English 232 Assessment

Part A – Critical Thinking

 

The Overland Mail

(Foot-Service to the Hills)

Rudyard Kipling

 

IN THE name of the Empress of India, make way,
     O Lords of the Jungle, wherever you roam.
The woods are astir at the close of the day—
     We exiles are waiting for letters from Home.
Let the robber retreat—let the tiger turn tail—
In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail!

With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in,
     He turns to the foot-path that heads up the hill—
The bags on his back and a cloth round his chin,
     And, tucked in his waist-belt, the Post Office bill:—
“Dispatched on this date, as received by the rail,
“Per runner, two bags of the Overland Mail.”

Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim.
     Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff.
Does the tempest cry halt? What are tempests to him?
     The Service admits not a "but" or and "if."
While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail,
In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

From aloe to rose-oak, from rose-oak to fir,
     From level to upland, from upland to crest,
From rice-field to rock-ridge, from rock-ridge to spur,
     Fly the soft sandaled feet, strains the brawny brown chest.
From rail to ravine—to the peak from the vale—
Up, up through the night goes the Overland Mail.

There's a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road—
     A jingle of bells on the foot-path below—
There’s a scuffle above in the monkey’s abode—
     The world is awake, and the clouds are aglow.
For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail:—
“In the name of the Empress, the Overland Mail!”

 

 

  1. Who is the speaker of the poem:

a.        the Empress of India

b.      the runner

c.       the robber

d.      the exiles from England

 

  1. How is the Indian landscape portrayed in the poem?
    1. inhospitably
    2. romantically
    3. idealistically
    4. disgustingly

 

  1. How does the imagery in the poem “move?”
    1. from valley to mountain top
    2. from dark to dawn
    3. from stormy to clear
    4. all the above

 

  1. What word(s), used frequently in the poem, indicate(s) that the runner is a servant of empire, rather than a subject of his own free will?
    1. jingle of bells
    2. empress of India
    3. must
    4. hail

 

  1. How do you interpret the repetition of “In the name of the Empress, the Overland Mail” in the final stanza?
    1. literally
    2. ironically
    3. metaphorically
    4. philosophically

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following passage is from Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place.  It is the concluding paragraph of the book, which is about the people behind the beautiful landscape of Antigua, a small island in the Caribbean.

 

 . . . Antiqua is a small place, a small island.  It is nine miles wide by twelve miles long.  It was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493.  Not too long after, it was settled by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved but noble and exalted human beings from Africa (all masters of every stripe are rubbish and all slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted; there can be no question about this) to satisfy their desire for wealth and power, to feel better about their own miserable existence, so that they could be less lonely and empty – a European disease.  Eventually, the masters left, in a kind of way; eventually, the slaves were freed, in a kind of way.  The people in Antigua now, the people who really think of themselves as Antiguans (and the people who would immediately come to your mind when you think about what Antiguans might be like; I mean, supposing you were to think about it), are the descendants of those noble and exalted people, the slaves.  Of course, the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master’s yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a human being, and all the things that adds up to.  So, too, with the slaves.  Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings.

 

Choose the best answer to the following questions about Kincaid’s paragraph.

 

6) Who is the “you” Kincaid refers to in the last sentences of the paragraph?

a.   other Antiguans

b.   white people

c.   those now dead colonizers of Antigua

d.  people, both white and of color, now living on Caribbean islands

 

7)      What is the predominate tone of the paragraph?

a.                   sanguine

b.                  accepting

c.                   angry

d.                  resolute

 

 8)  What is the “European disease” Kincaid refers to in sentence three?

  a.  greed

  b.  typhoid

  c.   lust

  d.   despair

 

9)       Kincaid uses the word “discovered” in this sentence – “It was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493” – in what way:

a.       literally

b.      figuratively

c.       ironically

d.      metaphorically

 

10)  What point does Kincaid make in the last three sentences of the paragraph?

a.       masters are all human rubbish always

b.      slaves are noble and exalted always

c.       we’re all the same; it is power that creates differences

d.      slaves should be masters, masters should be enslaved

 

