Common themes
Description
Essay Exam Question and Explanation:
For this first essay exam, write an essay of approximately 1.5 pages. The essay will be typed and double-spaced, using Times New Roman 12 point type, and formatted according to MLA style. Please use specific examples from the texts to support your answers.
At this point in the semester, what are some of the themes (underlying meanings or insights about life) that you have noticed so far in the course readings?
Have you noted common themes in the course readings so far? If so, what are the common themes that you have noticed? Please use specific examples from the course readings to back up your points. As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Stories and poems read so far….
1) Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
2) “Hope”
Hope
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.
Lisel Mueller
3) Necklase
4) The Lottery
