Your strategy for writing depends on the length of your answer. For short identifications and definitions, start with a general identifying statement and then move on to describe specific applications or explanations. Two complete sentences will almost always suffice.
See Chapter 13 for more on forecasting and transitions.
For longer answers, begin with a clear and explicit thesis statement. Use key terms from the question in your thesis, and use the same key terms throughout your essay. If the question does not supply any key terms, provide your own. Outlining your answer will enable you to forecast your points in your opening sentences. Use transitions such as first, second, moreover, however, and thus to signal clear relations among paragraphs.
As you write, you will certainly think of new ideas or facts to include. If you find that you want to add a sentence or two to sections you have already completed, write them in the margin or at the top of the page, with a neat arrow pointing to where they fit in your answer. Strike out words or even sentences you want to change by drawing through them neatly with a single line. If you run out of time when you are writing an answer, jot down the remaining ideas, just to show that you know the material and with more time could have continued your answer.
Model Answers
Here we analyze several successful answers and give you an opportunity to analyze one for yourself. These analyses, along with the information we have provided elsewhere in this chapter, should greatly improve your chances of writing successful exam answers.
Short Answers A literature midterm opened with ten items to identify, each worth 3 points. Students had about two minutes for each item. Here are three of Brenda Gossett’s answers, each one earning her the full 3 points:
Rauffenstein: He was the German general who was in charge of the castle where Boeldieu, Maréchal, and Rosenthal were finally sent in The Grand Illusion. He, along with Boeldieu, represented the aristocracy, which was slowly fading out at that time.
Iges Peninsula: This peninsula is created by the Meuse River in France. It is there that the Camp of Hell was created in The Debacle. The Camp of Hell is where the French army was interned after the Germans defeated them in the Franco-Prussian War.
Pache: He was the “religious peasant” in the novel The Debacle. It was he who inevitably became a scapegoat when he was murdered by Loubet, La poulle, and Chouteau because he wouldn’t share his bread with them.
The instructor said only “identify the following” but clearly wanted students both to identify the item and to indicate its significance to the work in which it appeared. Gossett does both and gets full credit. She mentions particular works, characters, and events. Although she is rushed, she answers in complete sentences. She does not misspell any words or leave out any commas or periods. Her answers are complete and correct.
Paragraph-Length Answers The following question is from a weekly literature quiz. With only a few minutes to respond, students were instructed to “answer in a few sentences.” Here is the question and Camille Prestera’s answer:
In Things Fall Apart, how did Okonkwo’s relationship with his father affect his attitude toward his son? (20/100 points)
Okonkwo despised his father, who was lazy, cowardly, and in debt. Okonkwo tried to be everything his father wasn’t. He was hardworking, wealthy, and a great warrior and wrestler. Okonkwo treated his son harshly because he was afraid he saw the same weakness in Nwoye that he despised in his father. The result of this harsh treatment was that Nwoye left home.
Prestera begins by describing Okonkwo and his father, contrasting the two sharply. Then she explains Okonkwo’s relationship with his son Nwoye. Her answer is coherent and straightforward.
Long Answers Many final exams include at least one question requiring an essay-length answer. John Pixley had an hour to plan and write this essay for a final exam in a literature course in response to the following question applying a concept:
Many American writers have portrayed their characters or their poetic speaker as being engaged in a quest. The quest may be explicit or implicit, it may be external or psychological, and it may end in failure or success. Analyze the quest motif in the work of four of the following writers: Edwards, Franklin, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Douglass, Whitman, Dickinson, James, Twain.
Key term, quest, is mentioned in introduction and thesis.
1Americans pride themselves on being ambitious and on being able to strive for goals and to tap their potential. Some say that this is what the “American Dream” is all about. It is important for one to do and be all that one is capable of. This entails a quest or search for identity, experience, and happiness. Hence, the idea of the quest is a vital one in the United States, and it can be seen as a theme throughout American literature.
First writer is identified immediately.
2In eighteenth-century colonial America, Jonathan Edwards dealt with this theme in his autobiographical and personal writings. Unlike his fiery and hard-nosed sermons, these autobiographical writings present a sensitive, vulnerable man trying to find himself and his proper, satisfying place in the world. He is concerned with his spiritual growth, in being free to find and explore religious experience and happiness. For example, in Personal Narrative, he very carefully traces the stages of religious beliefs. He tells about periods of abandoned ecstasy, doubts, and rational revelations. He also notes that his best insights and growth came at times when he was alone in the wilderness, in nature. Edwards’s efforts to find himself in relation to the world can also be seen in his “Observations of the Natural World,” in which he relates various meticulously observed and described natural phenomena to religious precepts and occurrences. Here, he is trying to give the world and life, of which he is a part, some sense of meaning and purpose.
