American Lit. Exam 1 Questions and Answers Latest Update 2025 Graded A+
Billy Collins - Answers 1941- Present
-NYC
-Imagines poet and reader sitting together
-Funny poems yet sad
-No metaphysical structure
-Taking off Emily Dickinsons clothes
Billy Collins- Marginalia - Answers "Pardon the egg salad stains, I'm in love"
-Having an active relationship with text
Robert Frost - Answers 1874-1963
-Born in California but identified with New England
-Modernism
-Clarity of his diction, colloquial rhythm
-Simplicity of images and folksy speaking
-Rejected modernist internationalism
-Restored tradition of New England regionalism
-Nature lyric (outer scene and psyche)
-Played rhythms of ordinary speech against formal patterns of line and verse
-Contained rhythms within traditional poetic forms
Dramatic narratives.
-Ideological descendant of 19th century (Am. Trans.)
-Most tattooed American Poet
Robert Frost- The Road Not Taken - Answers -Many perceive the poem as having a certain "can do"
individualism, self- reliance, self- assertion, sense of making a certain choice, "American" ideals
-Poems complexity plays on the dialectic of the deeply embedded personal and national desire for
individualism, control, and the rationale
,-Irony of the sigh
Robert Frost- Mending Wall - Answers -Placement of invitation with wall
-Speaker is opponent of wall and neighbor "good fences make good neighbors"
-Mocking devotion to tradition ("elves and spells:" inverted syntax)
-Speaker identifies his anti tradition
-Mending: narrators playful assertion that barriers are needed for freedom
-To welcome but remind us of many view: signals multiplicity (invitation and reservation)
-Political critique with literature dynamic (text's meaning changing over time)
Robert Frost- Nothing Gold Can Stay - Answers -Opens with two paradoxes ("Green is gold" and "Leaf's
flower")
-Ubiquitous, tradition on what nature can offer us
-Series of Diminishment: nature experienced by spectacular to less spectacular
-Fundament logic of transaction ("but only so an hour": emphasis on so)
-Inevitability to fall, perfection is impossible
-Direct, hard, end stop rhymes
-Lack of enjambment: force of aphorism
-Economical, taught, straight forward
Robert Frost- Design - Answers -Mentions a moth, spider, and flower
- Rhyme scheme
-Similes
-Personification
-Grotesque description of spider
-Associating white with purity
Gwendolyn Brooks - Answers 1917-2000
-Kansas
-Spent childhood residence on Chicago's segregated and poor South Side
,-Harlem Renaissance
-African American poet
-Passionate sense of language
-Daring use of formal structure
-Poetry belongs to African American community
-White audience
-Black experience and black rage
-Started when seven (writing poetry)
-Traditional lyric form
-Strongly rhymed lines
-Leader of black feminists
Gwendolyn Brooks- Kitchenette Building - Answers -Published in 1945 near the end of WWII and popular
ideology and discourse of The American Dream
-Enjambment, oxymoron, connotations with use of "giddy"
-Associations of colors white and violet
-Speaker describes life for residents of the kitchenette building as dreary and devoted to basic
necessities rather than frills like dreaming
-Dreaming described with bright colors and beautiful music creating different environment
-Personification of a dream and creating extra line
Thomas Payne - Answers 1737-1809
-England
-Rationalism
-Supporter of Revolution (most persuasive rhetorician of the cause for independence)
-Quaker father, Anglican mother
-Journalist
-Spokesman against slavery
, -Anonymous author of Common sense
-Spokesman in French Revolution
-Protested Prosecution of Henry XVI
-Plainness in writings, no ceremonious expressions, clear conclusions
Thomas Paine- Common Sense - Answers -Filled with figurative language
-Rhetoric appeal: art of using language effectively so as to persuade or influence others
-Persuade readers to take action after reading the text, convince that everything is at stake
-Sense of urgency, force of the rhetoric
-Written as anonymous author
-First published in 1776
-One of best selling pamphlets of all time
-Extended Metaphor: "wound a young oak tree, it grows, becomes central to the tree, so posterity can
read it in full lettering"
-No transcendent extent in context
Thomas Jefferson - Answers 1743-1826
-Virginia
-Rationalism
-Passionate about liberating the human mind from tyranny imposed by state, church, and ignorance
-Mastered Latin and Greek
-President of Us. 1st secretary of state, minister to France, governor of Virginia, congressmen
-Agrarian aristocrat
Declaration of Independence - Answers -Congress: talking to and about elite white men in the colonies.
-Leaders thought they had been made second class citizens, and they should have power to control their
own politics, economy and not be subordinate to king and Parliament.
-Main causes for separation stated in Declaration: England had endangered prosperity of the colonies.
Most causes are economic and political.
