Destiny always seems decades away, but suddenly it’s not decades away; it’s right now. But maybe destiny is always right now, right here, right this very instant, maybe.
Brother Joshua in Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz
Pick five of the following items. For each, explain in your blue book, in approximately four to five sentences, where the term occurs and what its definition is, as well as what its relevance and/or significance are. (5 points each.)
Pick five of the following passages. In your blue book, identify the name of the work from which the quote comes, the author of the work, who is speaking in the passage quoted, and, in 1-2 sentences, describe its broader significance to the work from which it is drawn and/or the larger concerns of the course. (4 points each.)
The man thought he seemed some sad and solitary changeling child announcing the arrival of a traveling spectacle in the shire and village who does not know that behind him the players have all been carried off by wolves.
Pick five of the following passages. In your blue book, identify the name of the work from which the quote comes, the author of the work, who is speaking in the passage quoted, and, in 1-2 sentences, describe its broader significance to the work from which it is drawn and/or the larger concerns of the course. (4 points each.)
The man thought he seemed some sad and solitary changeling child announcing the arrival of a traveling spectacle in the shire and village who does not know that behind him the players have all been carried off by wolves.
The narrator in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, 78
Pick four of the following questions. In your blue book, answer each in a paragraph of approximately five to eight sentences. In each case, you should connect your answer to specific details (though not necessarily textual quotations) from course texts. (You may use optional readings to answer these questions if you believe it is appropriate.) (5 points each.)
Pick only one and write an essay addressing it. Regardless of which option you choose, your essay must make reference to at least four texts that appeared on the syllabus this quarter, including at least two novels. (You are certainly welcome to treat movies – and optional readings – as course texts.) (35 points)
In the village it was not calledselling,’ this transaction. The talk about it implied apprenticeship. The children were being trained to earn their living in the wide world: this was the gloss put on it. Besides, if they stayed where they were, what was there for them to do?(116; ch. 6)
Oryx was sold to a man who made movies. She was the only one of them that went with the movie man. […] He asked her wouldn’t she like to be in a movie. She’d never seen a movie so she didn’t know whether she would like it or not; but it sounded like an offer of a treat, so she said yes. By this time she was good at knowing when yes was the expected answer.(136; ch. 6)
So I learned about life,
said Oryx.
Learned what?
said Jimmy. He shouldn’t have had the pizza, and the weed they’d smoked on top of that. He was feeling a little sick.
That everything has a price.
Not everything. That can’t be true. You can’t buy time. You can’t buy …
He wanted to say love, but hesitated. It was too soppy.
You can’t buy it, but it has a price,
said Oryx. Everything has a price.
Not me,
said Jimmy, trying to joke. I don’t have a price.
Wrong, as usual. (139; ch. 6)
But Jimmy, you should know. All sex is real.(144; ch. 6)
She [Oryx] turned into the camera and there it was again, that look, that stare, the stare that went right into him [Jimmy] and saw him as he truly was.(308; ch. 12)
Rich was just a thing you learned to tell.(136; ch. 6)
Perhaps they’ll say, These things are not real. They are phantasmagoria. They were made by dreams, and now that no one is dreaming them any longer they are crumbling away.(222; ch. 9)
Of course (said Oryx), having a money value was no substitute for love. Every child should have love, every person should have it. She herself would rather have had her mother’s love – the love she still continued to believe in, the love that had followed her through the jungle in the form of a bird so she would not be too frightened or lonely – but love was undependable, it came and then it went, so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also there were many people who had neither love nor a money value, and having one of these things was better than having nothing.(126; ch. 6)
What people want is perfection,
said the man. In themselves.
But they need the steps to it to be pointed out,
said the woman.
In simple order,
said the man.
With encouragement,
said the woman. And a positive attitude.
They like to hear about the before and the after,
said the man. It’s the art of the possible. But with no guarantees, of course.
(246; ch. 10)
Crake still had a collection of fridge magnets, but they were different ones. No more science quips.
Archaischer Torso ApollosWir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,
sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.
Sonst stünde dieser Stein enstellt und kurz
unter der Shultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;
und brächte nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.
The Archaic Torso of Apollo(tr. Stephen Mitchell)
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.