Lavinia from Titus Andronicus
Final Exam
Part I: Creative Retellings (70 Points)
Toni Morrison’s A Mercy emphasizes the value of multiple perspectives that only a range of characters can contribute to a story; thus, in A Mercy, each character gives the reader a new perspective on the same story being told. Take, for example, when Floren’s mother gives Florens away to Jacob: A Mercy provides different viewpoints from Florens, Jacob, and Florens’s mother. Florens understands her mother’s act as one of betrayal. Jacob views the act as a sympathetic business trade. Florens’s mother explains that her decision was an act of mercy to save Florens from the evils of slavery. However, not all literary works allow readers multiple insights.
In this creative final exam, you are to make an argument for what information readers could gain about a text we have read in ENG 104, if the authors allowed multiple characters to give different perspectives of the same story, such as Morrison does in A Mercy. Reading Raleigh’s response to Marlow’s “Passionate Shepherd” might help you with this assignment. From the following list, choose one character and text upon which to base your argument:
- Sen or Eliot’s mom in “Mrs. Sen’s”
- Japanese husbands or the Japanese-American children in Buddha in the Attic.
- Mala or Anna/Anja from Maus
- Joseph or Anise from Watch on the Rhine
- Lavinia from Titus Andronicus
Instructions:
- Select only one character/text from the list above. (5 points)
- Select one moment in your chosen text where the selected character could offer another perspective to readers.
- Type out the passage exactly the way it is written in the text. If you select Maus, type out the dialogue only. (5 points)
- Your passage should be between 6-10 lines. (5 points)
- In 1-2 paragraphs, give a close-reading of the selected moment by answering the following: (2pts/length)
- What is the context for the selection? (5 points)
- What characters are present and/or involved in this moment? (5 points)
- How is your selected character involved/related to this moment? (15 points)
- Why does your selected character matter for this moment, whether s/he is present or not?
- In 2-3 paragraphs, describe how and why this selected moment and text, overall, would be different if told through the viewpoint of your selected character? (3pts/length)
- Use textual evidence to justify your answer.
- You must use at least 3 quotes (type them out). (10 points)
- You must explain in detail how these quotes support your answer. (15 points)
Total: 70 points
Part II: Reflection on ENG 104 and your participation (30 points; 5 pts for each question)
Answer the following questions with short answers (2-3 sentences will suffice for most answers).
Value of Reading Communities (Groups):
- What did you find most useful about having a reading community throughout the semester?
- How could you have better participated in your reading community? (presence, voice, contribution)
- What did you learn from preparing the group presentations?
- What did you learn from presenting to the class?
- What did you learn from other presentations and watching other groups present? (Learning the plot of the presented text is not an acceptable answer).
Commonplace Book
- Looking at the entries for our commonplace book (found on Blackboard), discuss how 1 entry influenced or changed how you understood the corresponding text.
- Select 1 commonplace book entry.
- Who posted the entry?
- Name the text the entry responds to.
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Lavinia from Titus Andronicus
Lavina in the end of act 2 of Titus Andronicus, the character enters ‘her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravished’ (2.4.0 SD). In this play the rapist Chirion and Demetrius come on stage with her, taunting: ‘’so now go tell, and if thy tongue can speak, / who ‘twas that cut thy tongue and ravished thee.’’ Here they have not only raped her but cut off her tongue
Lavina has no hands hence she cannot provide the story to other about her………….
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