more British.

Style: Used long complex snake like sentences, he wrote about a fictional version of his own "postage stamp" of native soil which he called Yaknopatawpha, reusing many of the same characters and families throughout his different stories.

Quote: "A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream."


T. S. Eliot, 1917
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (451-56)

Biography Fact: Although he was born in St. Louis MO, Eliot thought of himself as more British than American. He later became a British citizen.

Style: Used a modern style, with a lot of symbolic imagery.

Quote: "Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."


E. A. Robinson, 1897
"Richard Cory" (555)

Biography: Through the help of President Theodore Roosevelt, Robinson was pulled out of the slums of poverty and alcoholism, and placed in a job that conveniently allowed him to devote his time and talent to start his legacy as a poet.

Style: Robinson's is considered the stylistic benchmark for American poetry with its basic rhyme scheme, simple feet & meter.

Quote: "His writings were trying to express things and truths that he had seen, ideas that he believed in, as opposed to simply being a vehicle for thinly disguised life lessons."


Emily Dickinson, 1896
"The Soul selects her own Society" (439), "I heard a Fly buzz" (440), "Because I could not stop for Death" (440-41)

Biography: She secluded herself as a recluse from all social life at the age of 23 to work on her poetry.

Style: Her style is to capture impressions of particular moments, scenes, or moods, and often contains contradictory meanings and wording that can be hard to understand.

Quote: "I dwell in possibility."


Oscar Wilde, 1895
The Importance of Being Ernest (886-949)

Biography: Oscar Wild was a homosexual.

Style: Uses absurdity in character, dialogue, and plot to comment on the absurdity of propriety in Victorian society.

Quote: "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."


Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1968
"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" (103-110)

Biography: Marquez grew up in Columbia and was greatly effected by the bloodshed that took place there.

Style: Marquez wrote using magical realism.

Quote: "Magical realism expands the categorizes of the real so as to encompass myth, magic, and other extraordinary phenomena in Nature or experience which European realism excluded."


Franz Kafka, 1924
"A Hunger Artist" (161-170)

Biography: Kafka grew up in an atmosphere of familial tensions and social rejection that he experienced as a member of Prague's Jewish minority; tuberculosis lead him to starvation in his 40's.

Style: Kafka's lucid, concise style forms a striking contrast to the labyrinthine complexities, the anxiety-laden absurdities, and the powerfully oppressive symbols of torment and anomie that are the substance of the writer's vision.

Quote: "Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."


William Stafford, 1962
"Traveling Through the Dark" (568-69)

Biography: When the United States entered World War II in 1941 Stafford
was drafted before he could obtain his English degree.

Style: Often seen as "a poet of ordinary life." His works reflect things that he observed on a day to day basis, focusing on the earthy, accessible details appropriate to a specific locality.

Quote: "I enter that world like water or air . . . everywhere. Mythologizing, yes. I'm writing the myth of the world, not the myth of me."


William Wordsworth, 1798
"The Tables Turned" (588-90)

Biography: Was very close to his neurotic sister, and found inspiration in nature.

Style: A pioneer of the English Romantic style, he used simple poetic diction with open themes and common language to express subjects such as farmers, children, and nature.

Quote: Speaking of himself, his sister, and Samuel Coleridge, he said, "We were three persons with one soul."


Stephen Crane, 1897
"The Open Boat" (68-92)

Biography: Stephen Crane was never involved as a soldier in any war, but was a war correspondent which was actually how he ended up on the ship Commodore.

Style: Considered to be realism (Naturalism), but of a romantic quality because of the techniques he used.

Quote: "A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe, 'the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.'"


Robert Frost, 1916
"Mending Wall" (467-468), "The Road Not Taken" (469-70), "Birches" (470-72)

Biography: He recited a poem at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.

Style: Robert Frost owned many farms over his lifetime, consequently many of his poems are metaphors with New England farms or nature and often contain mixed feelings and contradictory ideas.

Quote: "Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't,
and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it."


Eudora Welty, 1941
"A Worn Path" (338-347)

Biography: Her mother went back into a burning building on crutches to rescue a set of books because they were so important in her house.

Style: She tended to write about past experiences and tried to relate her stories to her life's experiences in some way.

Quote: "What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself."


Dylan Thomas, 1952
"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" (582)

Biography: Avoided getting drafted, by drinking so much it made him sick.

Style: He would read his poems out loud to friends and family but wouldn't let them read his work.

Quote: "The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone."


William Carlos Williams, 1923
"Spring and All" (585-586), "The Red Wheelbarrow" (587), "This Is Just to Say" (587-88)

Biography: Sustained his medical practice during his lifetime.

Style: Model example of the Imagist movement's style and principles.

Quote: "No ideas but in things."