On Wednesday, December 4, you will take a final exam. It will consist of two essay questions, and you’ll write a response to each. These will not be terribly long. Plan to spend at most 30 minutes on each, and include analysis of 2-3 places in each text you choose to work with.

1. Use one of the two definitions of ideology below to make a case that 1 text of your choice presents and then either undermines or reinforces an important pattern of ideas. The ideology may involve economic class, political power, marriage, gender, service, or any other explanation offered for social phenomena. Please do not use any of our 3 tragedies; you may use our short story, "A Tiny Feast," or any other text you're reading in another class.

A distorted or illusory set of explanations or representations intended to convince people that the current state of production is justified, warranted, "natural" or anything else that encourages acceptance and compliance.

Or

A rich "system of representations" worked up in specific material practices, which helps form individuals into social subjects who "freely" internalize an appropriate "picture" of their social world and their place in it.  Ideology offers the social subject not a set of narrowly "political" ideas but a fundamental framework of assumptions that defines the parameters of the real and the self.

2. Use our definition of tragedy to explain one of the tragedies assigned in class (please do not use the one you wrote your long paper on). You'll need to introduce the definition; identify a conflict and explore it through concrete evidence; and discuss whether or not the conflict is resolved.

To refresh your memory: "A narrative in which a character’s fall is brought about by his or her own actions and reveals conflicts within or among a culture’s values, beliefs, and/or practices.

That is, characters fall because they see or feel contradictory pressures or signals; they make self-destructive decisions, but these are at least partly justifiable by appeals to cultural context. Thus, in some measure tragedies are socially critical."

For a refresher, see the PowerPoint from one of the first days of class.