-Opening clause: assumes all are "one people"
Billy Collins - Answers 1941- Present
-NYC
-Imagines poet and reader sitting together
-Funny poems yet sad
-No metaphysical structure
-Taking off Emily Dickinsons clothes
Billy Collins- Marginalia - Answers "Pardon the egg salad stains, I'm in love"
-Having an active relationship with text
Robert Frost - Answers 1874-1963
-Born in California but identified with New England
-Modernism
-Clarity of his diction, colloquial rhythm
-Simplicity of images and folksy speaking
-Rejected modernist internationalism
-Restored tradition of New England regionalism
-Nature lyric (outer scene and psyche)
-Played rhythms of ordinary speech against formal patterns of line and verse
-Contained rhythms within traditional poetic forms
Dramatic narratives.
-Ideological descendant of 19th century (Am. Trans.)
-Most tattooed American Poet
Robert Frost- The Road Not Taken - Answers -Many perceive the poem as having a certain "can do"
individualism, self- reliance, self- assertion, sense of making a certain choice, "American" ideals
-Poems complexity plays on the dialectic of the deeply embedded personal and national desire for
individualism, control, and the rationale
,-Irony of the sigh
Robert Frost- Mending Wall - Answers -Placement of invitation with wall
-Speaker is opponent of wall and neighbor "good fences make good neighbors"
-Mocking devotion to tradition ("elves and spells:" inverted syntax)
-Speaker identifies his anti tradition
-Mending: narrators playful assertion that barriers are needed for freedom
-To welcome but remind us of many view: signals multiplicity (invitation and reservation)
-Political critique with literature dynamic (text's meaning changing over time)
Robert Frost- Nothing Gold Can Stay - Answers -Opens with two paradoxes ("Green is gold" and "Leaf's
flower")
-Ubiquitous, tradition on what nature can offer us
-Series of Diminishment: nature experienced by spectacular to less spectacular
-Fundament logic of transaction ("but only so an hour": emphasis on so)
-Inevitability to fall, perfection is impossible
-Direct, hard, end stop rhymes
-Lack of enjambment: force of aphorism
-Economical, taught, straight forward
Robert Frost- Design - Answers -Mentions a moth, spider, and flower
- Rhyme scheme
-Similes
-Personification
-Grotesque description of spider
-Associating white with purity
Gwendolyn Brooks - Answers 1917-2000
-Kansas
-Spent childhood residence on Chicago's segregated and poor South Side
,-Harlem Renaissance
-African American poet
-Passionate sense of language
-Daring use of formal structure
-Poetry belongs to African American community
-White audience
-Black experience and black rage
-Started when seven (writing poetry)
-Traditional lyric form
-Strongly rhymed lines
-Leader of black feminists
Gwendolyn Brooks- Kitchenette Building - Answers -Published in 1945 near the end of WWII and popular
ideology and discourse of The American Dream
-Enjambment, oxymoron, connotations with use of "giddy"
-Associations of colors white and violet
-Speaker describes life for residents of the kitchenette building as dreary and devoted to basic
necessities rather than frills like dreaming
-Dreaming described with bright colors and beautiful music creating different environment
-Personification of a dream and creating extra line
Thomas Payne - Answers 1737-1809
-England
-Rationalism
-Supporter of Revolution (most persuasive rhetorician of the cause for independence)
-Quaker father, Anglican mother
-Journalist
-Spokesman against slavery
, -Anonymous author of Common sense
-Spokesman in French Revolution
-Protested Prosecution of Henry XVI
-Plainness in writings, no ceremonious expressions, clear conclusions
Thomas Paine- Common Sense - Answers -Filled with figurative language
-Rhetoric appeal: art of using language effectively so as to persuade or influence others
-Persuade readers to take action after reading the text, convince that everything is at stake
-Sense of urgency, force of the rhetoric
-Written as anonymous author
-First published in 1776
-One of best selling pamphlets of all time
-Extended Metaphor: "wound a young oak tree, it grows, becomes central to the tree, so posterity can
read it in full lettering"
-No transcendent extent in context
Thomas Jefferson - Answers 1743-1826
-Virginia
-Rationalism
-Passionate about liberating the human mind from tyranny imposed by state, church, and ignorance
-Mastered Latin and Greek
-President of Us. 1st secretary of state, minister to France, governor of Virginia, congressmen
-Agrarian aristocrat
Declaration of Independence - Answers -Congress: talking to and about elite white men in the colonies.
-Leaders thought they had been made second class citizens, and they should have power to control their
own politics, economy and not be subordinate to king and Parliament.
-Main causes for separation stated in Declaration: England had endangered prosperity of the colonies.
Most causes are economic and political.
-Opening clause: assumes all are "one people"
