Kochan's life in Confessions of a Mask

1. Compose an essay that briefly summarizes Kochan's life in Confessions of a Mask. Your answer should include several details about his childhood, youth, and his later adult life. Things to consider may include, but are not limited to, Kochan's confusion as to his true sexual nature as described in this novel, things you learned about Japanese culture, the "masks" Kochan wears, the relationship between the character Kochan and the author Yukio Mishima, and/or Kochan's fascination with death, blood, night, and violence.
2. Several times over the course of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, we find statements very much like this one: "So that on the whole Ivan Ilyich's life proceeded as he felt it should - pleasantly and properly." The first instinctive reaction to such comments might be, "Well, what's wrong with that?" What, according to Tolstoy, is wrong with that?
PLEASE WRITE A FULL PAGE ESSAY TO ABOVE TOPICS. MUST BE 24-25 LINES EACH.
SEE ATTACHMENT FOR MORE INSTRUCTION (TOPICS ARE QUESTION 7 AND 9)

Page 1 of 2 Queens College (CUNY) Department of Comparative Literature Spring 2020 - Global Literatures II / CMLIT 102W, Section 09 Final Examination updated 11/5/2018 Instructions: Choose any three of the numbered topics below. If an essay answer is required, write at least one full page. If there is another choice, please follow the question(s) carefully. Please use every other line, like you do for any essay. You may do your three choices in any order you choose. Stay focused! Concentrate on only one question at a time, and think it all the way through. Above all, remember to answer the question being asked! Remember that “one full page” is 24 - 25 typed lines; not 21 lines; not 22 lines. Important: Please don’t repeat the question, but do tell me which question you are answering. This examination is due by 11:59 pm on 15 May, after which the questions/topics will disappear from Blackboard. Under no circumstances will I accept any work beyond 11:59 pm, 17 May. If you return it to me late, your grade will be reduced, as stated in the syllabus. 1) Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has been read over the past one hundred years variously as: an adventure story; a racist text; a critique on King Leopold II’s atrocities in the Congo; a postcolonial commentary; in support of white European superiority and African inferiority; a feminist text; and other interpretations. What significance did the story have on you as a person? Your response may include one or more interpretations as sketched above, or you may give your own interpretation, fully explaining your opinion(s). 2) The themes of Shakespeare’s Othello, first performed in about 1604, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) still reverberate today. Compose an essay that describes two of the themes in common with both works which we discussed in class and that are still present in modern society. 3) Compose an essay tracing the character Avey Johnson’s journey to discover her ancestry, as described in Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow. Be sure to include the memories about her childhood that later influence what she becomes and does at the end of the story. 4) Communism, in the form it took in Vietnam during the so-called American War, is scorned in Duong Thu Huong’s Novel Without a Name. Compose an essay describing any one scene in the novel where “pure” Marxism is shown to be a sham. Page 2 of 2 5) Compose an essay that briefly summarizes Kochan's life in Confessions of a Mask. Your answer should include several details about his childhood, youth, and his later adult life. Things to consider may include, but are not limited to, Kochan's confusion as to his true sexual nature as described in this novel, things you learned about Japanese culture, the "masks" Kochan wears, the relationship between the character Kochan and the author Yukio Mishima, and/or Kochan's fascination with death, blood, night, and violence. *6) Is The Blind Owl an alcohol- and opium-induced dream, or is it something more? Compose an essay which supports either of these suppositions. *7) Write a commentary on the nature of the characters in The Blind Owl. Include specifics to support your opinion(s). **8) Identify the name of the book or play from which each quote is taken: A) “He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs.” B) “I have done the state some service, and they know’t.” C) “I told myself that even if my house had burned to the ground while I was away, even if my mother, father, brother, and sister had all been killed, that would be quite all right with me.” D) “The old woman (she had been young then) had been caught ‘crossing her feet’ in a Ring Shout . . . and had been ordered out of the circle.” E) “After she had gone I withdrew from the company of man, from the company of the stupid and successful . . .” F) “She has deceived her father, and may thee.” G) “The horror! The horror!” H) “ . . . he held on to the ladder and merely banged his side against the knob of the window frame.” I) “You’ll sleep here. I’m going to lift the cover. You get in and I’ll close it over you.” J) “It is not pain that hovers about his straining chest, his tense abdomen, his slightly contorted hips, but some flicker of melancholy pleasure like music.” K) “Orangutans are almost human. There’s no tastier flesh.” 9) Several times over the course of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, we find statements very much like this one: "So that on the whole Ivan Ilyich's life proceeded as he felt it should - pleasantly and properly." The first instinctive reaction to such comments might be, "Well, what's wrong with that?" What, according to Tolstoy, is wrong with that? *Note 1: Questions 6 and 7 are not the same. If you choose to answer both questions, your answers must be, by definition, different. **Note 2: If you choose to answer #8, you must answer all items (A-K) to get full credit.