Archive for category: English

Final exam

Instructions for Section One: Choose 2 of the following questions to respond to (if you respond to more than 2 questions, only the first 2 will be assessed). You must respond to one question about Never Let Me Go (either #1 or #2) and one question about Romeo and Juliet (either #3 or #4).

Question 1 (5 marks): This response should have 7 complete sentences. Explain how the following passage reflects Kathy’s use of pathos in Never Let Me Go. Explain how specific language and/or imagery in the passage represent your perspective, and integrate one quotation from the passage into your response to demonstrate this (MLA citation not required). To further support your perspective, explain how this passage relates to another event at Hailsham in which Kathy uses pathos to demonstrate her purpose.

Passage for Question 1:
We were fifteen by then, already into our last year at Hailsham. We’d been in the pavilion getting ready for a game of rounders. The boys were going through a phase of ‘enjoying’ rounders in order to flirt with us, so there were over thirty of us that afternoon. The downpour had started while we were changing, and we found ourselves gathering on the veranda– which was sheltered by the pavilion roof – while we waited for it to stop. But the rain kept going, and when the last of us had emerged, the veranda was pretty crowded, with everyone milling around restlessly. . . .
Miss Lucy was now moving her gaze over the lot of us. . . . I could see more drops coming off the gutter and landing on her shoulder, but she didn’t seem to notice. ‘If no one else will talk to you,’ she continued, ‘then I will. The problem, as I see it, is that you’ve been told and not told. You’ve been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way. But I’m not. If you’re going to have decent lives, then you’ve got to know and know properly. None of you will go to America, none of you will be film stars. And none of you will be working in supermarkets as I heard some of you planning the other day. Your lives are set out for you. You’ll become adults, then before you’re old, before you’re even
middle-aged, you’ll start to donate your vital organs. That’s what each of you was created to do.
You’re not like the actors you watch on your videos, you’re not even like me. You were brought
into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them, have been decided. So you’re not to talk that way any more. You’ll be leaving Hailsham before long, and it’s not so far off, the day you’ll be preparing for your first donations. You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.’ (Ishiguro 79-81)

Question 2 (5 marks): This response should have 7 complete sentences. Explain how the following passage reflects the theme of dehumanization in Never Let Me Go. Explain how specific language and/or imagery in the passage represent your perspective, and integrate one quotation from the passage into your response to demonstrate this (MLA citation not required). To further support your perspective, explain how this passage relates to an event in Part Two in the novel (when the students are living at the Cottages).

Passage for Question 2:
I’d hardly ever been to the Kingsfield in those days, so Ruth and I had to consult the map a number of times on the way and we still arrived several minutes late. It’s not very well appointed as recovery centres go, and if it wasn’t for the associations it now has for me, it’s not somewhere I’d look forward to visiting. It’s out of the way and awkward to get to, and yet when you’re there, there’s no real sense of peace and quiet. You can always hear traffic on the big roads beyond the fencing, and there’s a general feeling they never properly finished converting the place. A lot of the donors’ rooms you can’t get to with a wheelchair, or else they’re too stuffy or too draughty. There aren’t nearly enough bathrooms and the ones there are hard to keep clean, get freezing in winter and are generally too far from the donors’ rooms. The Kingsfield, in other words, falls way short of a place like Ruth’s centre in Dover, with its gleaming tiles and double glazed windows that seal at the twist of a handle. . . . That afternoon Ruth and I went to the Kingsfield, it was overcast and a bit chilly, and as we drove into the Square it was deserted except for a group of six or seven shadowy figures underneath that roof. As I brought the car to a stop somewhere over the old pool—which of course I didn’t know about then—one figure detached itself from the group and came towards us, and I saw it was Tommy. (Ishiguro 218-219)

Question 3 (5 marks): This response should have 7 complete sentences. Explain the significance of the structure of Shakespeare’s verse in the following passage from Romeo and
Juliet. Develop your discussion by focusing on how the rhythm and imagery emphasize the theme of the passage. To support your discussion, integrate and explain one quotation from the passage in your response (MLA citation not required).

Passage for Question 3:
ROMEO: [To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
ROMEO: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEO: Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
JULIET: Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO: Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
JULIET: You kiss by the book. (Act 1, Scene 5, page 21)

Question 4 (5 marks): This response should have 7 complete sentences. Explain how Juliet’s character traits in the following scene reflect her transition from being someone who follows the rules to someone who thinks for herself. How do Juliet’s language and imagery represent her ability to make decisions for herself? To support your discussion, integrate and explain one quotation from the passage in your response (MLA citation not required).

Passage for Question 4:
JULIET: Madam, I am not well.
LADY CAPULET: Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death?
What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live;
Therefore, have done: some grief shows much of love;
But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
JULIET: Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
LADY CAPULET: So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend
Which you weep for.
JULIET: Feeling so the loss,
Cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
LADY CAPULET: Well, girl, thou weep’st not so much for his death,
As that the villain lives which slaughter’d him.
JULIET: What villain madam?
LADY CAPULET: That same villain, Romeo.
JULIET: [Aside] Villain and he be many miles asunder.–
God Pardon him! I do, with all my heart;
And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.
LADY CAPULET: That is, because the traitor murderer lives.
JULIET: Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands:
Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death!
LADY CAPULET: We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not:
Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua,
Where that same banish’d runagate doth live,
Shall give him such an unaccustom’d dram,
That he shall soon keep Tybalt company:
And then, I hope, thou wilt be satisfied.
JULIET: Indeed, I never shall be satisfied
With Romeo, till I behold him–dead–
Is my poor heart for a kinsman vex’d.
Madam, if you could find out but a man
To bear a poison, I would temper it;
That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof,
Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors
To hear him named, and cannot come to him.
To wreak the love I bore my cousin
Upon his body that slaughter’d him! (Act 3, Scene 5, pages 61-62)

Section Two: Body Paragraph
Instructions for Section Two: In body paragraph format, develop an argument about how the following passage from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet represents Romeo’s tragic flaw. Include analysis of how dissonance and/or imagery in the passage help Shakespeare’s audience understand Romeo’s character traits. Begin your body paragraph with your thesis statement. The rest of your body paragraph should support your thesis by properly integrating, analyzing and explaining textual evidence from the passage. Your body paragraph should have all of the required elements, as well as comprehensive explanation of the significance of specific words in your quotations (MLA citations are not required).

Passage for Section Two:
(JULIET appears above at a window)
ROMEO: But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
It is my lady, O, it is my love!
O, that she knew she were!
She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold, ’tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek! (Act 2, Scene 2, pages 25-26)