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Praxis II Summaries b

Summaries

Question:

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner


Answer:

1930 novel that is much more sparse and clear than many of his works. It is composed of 59 segments narrated by 15 different characters and follows the Bundren family over a series of days as they travel from their home to the town of Jefferson to bury the family's matriarch, Addie, whose body they carry with them.



Question:

The Sound and Fury by William Faulkner


Answer:

At a basic level, the novel is about the three Compson brothers' obsessions with the their sister Caddy, but this brief synopsis represents merely the surface of what the novel contains. A story told in four chapters, by four different voices, and out of chronological order, The Sound and the Fury requires intense concentration and patience to interpret and understand.



Question:

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding


Answer:

A novel tells the story of an orphan who travels all over England to win the hand of his lady.



Question:

Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald


Answer:

Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan, Jordan Baker, Myrtle Wilson, George Wilson, Dan Cody



Question:

Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert


Answer:

(1856) based on the true story of Daphine Delamar, an adulterous wife married to a country doctor, who died of grief after decieving and ruining her husband. The novel is a realist attack on the Romantic sensibility.



Summaries

Question:

The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford


Answer:

1915 portrays pre-WWI society's shifting morals and loss of steadfast social rules. It is narrated, unreliably, by John Dowell in a form that prefigures stream of consciousness, following Dowell's recollections of his and his wife's relationship with Edward and Leonora Ashburnham in non-chronological order. Dowell's narration mainly explores the discovery of the numerous affairs of his wife Florence and Edward, who end up having an affair with each other. These intrigues lead to Florence's suicide, Leonora's moral torture of Edward and his suicide, and the madness of the Ashburnham's young ward Nancy, whom Dowell eventually takes care of.



Question:

Lord of the Flies by William Golding


Answer:

A group of English boys (Jack, Piggy, Ralph, Roger, Sam, Eric, and Simon), marooned on an island, rapidly turn lawless and bloodthirsty.



Question:

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy


Answer:

1891 novel aroused controversy for its sympathy for England's lower classes, particularly for rural women victimized by the country's rigid social morality. It follows the eponymous young woman T of the title, whose family discovers they are descendants of a noble family. They send T to be raised by a wealthy family of the same last name, who are not actually related at all. That family's son Alec rapes T, and she eventually flees and gives birth to a baby, named Sorrow, that soon dies. She begins a romance with a young man named Angel and they marry, but when they confess their respective indiscretions to each other, T forgives Angel but he does not forgive her for what Alec did to her. Angel leaves for Brazil. T struggles, her father dies, and they are evicted from their home, but she refuses help from Alec, who is trying to woo her back. Eventually she becomes Alec's lover but kills him when Angel comes back and is eventually caught and executed.



Question:

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne


Answer:

Set in the 17th-entury Boston, Hester Prynne is being publically shamed and ostracized as an adultress. her husband, Roger Chillingworth, posing as a doctor, is intent on revenge against Hester and her "accomplice", who is revealed to bethe ailing Reverand Arthur Dimmesdale.



Question:

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller


Answer:

Takes place during WWII, to a military rule that prevents soldiers from avoiding combat missions. From the book, "There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. (p. 56, ch. 5)



Summaries

Question:

A Tale of Two Cities


Answer:

1859 novel by Charles Dickens set in the late 18th century. It has a typically Dickensian plot with lots of characters and twists and turns, but it revolves around the love triangle of Charles Darnay, Lucie Manette, and Sydney Carton and takes place in London and Paris on the eve of and during the French Revolution. Lucie and Darnay marry, and in the end Carton tricks the imprisoned Darnay, switches places with him, and is executed instead of Darnay, giving Carton's life meaning and saving the lives of Lucie, Darnay, and their daughter.



Question:

Oliver Twist


Answer:

Dickens; novel depicted nineteenth century way of life in England; scorn for governmental ignorance of poor.



Question:

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.


Answer:

(1925) Clyde Griffiths, whose troubles with women and the law take him from his religious upbringing in Kansas city, to the town of Lycurgus, New York. Materialistic Hortense Briggs, farm girl Roberta Alden (who drowns), aristocratic Sondra Finchley. Clyde is found guilty of murdering Roberta, and sentenced to death. Abortion, society ills.



