Essays:

Essay 1 from choice of several options on most recent poetry:

Essay 2 from choice of options making thematic connections between some or all of the following: The Great Gatsby, Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Jane Eyre.

Cheat sheet of one page, one-sided, okay with whatever notes you want to bring.

Sample short answer questions:

Identify and explain the significance of the passages in 1-3 sentences.  (You will have some choice on the actual exam: as in your choosing 8 passages from a possible 12 total, e.g.)

1. "She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.  So I didn't think much of it."

A+ answer:
In this passage from Huck Finn Huck is reporting Miss Watson's description of heaven.  The passage is significant because it shows how naive Huck is at the beginning of the novel: he says he wishes he could go to hell just to get away from her, and he is glad that he and Tom Sawyer are likely to be in hell together.  The passage is also significant because Huck's later decision to risk hell for rescuing Jim from slavery echoes this scene and shows a much more mature and informed understanding of heaven and hell than he demonstrates at this early point in the novel.

F answer:
This passage is from Huck Finn where Miss Watson is describing heaven to Huck.

2. "What I mean is—he thinks I'm sort of—prim and proper, you know! [She laughs out sharply.]"

A+ answer:
Here Blanche tells Stella what Mitch thinks of her (Blanche) in A Streetcar Named Desire.  The significance of the passage is that it shows how Blanche is a manipulative liar: she presents the false illusion that she is a "prim and proper Southern lady" to Mitch and everyone else in hopes of getting Mitch to marry her.  She thinks Mitch's believing her false image is funny because she knows how truly false it is.  Skank!

F answer:
This passage is spoken by Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire.  She is talking to Stella about how prim and proper Mitch thinks she is.

3. "She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

A+ answer:
This passage is from Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find,"and the Misfit is talking about the grandmother after he kills her.  The passage is significant because it highlights the ironic point that the grandmother, who was a dingbat usually, actually behaves like a good Christian woman when the Misfit is about to kill her.  She shows sympathy for her murderer when she treats him like her son and reaches out to comfort him—the implication is that she would have been a truly good woman if she had had such moments of stress all the time.

D answer:
The Misfit says this.  I don't remember the story too well, but I think it involves Greg Maddux and John Smoltz, and of course, its central theme is that the Atlanta Braves are the baddest team in baseball.