Instructions

Using the examination booklet, write four short essays in response to the following sets of paired quotations. Each essay should construct a concise comparative analysis of the pair presented for your consideration. Address similarities as well as differences in imaginative language, stylistic techniques, character development, and/or thematic significance. While you may concentrate on these passages themselves via close reading, you should also situate them in the broader context of the literary works from which they are taken. Try to draw revealing connections between the two excerpts. How does thinking about one passage help you to clarify the other? How do their shared or divergent emphases resound throughout our study of place-based American literature? How do they embody or resolve tensions between roots and routes? Aim to spend about half an hour analyzing each pair of quotations, so that you can complete all four essays in two hours.