Edwards’s work and the details of his quest are presented.
Transition sentence identi fies second writer. Key term (quest) is repeated.
3Although he was a contemporary of Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, who was very involved in the founding of the United States as a nation, had a different conception of the quest. He sees the quest as being one for practical accomplishment, success, and wealth. In his Autobiography, he stresses that happiness involves working hard to accomplish things, getting along with others, and establishing a good reputation. Unlike Edwards’s, his quest is external and bound up with society. He is concerned with his morals and behavior, but as seen in part 2 of the Autobiography, he deals with them in an objective, pragmatic, even statistical way, rather than in sensitive pondering. It is also evident in this work that Franklin, unlike Edwards, believes so much in himself and his quest that he is able to laugh at himself. His concern with society can be seen in Poor Richard’s Almanac, in which he gives practical advice on how to find success and happiness in the world, how to “be healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
Contrast with Edwards adds coherence to essay.
Another key term from the question, external, is used.
Franklin’s particular kind of quest is described.
Transition sentence identi fies third writer. Key term is repeated.
4Still another version of the quest can be seen in the mid-nineteenth-century poetry of Walt Whitman. The quest that he portrays blends elements of those of Edwards and Franklin. In “Song of Myself,” which is clearly autobiographical, the speaker emphasizes the importance of finding, knowing, and enjoying oneself as part of nature and the human community. He says that one should come to realize that one is lovable, just as are all other people and all of nature and life. This is a quest for sensitivity and awareness, as Edwards advocates, and for great self-confidence, as Franklin advocates. Along with Edwards, Whitman sees that peaceful isolation in nature is important; but he also sees the importance of interacting with people, as Franklin does. Being optimistic and feeling good--in both the literal and the figurative sense-- are the objects of this quest. Unfortunately, personal disappointment and national crisis (i.e., the Civil War) shattered Whitman’s sense of confidence, and he lost the impetus of this quest in his own life.
Comparison of Whitman to Edwards and Franklin sustains coherence of essay.
Whitman’s quest is defined.
Transition: Key term is repeated, and fourth writer is identified.
5This theme of the quest can be seen in prose fiction as well as in poetry and autobiography. One interesting example is “The Beast in the Jungle,” a short story written by Henry James around 1903. It is interesting in that not only does the principal character, John Marcher, fail in his lifelong quest, but his failure comes about in a most subtle and frustrating way. Marcher believes that something momentous is going to happen in his future. He talks about his belief to only one person, a woman named May. May decides to befriend him for life and watch with him for the momentous occurrence to come about, for “the beast in the jungle” to “pounce.” As time passes, May seems to know what this occurrence is and eventually even says that it has happened; but John is still in the dark. It is only long after May’s death that the beast pounces on him in his recognition that the “beast” was his failure to truly love May, the one woman of his life, even though she gave him all the encouragement that she possibly, decently could. Marcher never defined the terms of his quest until it was too late. By just waiting and watching, he failed to find feeling and passion. This tragic realization, as someone like Whitman would view it, brings about John Marcher’s ruin.
Quest of James character is described.
Conclusion repeats key term.
6As seen in these few examples, the theme of the quest is a significant one in American literature. Also obvious is the fact that there are a variety of approaches to, methods used in, and outcomes of the quest. This is an appropriate theme for American literature, seeing how much Americans cherish the right of “the pursuit of happiness.”
Pixley’s answer is strong for two reasons: He has the information he needs, and he has organized it carefully and presented it coherently.
The following essay was written by Dan Hepler. He answered the same essay exam question as his classmate John Pixley. Analyze Hepler’s essay to discover whether it meets the criteria of a good essay exam answer. Review the criteria mentioned earlier in this chapter (in the section Write Your Answer, p. 759) and in the annotated commentary of John Pixley’s answer. Try to identify the features of Hepler’s essay that contribute to or work against its success.
