Assessment Essay Prompts
As a way of wrapping up the semester--and forcing you into a bit of review prior to the national exam--you should write an essay in response to one of the two prompts below.
Once you are ready to write, you should plan to spend about 45 minutes.
Better responses will:
- Avoid plot summary.
- Respond the prompt with sincerity.
- Make specific references to the text(s) involved as a way of demonstrating your thinking.
Choice 1:
According to a 2012 study conducted at Ohio State University, watching/reading tragedies causes audiences to feel better about themselves and about life in general. This effect on audiences is essentially the same as the one that Aristotle observed centuries ago in his Poetics: “the soul of tragedy has a paradoxical ability to be uplifting, even exhilarating” (Baxter).
This optimistic response seems counter-intuitive.
Psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl offers this remark on tragic suffering: “I speak of … an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action” (Frankl).
Aristotle says in his Poetics that a tragedy ought to cause us to “leave the theater feeling cleansed and uplifted, with a heightened understanding of the ways of gods and men” (“Aristotle on Tragedy”). For more of Aristotle’s views on this: https://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-poe/#H3 Links to an external site..
Prompt: Consider the body of tragedies we have read this semester and discuss how it is possible to view them as tales that lead us as an audience to a sense of optimism about the human condition. You do not need to comment specifically on all of the plays (in fact, you probably shouldn’t), but you should deal specifically with at least two (i.e. use them as examples in a substantive way).
Choice 2:
One of the evergreen ideas about works of literature are the products of particular contexts (time, culture, geography, language, local concerns, etc.). If they were only responses to those immediate influences, it's hard to imagine that any work of literature would ever find an audience after the particular concerns of a place and time change.
It is certainly true that much literature doesn't "age well," so to speak, but certain texts continue to find audiences who are very different in all kinds of ways from the audiences these works were written for. In addition, these new audiences often respond to these works in ways that original audiences did not.
There must be something about these works that make them capable of enduring appeal. (beyond any sense of the historical significance of a work or writer)
Prompt: Pick ONE play we read this year (Oedipus, Antigone, Hamlet, A Doll's House, Waiting for Godot, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, or Fences) and compose an essay in which you explain how that work "meets the moment" of our current time as readers. You might wish to consider how a work's theme, character(s), plot, setting, etc. provoke consideration of our current interests, fears, anxieties, concerns, desires, aspirations, etc.