Part B – Appreciating the contributions of literature to our perceptions of ourselves and our world via postcolonial literary history:

 

1.  Which of the following is NOT a significant binary pair in Orientalist thought?

a.  center/margin

b.  metropolis/empire

c. birth/death

d.  civilized/primitive

 

  1. A master narrative is
  1. an organizing story that provides a framework for all historical events
  2. the story told by a master about his slaves
  3. a formula for plots shared by publishers with writers
  4. the story about how one masters one’s bad habits

 

  1. Which of the following are relevant to the term “liminality:
  1. it labels an in-between state
  2. it is a space where transformation constantly occurs
  3. it does not imply a break with the past, nor a bonding with the future
  4. all the above

 

  1. What is one fundamental problem with the concept of Negritude:
  1. it establishes critical approaches to Black/African art
  2. it is essentialist –  it claims that all people of Negro descent have the same characteristics
  3. it fostered a flowering of African/Black art after WWII
  4. it creates a confusing confluence of contemporary cultures

 

  1. Which is the best definition of subaltern?
  1. subject to prejudice
  2. member of a group subject to the ruling class
  3. alternately rich and poor
  4. hybridized hyperbole

 

  1. According to Homi Bhabha, mimicry functions in postcolonial situations in the following way:
  1. it makes the colonized individual feel lesser
  2. it relieves tension by enabling laughter
  3. it creates potential for rebellion through parody
  4. it functions allegorically to stabilize the message of postcolonial discourse

 

  1. “4th World” refers to:
  1. capitalistic and imperialistic countries
  2. pre-settler and indigenous peoples
  3. socialist and/or settler colonies
  4. colonized and occupied territories

 

  1. When postcolonial writers discuss the idea of “moving the center,” what do they mean?
  1. that indigenous people should move to town
  2. that the center of influence and study should shift from the colonizer to the colonized
  3. that colleges and universities should no longer control ideology
  4. that politicians need focus less attention on the metropolis and more on the rural areas

 

  1. Which of the following apply to the term hegemony?
  1. indicates colonizers fears of contamination by absorption into native life and customs
  2. implies domination by consent
  3. describes the acquisition of an empire
  4. is synonymous with “going native”

 

  1. Diasporic peoples
  1. live “in-between” cultures
  2. are often ghettoized and excluded by their “new” country
  3. often experience wide generational differences in interpretation and cultural connections
  4. all of the above

 

  1. What happened at the Conference in Berlin in 1887?
  1. the Nazis were defeated
  2. African nations united
  3. Africa was divided among the major European powers
  4. Victoria was declared Empress of India

 

  1. What is a national allegory?
  1. the mythical story of how a nation came to be
  2. a story that connects an individual character’s life events with a nation’s development
  3. an historical account of a nation’s growth and development
  4. all the above

 

  1. Postcolonial writers often use women/women’s bodies to stand for
  1. the nation
  2. the possibility of rebirth/regeneration for indigenous people
  3. transmitters of culture
  4. all the above

 

14.  The practice of the colonized stereotyping the colonizer has been labeled:

  1. Orientalism
  2. Occidentalism
  3. Oxymoronism
  4. Onomatopoeia

 

15.  An important thing to remember about the POST in postcolonialism is that

  1. it is an accurate description of the state of colonial societies
  2. it implies that colonialism is something from the past; but colonialism and its effects are present
  3. it only applies to third world countries, not countries like the U.S.
  4. it means the same thing as anticolonial

 

 

True or False:

 

    1. A nation is a political construct, not a naturally occurring entity, and national boundaries and identities can and do change over time.

a.       True

b.      False

 

    1. A novel can only be interpreted in one way – the way the author intended it to be interpreted. 

a.       True

b.      False

 

    1. Every reader is an objective reader.  We leave all our biases and beliefs behind when we take up a piece of literature.

a.       True

b.      False

 

    1. Great books written by canonical writers like Shakespeare and Austin and Dante and Hawthorne do not have a political motivation.  They address only “universal” human values and ideas.

a.       True

b.      False

 

    1. History has, almost always, been a recording of events from the point of view of the “winner” or the dominant power.

a.       True

b.      False