Dan Hepler’s Answer
1The quest motif is certainly important in American literature. By considering Franklin, Thoreau, Douglass, and Twain, we can see that the quest may be explicit or implicit, external or psychological, a failure or a success. Tracing the quest motif through these four authors seems to show a developing concern in American literature with transcending materialism to address deeper issues. It also reveals a drift toward ambiguity and pessimism.
2Benjamin Franklin’s quest, as revealed by his Autobiography, is for material comfort and outward success. His quest may be considered an explicit one because he announces clearly what he is trying to do: perfect a systematic approach for living long and happily. The whole Autobiography is a road map intended for other people to use as a guide; Franklin apparently meant rather literally for people to imitate his methods. He wrote with the assumption that his success was reproducible. He is possibly the most optimistic author in American literature because he enjoys life, knows exactly why he enjoys life, and believes that anyone else willing to follow his formula may enjoy life as well.
3By Franklin’s standards, his quest is clearly a success. But his Autobiography portrays only an external, not a psychological, success. This is not to suggest that Franklin was a psychological failure. Indeed, we have every reason to believe the contrary. But the fact remains that Franklin wrote only about external success; he never indicated how he really felt emotionally. Possibly it was part of Franklin’s overriding optimism to assume that material comfort leads naturally to emotional fulfillment.
4Henry David Thoreau presents a more multifaceted quest. His Walden is, on the simplest level, the chronicle of Thoreau’s physical journey out of town and into the woods. But the moving itself is not the focus of Walden. It is really more of a metaphor for some kind of spiritual quest going on within Thoreau’s mind. Most of the action in Walden is mental, as Thoreau contemplates and philosophizes, always using the lake, the woods, and his own daily actions as symbols of higher, more eternal truths. This spiritual quest is a success in that Thoreau is able to appreciate the beauty of nature and to see through much of the sham and false assumptions of town life and blind materialism.
5Thoreau does not leave us with nearly as explicit a “blueprint” for success as Franklin does. Even Franklin’s plan is limited to people of high intelligence, personal discipline, and sound character; Franklin sometimes seems to forget that many human beings are in fact weak and evil and so would stand little chance of success similar to his own. But at least Franklin’s quest could be duplicated by another Franklin. Thoreau’s quest is more problematic, for even as great a mystic and naturalist as Thoreau himself could not remain in the woods indefinitely. This points toward the idea that the real quest is all internal and psychological; Thoreau seems to have gone to the woods to develop a spiritual strength that he could keep and take elsewhere on subsequent dealings with the “real world.”
6The quest of Frederick Douglass was explicit in that he needed physically to get north and escape slavery, but it was also implicit because he sought to discover and redefine himself through his quest, as Thoreau did. Douglass’s motives were more sharply focused than either Franklin’s or Thoreau’s; his very humanness was at stake, as well as his physical well-being and possibly even his life. But Douglass also makes it clear that the most horrible part of slavery was the mental anguish of having no hope of freedom. His learning to read, and his maintenance of this skill, seems to have been as important as the maintenance of his material comforts, of which he had very few. In a sense, Douglass’s quest is the most psychological and abstract so far because it is for the very essence of freedom and humanity, both of which were mostly taken for granted by Franklin and Thoreau. Also, Douglass’s quest is the most pessimistic of the three; Douglass concludes that physical violence is the only way out, as he finds with the Covey incident.
7Finally, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is an example of the full range of meaning that the quest motif may assume. Geographically, Huck’s quest is very large. But again, there is a quest defined implicitly as well as one defined explicitly, as Huck (without consciously realizing it) searches for morality, truth, and freedom. Twain’s use of the quest is ambiguous, even more so than the previous writers’, because while he suggests success superficially (i.e., the “happily ever after” scene in the last chapter), he really hints at some sort of ultimate hopelessness inherent in society. Not even Douglass questions the good or evil of American society as deeply as Twain does; for Douglass, everything will be fine when slavery is abolished; but for Twain, the only solution is to “light out for the territories” altogether--and when Twain wrote, he knew that the territories were no more.
8Twain’s implicit sense of spiritual failure stands in marked contrast to Franklin’s buoyant confidence in material success. The guiding image of the quest, however, is central to American values and, consequently, a theme that these writers and others have adapted to suit their own vision.
Analyze the following essay exam questions to decide what kind of writing task they present. What is being asked of the student as a participant in the course and as a writer? Given the time constraints of the exam, what plan would you propose for writing the answer? Following each question is the number of points it is worth and the amount of time allotted to answer it.