Take-home Midterm Exam

Instructions:

Choose three of the following four prompts to develop into essays. Copy and paste the essay prompts into a document, and write up your response below the question. You may find it beneficial to quickly outline your response and make yourself a list of supporting details to include to help you structure your essay. Because these are compare and contrast questions, I will expect to see some reflection in your concluding paragraphs to explain what makes the readings similar or different. I will evaluate your essays based on the relevance, accuracy, and detail with which you present supporting evidence, as well as your reflection on the readings. Take time to think through these responses to develop your ideas. Save your work, and upload it to Courseweb by the due date at the designated upload point for the Midterm Exam under Assignments.

Over the course of this exam, to receive full credit you must write about all three texts: Parable of the Sower, Klee Wyck, and Gem of the Ocean.

Due by Courseweb upload, by Tues. 3/5 by 11:59pm

  1. Consider how two of our readings have foregrounded tension with the laws of society in the world of the text. Which readings seem comparable in the way they highlight conflicts over law and order? Discuss, drawing on two or three detailed examples of crises from these texts that seem significantly worth comparing. Then, reflect in your concluding paragraph: How similar are these texts in the way they highlight a problem, present and/or resolve a crisis over law and order?

  2. How have walls been important in our readings so far in this class? Compare and/or contrast why walls are constructed in two of our readings. Why have characters in the readings constructed walls, and how useful are they for achieving their purposes? How effective is it to work on a wall in these texts, and significance does it have to characters in each text? Reflect: How similarly or differently are walls treated in these readings?

  3. Consider the way new, closely knit social units form in any two of our readings. Which passages or events in the readings seem especially memorable for showing what factors draw people together into supportive relationships? What internal or external factors (within or outside the new group) might separate the group? Compare and/or contrast the way the forming of new, strong relationships is treated in the readings you selected.

  4. Our readings have each featured journeys to remote destinations (both mental and physical), and each of these journeys has involved some transformation in spiritual perspective. Compare and/or contrast two of our readings based on the way people find or create spiritual significance in their travels, and what significance they seem to be finding.