Question:

Death Comes for the Archbishop


Answer:

Willa Cather



Question:

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekov


Answer:

The whole of the action takes place on a Russian estate of Ranevsky, who returns, with her daughter Anya and their entourage, after several years in France because the debt she has accumulated there necessitates that she sell the Russian estate. The action follows conversations about this sale with Lopakhin, a friend of the family who wants to buy the estate and build vacation cottages on the site of an enormous cherry orchard, which Ranevsky does not want to be cut down. In the midst of all this there are conversations and intrigue among the play's lesser characters, including the servents, who are involved in a love triangle with Dunyasha at the center. In the end, Lopakhin buys the estate and everyone leaves as the cherry orchard is being cut down.



Summaries

Question:

Faust


Answer:

12,000 line verse play based on a sixteenth-centrury German legend about a traveling physician who, bored with his station in life, sold his soul to the devil, a character named Mephistopholes, in return for infinite knowledge.



Question:

A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley


Answer:

A Science fiction story that explains a world in which embryos are conditioned to behave a certain way. The story describes sick practices in which children behave in sexual behavior...



Question:

A Doll's House by Hendrick Ibsen


Answer:

Nora's struggle with Krogstad, who threatens to tell her husband about her past crime, incites Nora's journey of self-discovery and provides much of the play's dramatic suspense. Nora's primary struggle, however, is against the selfish, stifling, and oppressive attitudes of her husband, Torvald, and of the society that he represents.



Question:

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James


Answer:

This novel is considered a masterpiece. The text depicts the life of Isabel Archer who moves from the States to England to live with her aunt after the death of her father. There she meets her cousin Ralph, her uncle Mr. Touchett, and the wealthy Lord Warburton, who proposes to her shortly after her arrival. She rejects him in favour because she fears to lose her freedom if she enters a marriage. She learns that her former suitor Caspar Goodwood has followed her. She encounters him in London. He proposes to her and she rejects him, but promises to mull the proposal over in the next two years. When her uncle grows sick and dies he leaves Isabel a seizable fortune. While she is staying at her uncle's home she befriends Mrs. Touchett's friend Madame Merle. Later Isabel, Mrs. Touchett, and Madame Merle travel to the Touchett's house in Florence where Isabel meets Gilbert Osmond through introduction by Madame Merle. She marries Osmond despite the urging of her friends that he will not make a good husband for her. She ignores the advice and learns that he is a controlling tyrant who has raised his daughter Pansy to obey his every wish. When news arrive that Ralph is dying Osmond refuses to let her visit her cousin in England. When Isabel learns that Pansy is the child of Osmond and Merle and that she has been tricked into marriage by the latter, she leaves regardless of her husbands advice. She decides to return to him, however, because she believes in the principles of marriage and because she does not want to abandon Pansy with her cruel father.



Question:

The American by Henry James


Answer:

Tells the story of a man who is living confined and unhappy. Henry James is poking fun at American culture.



Summaries

Question:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce


Answer:

As a boy, the protagonist of this novel delivers messages with his Great Uncle Charles and is bullied by Nasty Roche. Other people its protagonist meets at the Clongowes Wood School include a teacher who punishes him for breaking his glasses, Father Dolan, and the religious Father Arnall, whose sermon inspires a phase of religious fervor. This work's protagonist meets Cranly, Lynch, and Davin at the University College and writes love letters to E. C. For 10 points name this bildungsroman about a character who later appeared in Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus.



Question:

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka


Answer:

In this work the main character dies of an infection after being pelted by apples by his father and his sister wishes to go to music school to play violin.



Question:

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston


Answer:

1976 memoir known for its blending of voices and styles and for taking autobiography into the postmodern literary age. Kingston blends autobiography with ancient Chinese folk tales as she tells the stories of a long-dead aunt, "No-Name Woman"; a mythical female warrior, Fa Mu Lan; Kingston's mother, Brave Orchid; Kingston's aunt, Moon Orchid; and herself. These stories integrate her own experiences with "talk-stories" - blends of Chinese history, myths and beliefs - that her mother tells her.



Question:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee


Answer:

Follows widower and father Atticus Finch, a small-town southern lawyer, and his daughter Scout as they navigate racially-charged events in a small southern town.



Question:

Babbitt by Lewis Sinclair


Answer:

A self-satistied person concerned chiefly with business and middle-class like material success; a member of the American working class whose unthinking attachment to its business and social ideals is such to make him a model of narrow-mindedness and self-satisfaction; after George F. Babbitt, the main character in the novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis.