Like I said last time, I already had two finals last week. They weren't too bad, and only one (political science) had any essay questions. I answered the one about systems and chose fascism to discuss, because I really remembered the class we spent on it. The interesting thing about the English exam is that it's on two different days; we're doing the essay question tomorrow, and our study guide actually gave us the entire question that will be on the test.
The last unit of the course was on writing exam essays, so giving us the question made sense, but I'm thinking now that it was kind of diabolical, too. All weekend long I was obsessing about it. According to the prof, the verb in the question is the key to answering it, and the verb in our question is "analyze," which, as it turns out, is the most difficult one. Actually, what we're going to do is sort of a mini version of a critical analysis. She gave us a three-page handout by Bruno Bettelheim about what fairy tales do in terms of childhood development and showed us a couple of fairy tales on video. We also read the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, which was a real surprise -- no fairy godmother, three balls, and her father is STILL ALIVE through the whole thing. That was the thing that convinced me that Bettelheim was right when he said that it's a story about sibling rivalry. The father goes along with whatever the stepmother and stepsisters choose to do to Cinderella.
The problem I'm having here, though, isn't with Cinderella, since that's not the story being used for the exam. I never even heard of the story on the test. It's The Three Ravens, and it's about a princess who swears not to speak for three years, three months, and three days in order to break the spell her evil stepmother put on her brothers (she turned them into ravens). A lot of things happen during the three years that test her ability to keep to her vow, but she doesn't give up and eventually breaks the spell (just as she's about to be burned at the stake for being a witch!). I can't make up my mind about what to do with this story, but I'll have to decide before noon tomorrow.
