Take-Home Exam

The goals of this paper are to test your ability to:

1. work closely with a scene to analyze and explain its dramatic dynamics.
In the case of Pinter it was the power struggle as it shifts from moment to moment, which is a way of dramatizing psychological drives for power, ways of compensating for insecurities, social and psychological anxiety, etc.; but also a view of the postmodern world where what happened in uncertain and the self is multiple.  In Strindberg and Williams, you'd be working with different dramatic strategies aimed toward some of the same but some other goals.

2.  relate the scene to the play as a whole.
Here you'd be working toward larger themes and working with the elements of the plot:  expositions, main action, climax, resolution.

3.  reflecting what distinguishes the playwright.

Though I strongly recommend your starting with the analysis of what you think will be a good representative scene--as you did with Pinter--your final paper should be structured in a way that you think is most suitable.

Don't outside sources.  Research requires gathering a range of information, which takes a take a lot of time.  This is to test your understanding of the section we just covered and your ability to work closely with a dramatic text and, except for Miss Julie, one way it was performed.