American Literature
Final Exam 2012
Spragins

Part One: Usage/Vocabulary (20%)

Part Two: Essay on Jitney (40%)

Do middle class values serve the jitney drivers in Pittsburgh in 1978?

Becker’s faith in hard work, his strategy of accommodation with racism, and his resolution to follow the rules have been shaken to the core. How have the people in his neighborhood really survived to this point, and what will happen now that the city is moving them out? Has the role of middle class values changed over the years between 1776 and 1978? Has the time come for Becker to re-consider his judgment of Booster’s militancy?

Part Three: One–Act Play (40%)

Gather together in an interesting locale some characters from the works which we have studied this year and have them debate whether the American Dream is alive and well today. (There may even be a thunderstorm predicted!)

Have your characters consider the following definition of the American Dream:

Characters:
 
Ben Franklin

Huck Finn
Jim

Maggie Johnson
Jimmy Johnson
Pete the Bartender

Jay Gatsby
Daisy Buchanan
Tom Buchanan
Nick Carroway

Tom
Amanda
Laura 		Willy Loman
Linda Loman
Biff Loman
Happy Loman


Becker
Booster
Youngblood
Rena
Turnbo
Fielding
Doub
Shealy

 

OR...

Write a one-act play. In fifteen minutes of stage time, show character, setting, a situation, a struggle, and the climax of an action. Perhaps this climax will be a turning point in your character’s life.

Once you have chosen a character and decided upon the conflict your character must undergo, then you need to use the tools of playwriting to focus the action. You only have about fifteen minutes of stage time to present a complete action. Use the setting of your scene and an igniting action to focus the conflict of your play.

In a play we write about the day when something important happens. Plays are like a gathering storm that finally breaks! Plays occur on days unlike any other day. They occur on crisis days. People are in trouble. Desires are starting to boil. Something has happened which has turned up the heat! Start your play near the climax. What is the igniting action of your play?

Conflict is the lens which reveals the true nature of character: how the individual responds to the challenge of change.

Think about what you can make happen that will best bring out the conflict in the action. What is your igniting action?

1) Describe the setting of your play.
 
- Be specific. Do a thorough description of the setting. Convey the mood of your character’s state of mind in your description of the landscape in which he or she exists. Detail will bring your scene to life

2) Igniting Action

- What makes this day different from any other?
- The Ghost in Hamlet
- The Plague in Oedipus Rex
- The Door getting knocked in Curse of the Starving Class.

3) Write Stage Directions in Parentheses

- Explain the important physical movements that the characters take on stage.

4) Include a monologue in your play if you wish.

- Monologues come from a character’s deeply felt need to say something, to reveal something about themselves. Characters at a turning point need to tell people what brought them there.
- The character may be explaining himself, confessing, deceiving, winning someone over, figuring out something, building up courage, or coming up with a plan. What does your character really need to tell? Your monologue can take the form of a memory, a dream, a confession, a revelation, a plan, a philosophy or a story.
- Think about what you learned about your character that you hadn’t known before you wrote your monologue. Think about how this new knowledge ma teach you to sharpen the action.

5) Get inside your main character. Know your character’s agenda at all times. Think about your character’s agenda at all times. In a play the people have clear desires and wants. They are in active pursuit of their objectives. They carry their desires like spears into the circle of action.