EN-142 1 Engelsk litteratur, kultur, didaktikk 2 ( 5.-10. trinn )
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2 EN-142 26/11-15 Exam questions
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EN-142 1 Engelsk litteratur, kultur, didaktikk 2 ( 5.-10. trinn )
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EN-142
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1 OPPGAVE
EN-142 26/11-2015
Emnekode/
Course code:
EN-142
Emnenavn/
Course title:
Litteratur, kulturkunnskap og
didaktikk
Literature, Culture and
Didactics
Dato/Date:
26.11.2015
Varighet/
Duration:
0900-1300
Tillatte
hjelpemidler/
Engelsk-engelsk ordbok
Fagplan for engelsk i LK06 -
Permitted aids:
English-English Dictionary
English Subject Curriculum
LK2006
Merknader/
Notes:
Kandidaten skal besvare 1 av
oppgavene. /
The candidate must answer 1
of the questions.
Sometimes professors ask for exam answers that can be used for teaching purposes, but in order
for this to take place, the university needs your consent.
Do you grant the University of Agder permission to use your exam answer for teaching purposes?
Yes
No
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2 OPPGAVE
EN-142 26/11-15 Exam questions
Answer ONE of the following questions. Take care to use relevant examples.
1
Write an essay where you discuss how F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby mirror the 1920s
America. How do the novel's characters embody particular ideas from this decade?
2
Imagine that you are going to teach the coming of the Industrial Revolution in Britain to pupils in
the 9th grade in Norwegian lower secondary school. Write an essay where you discuss how you
would prepare a two week teaching programme on this topic, bearing in mind what you might
include and what you might exclude. Call your essay: "How to teach the Industrial Revolution in
lower secondary".
3
Below there is an excerpt from a text you have read. Identify the title of the novel from which this
excerpt has been taken, as well as the name of its author and when it was written. Contextualize
the excerpt within the larger whole of the novel: how does it relate to the plot of the text as a
whole? Finally, as the main part of this task, show how the themes of personal maturation and
cultural difference are presented, and linked together, in the novel.
Text excerpt
«When Eilis went upstairs she felt, for the first time, less uneasy about being home, and found that
she was almost looking forward to the day dealing with wages at Davis’s and then the weekend.
As she was undressing, however, she noticed a letter on the bed and instantly saw that it was from
Tony, who had put his name and address on the envelope. Her mother must have left it there,
having decided not to mention it. She opened it with a feeling close to alarm, wondering for a
second if there was anything wrong with him, relieved when she read the opening sentences that
declared his love for her and emphasized how much he missed her.
As she read the letter she wished that she could take it downstairs and read it to her
mother. The tone was stiff, formal, old-fashioned; the letter was clearly by someone not used to
writing letters. Yet Tony managed to put something of himself into it, his warmth, his kindness and
his enthusiasm for things. And there was also something there all the time in him, she thought, that
was in this letter too. It was a feeling that were he to turn his head, she might be gone. That
afternoon, as she had enjoyed the sea and warm weather and company of Nancy and George and
even, towards the end, Jim, she had been away from Tony, far away, basking in the ease of what
had suddenly become familiarity.
She wished now that she had not married him, not because she did not love him and
intend to return to him, but because not telling her mother or her friends made every day she had
spent in America a sort of fantasy, something she could not match with the time she was spending
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at home. It made her feel strangely as though she were two people, one who had battled against
two cold winters and many hard days in Brooklyn and fallen in love there, and the other who was
her mother’s daughter, the Eilis whom everyone knew, or thought they knew.
She wished she could go downstairs now and tell her mother what she had done, but
she knew she would not. It would be simpler to claim that work called her back to Brooklyn and
write then, when she had returned, to say that she was seeing a man whom she loved and hoped
to get engaged to and married to. She would only be home for a few more weeks. As she lay in
bed she thought it would be wise to make the best of it, take no big decisions in what would be an
interlude. A chance to be at home like this would be unlikely to come her way again ever. In the
morning, she thought, she would get up early and write to Tony and post the letter on her way to
work.”
Write your answer here:
BESVARELSE
The Great Gatsby: a story of 1920s America
The Great Gatsby was written by Scott F. Fitzgerald and published in 1925, at the height of the "Roaring
Twenties". This decade was a time of prosperity in America, with a booming post-war economy that
made wealth and fortune available to anyone. After the Great War, the young people decided to live life to the
full, and threw themselves into a pursuit of wealth and pleasure with reckless abandon. In this essay I will
discuss how Fitzgerald's novel mirrors the 1920s America, with a focus on aspects such as the idea of the
self-made man, the pursuit of wealth and the moral decay of society, the "new rich" versus the "old rich" and
finally the corruption of the American Dream. I will also discuss how several of the novel's characters embody
these ideas from the decade.
