July 8, 2003

Instructions: Please answer the following two questions in essay form, taking approximately 25 minutes or about 600-800 words at most to draft each answer. Each answer should address the question specifically, clearly, and briefly. Please type and proofread the answers. You may use your texts as you write, but please do not quote them extensively—your answer should be your thoughts about the texts, not reproductions of the texts themselves. Here are some hints on writing successful essay question answers, based on my long experience reading them:

• Plan your answer.
If you’ve been asked to address three texts, plan to address all three of them. If you have four points to make about a subject, make sure you get all four. Your time and space for answering is short—planning will help you use it wisely.
• Do not repeat the question
. Repeating the question or turning it around to make a statement only wastes time, space, and your instructor’s patience.
• Pay close attention to topic sentences
. The first sentence of each paragraph should send a clear signal about what will follow, and indicate the logic of the answer overall. Good, logical transition words or phrases (also known as conjunctive adverbs), such as "however," "nevertheless," and "in contrast," are far more effective than "another example of...," and other tacked-on transitions.
• Be specific
. We can’t tell if you know what you’re talking about if you nothing but vague abstractions—say what you mean, and show your evidence with specific characters, incidents, and parts of the text.
• Answer as if you were explaining the texts to an intelligent friend.
Be clear, honest, and forthright—we want to understand what you mean.

Questions:

1. All of the texts we have read so far either explicitly or implicitly address the issue of responsible leadership. Choose three of the texts we have read so far, and explain some of the principles of leadership they embody. Do these principles develop and change over time? How do they reflect the values and concerns of the societies from which they came?
2. Following are four quotations from works we have read. Identify three out of four of them, explain their particular contexts, and examine how they represent similarities and variations in the relationship between literature and its audience among the various cultures that produced the works.

Quotation 3:

Your own hands have foiled you...

You have smashed the Stone Charms, you have thrown them into the channel,

The Stone Charms are smashed...

The Stone Charms are what carry me,

Lest I touch the waters of death.

In your fury, ... you have smashed them,

The Stone Charms, they are what I had with me to make the crossing!

Quotation 4:

No, it’s no disgrace for a man, even a wise man,

to learn many things and not to be too rigid.

You’ve seen trees by a raging winter torrent,

how many sway with the flood and salvage every twig,

but not the stubborn—they’ve ripped out, roots and all.

Bend or break. The same when a man is sailing:

haul your sheets too taut, never give an inch,

you’ll capsize, and go the rest of the voyage

keel up and the rowing-benches under.