John's English 2200 Midterm Study Guide
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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.'"
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."