The 1920s saw American society change quite drastically. Together with the rest of the world, America had
emerged from the most destructive war in human history, a war of immense distruction and brutality that
claimed millions of lives. While the war left Europe in economic ruin, America came out if it stronger than ever
before. Their growing war industry, and the fact that no warfare took place on American soil, left
America with a soaring economy. The rising stock market gave anyone the opportunity to make an easy
fortune, and many did. Much to the dismay of the "old rich" of the American aristocracy, the "new rich"
emerged, and they wanted a place among the wealthy and glamorous. Prohibition was put in
place making alcohol illegal, but it also gave way to a thriving underground of smuggling and bootlegging,
and a society of growing violence and gangsterism. The young American soldiers who had been sent
to Europe to fight, had witnessed unthinkable atrocities and inhuman conditions in the trenches, and returned
to America in a haze of disillusionment and ephemerality. The old Victorian values now seemed completely
hypocritical, and they rebelled against them. They no longer believed in any moral sense of duty or that God
had a hand in everything. There was no clear line between the good and the evil, between the civilized and
the savage, and they had realized all too well how short life could be. They did not want to waste it, they
wanted to enjoy it to the fullest and they pursued a life of wealth and pleasure without a care for any
possible consequences. Both the old rich and the new rich abandoned all morality, and spent the decade in a
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whirl of money-spending, drinking and wild partying and dancing to jazz music. Many of these aspects of the
"Roaring Twenties" are mirrored in Fizgerald's The Great Gatsby.
The novel's main character and protagonist, is Jay Gatsby, and he embodies the idea of the self-made
man. Even from a young age, Gatsby despises poverty, and his prime goal in life is to become rich. Born into
a modest life in the West as James Gatz, he is later alienated from his family, and goes off on his own. He
befriends a wealthy yatcht-owner, and sensing an opportunity a climb up the social ladder, he introduces
himself as "Jay Gatsby". He quite literally makes makes his own man by creating the illusion of Jay Gatsby.
The pursuit of wealth stays with him even after he meets and falls in love with Daisy. By this time he is a
young soldier on his way to fight in the Great War, and he is immediately bewitched by Daisy's aura of grace
and luxary - he later describes her voice as a "voice of money". He wants her, but he is not worthy of her, and
makes up a life in wealth to convince her to choose him. She promises to wait for him, but she eventually
ends up marrying Tom Buchanan. From that point on, everything Gatsby does is in order to win Daisy back.
He is recruited by a conman, and finds his fortune in illegal bootlegging and other criminal activities. His
pursuit of wealth - and of Daisy - is everything he can think of, and as long as he can achieve his dream, how
he does it is of no concern.
Gatsby achieves his goal, and becomes extremly rich. He buys himself an enormous mansion in West Egg,
the area of the "new rich" outside of New York. While he is there, he hosts incredible parties, filled with jazz
music, dance and wild drinking. People are drawn to this excess of wealth and pleasure, and we get a clear
idea of how society was in the 20s. The car accident outside of one of these parties, where an intoxicated
pair of the guests run their car off the road only a few meters from the driveway, also shows the recklessness
of people's behavior. Even after one of the wheels has been tore off the car, the driver still wants to keep
going, to just "put it in reverse". Perhaps Fitzgerald is prophecising an upcoming doom, that this way of life is
getting out of control. We know now that the Wall Street Crash occured just four years after the publication of
The Great Gatsby, but we get the impression that Fitzgerald is sensing an impending disaster. That
something has to go wrong.
Tom and Daisy Buchanan are the faces of the old American aristocracy, the "old rich", and consider
themselves to be of a higher class. They live in East Egg, and compared to Gatsby's flamboyant mansion,
their house, while also massive, is clearly more stylish. Tom is arrogant and brutish, and portrays clear racist
and sexist ideas. He firmly believes in the superiority of the white man, and sees them as descendants of
both the old Vikings and the old settlers of America. They, and by association he himself, built the nation,
even though he and his aristocratic friends have probably never lifted a finger. As we get to see when Nick
comes over for dinner, and Tom goes off on his racist rant; they do not even light their own candles.
The "old rich" saw themselves as being above everyone else, they had class and style, they
were sophisticated and morally superior. The "new rich" were seen as fake, loud, clearly unsophisticated, and
they lacked social grace. In the end, however, we get to see the shallowness and hypocricy of the aristocracy.
Tom demands a certain behavior and morality from the people around him, but he does not even try to live by
these ideals himself. When he discovers Daisy's relationship with Gatsby, he is furious - as he should be,
perhaps, but he has no quarrels with having an affair on his own. Fitzgerald paints both Tom and Daisy as
rich and entitled, with no care for anything or anyone - not even for their own daughter. Daisy's true colours
are shown when she lets Gatsby take the blame for the car accident that kills Myrtle Wilson, and when she
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decides to run away and leave East Egg before Gatsby's funeral. Gatsby may have made his money
dishonestly, but he is never corrupted by his luxurious lifestyle, and he remains a loyal friend and kind
man. The Buchanans on the other hand, go through life, destroying things in their path, and hide behind their
money to avoid facing any consequences.
Jordan Baker is another character that embodies aspects of 1920s society. She is a good friend of the
Buchanans, and thus also connected to the shallowness of the upper class, but she is very different from
Daisy. Jordan is the image of the "new woman" of the decade: beautiful and rich, but also boyish and
independent. She is making her own life, and she is not dependant on any man. She is a professional golfer,
but much of her success is revealed to be because of her dishonest ways. Tournaments are won by cheating,
and she tends to go for shortcuts in life. In a way, she symbolizes Nick's thoughts on life in East in general. At
first, he is attrackted to her and her success, but he is repulsed by her dishonesty and their romance never
takes oss. In the same way, he is attracked to the glitz and glamour of the society, but he also sees through it
all, and sees the immorality behind it, and he eventually decides to go back to the West, where he can live a
life with traditional values.
Myrtle and George Wilson live in the Valley of Ashes, and represent the other end of the social scale - the
bottom of the social ladder. Their home, George's car shop, is old and worn-down, and George, though fairly
young, is exhausted by the tough life in the valley. He is portrayed as tired and drawn, with hair that has taken
on a greyish, ash-coloured hue. He does some business with Tom Buchanan, and is oblivious to his affair
with his wife. George works hard, but he has no chance of rising in society. Myrtle is the opposite of George.
She is a vibrant and vital woman, but desperately unhappy. She is having an affair with Tom Buchanan,
whom she loves and hopes will sweep her away to a better life. A life in luxary. The valley they live in
is situated between the West Egg and Manhattan, is vast and lifeless, filled with dumps of industrial
waste and ashes, which represent the moral decay of the society. The rich people, the industrial owners, of
society have no care about their actions. They do not see how their way of life is leaving a waste. There are
consequences. Life in the 1920s were not only glitz and glamour - there was another side to the coin.
Finally we have Nick Carraway, the novel's narrator. As Daisy's cousin, he is connected to the aristocratic life,
but he is not rich himself, and settles down in a small house next to Gatsby's mansion in West Egg. He was
born and raised in the Midwest and gained a college-education from Yale. After fighting in the Great War, he
decided to leave for New York to learn the bond business. He is a quiet, drawn-back man, who prefers to stay
in the background. He describes himself as tolerant and patient, and people have a tendency to trust him and
lay their secrets on him - Gatsby in particular. Even though he is tolerant, he is also quick to judge.
Throughout the novel, he judges and discusses the characters he meets. He gives the impression of being
good at reading people, and has the capability to see them for what they really are. Thus he is able to see
through the glitz and glamour of society, and he is critical of the immorality he witnesses. Fitzgerald's own
voice continually shines through Nick and his thoughts and conclusion. Towards the end of the novel, he
gives his thoughts about the American Dream, and how he feels it has been corrupted. The American Dream
had once been a noble thing. It was never about making as much money as possible, it was the pure idea of
making a better life for oneself. The pursuit of happiness, not pleasure. Gatsby's dream of winning back
Daisy has a clear connection to the American Dream. The green light at the end of Daisy's dock by the river,
represents Gatsby's dream, and towards the end of the novel, Nick thinks about how the green land of
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America would have looked to the new settlers from Europe. In the end, both the American Dream, and
Gatsby's dream are crushed - by the reckless pursuit of wealth and pleasure, and by Daisy's inability to live
up to Gatsby's imagination.
To conlude, the 1920s were a decade of soaring wealth and reckless living. Americans abandoned all
morality, and lived their lives to the full and pursued wealth and pleasure without thought of any
consequences. The characters in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, each embody certain aspects that were
prominent during the "Roaring Twenties". Gatsby is the self-made man, and through him and the Buchanans
we see the contrast between the "new rich" and the "old rich" in society. Tom and Daisy also show the
hypocricy of the aristocracy, and Jordan Baker is the image of the "new woman". Myrtle and George on the
other hand, are on the bottom of the social ladder, and they never rise from the ashes of society. Finally, Nick
Carraway is the character that sees through all the glitz, and he decides to withdraw from a society he finds
to be immoral and destructive.
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