St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)

End Semester Examination – ApRil 2015

B.COM (T. T) –II Semester

ADDITIONAL ENGLISH

Duration: 3 Hours                                                                                       Max. Marks: 100

Note:  Read the questions carefully and answer.

Do not exceed the paragraph limit.

            Each paragraph should contain at least four sentences.

SECTION – A

Below are the opening paragraphs of two major novels. Read them carefully and answer the questions.

Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky

At the beginning of July, during an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left the closet he rented from tenants in S——y Lane, walked out to the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, headed for the K——n Bridge.

He had safely avoided meeting his landlady on the stairs. His closet was located just under the roof of a tall, five-storied house, and was more like a cupboard than a room. As for the landlady, from whom he rented this closet with dinner and maid-service included, she lived one flight below, in separate rooms, and every time he went out he could not fail to pass by the landlady’s kitchen, the door of which almost always stood wide open to the stairs. And each time he passed by, the young man felt some painful and cowardly sensation, which made him wince with shame. He was over his head in debt to the landlady and was afraid of meeting her.

It was not that he was so cowardly and downtrodden, even quite the contrary; but for some time he had been in an irritable and tense state, resembling hypochondria. He was so immersed in himself and had isolated himself so much from everyone that he was afraid not only of meeting his landlady but of meeting anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty; but even his strained circumstances had lately ceased to burden him. He had entirely given up attending to his daily affairs and did not want to attend to them. As a matter of fact, he was not afraid of any landlady, whatever she might be plotting against him. But to stop on the stairs, to listen to all sorts of nonsense about this commonplace rubbish, which he could not care less about, all this badgering for payment, these threats and complaints, and to have to dodge all the while, make excuses, lie—oh, no, better to steal catlike down the stairs somehow and slip away unseen by anyone.

This time, however, as he walked out to the street, even he was struck by his fear of meeting his creditor.

“I want to attempt such a thing, and at the same time I’m afraid of such trifles!” he thought with a strange smile. “Hm . . . yes . . . man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice . . . That is an axiom . . . I wonder, what are people most afraid of? A new step, their own new word, that’s what they’re most afraid of . . . I babble too much, however. That’s why I don’t do anything, because I babble. However, maybe it’s like this: I babble because I don’t do anything. I’ve learned to babble over this past month, lying in a corner day in and day out, thinking about . . . cuckooland. Why on earth am I going now? Am I really capable of that? Is that something serious? No, not serious at all. I’m just toying with it, for the sake of fantasy. A plaything! Yes, a plaything, if you like!”

It was terribly hot out, and moreover it was close, crowded; lime, scaffolding, bricks, dust everywhere, and that special summer stench known so well to every Petersburger who cannot afford to rent a summer house—all at once these things unpleasantly shook the young man’s already overwrought nerves. The intolerable stench from the taverns, especially numerous in that part of the city, and the drunkards he kept running into even though it was a weekday, completed the loathsome and melancholy coloring of the picture. A feeling of the deepest revulsion flashed for a moment in the young man’s fine features. Incidentally, he was remarkably good-looking, taller than average, slender and trim, with beautiful dark eyes and dark blond hair. But soon he lapsed as if into deep-thought, or even, more precisely, into some sort of oblivion, and walked on no longer noticing what was around him, and not wishing to notice. He only muttered something to himself from time to time, out of that habit of monologues he had just confessed to himself. And at the same moment he was aware that his thoughts sometimes became muddled and that he was very weak: it was the second day that he had had almost nothing to eat…

War of the End of the World – Mario Vargas Llosa

The man was tall and so thin he seemed to be always in profile. He was dark-skinned and rawboned, and his eyes burned with perpetual fire. He wore shepherd’s sandals and the dark purple tunic draped over his body called to mind the cassocks of those missionaries who every so often visited the villages of the backlands, baptizing hordes of children and marrying men and women who were cohabiting. It was impossible to learn what his age, his background, his life story were, but there was something about his quiet manner, his frugal habits, his imperturbable gravity that attracted people even before he offered counsel.

He would appear all of a sudden, alone in the beginning, invariably on foot, covered with the dust of the road, every so many weeks, every so many months. His tall figure was silhouetted against the light of dusk or dawn as he walked down the one street of the town, in great strides, with a sort of urgency. He would make his way along determinedly, amid nanny goats with tinkling bells, amid dogs and children who stepped aside and stared at him inquisitively, not returning the greetings of the women who already knew him and were nodding to him and hastening to bring him jugs of goat’s milk and dishes of manioc and black beans. But he neither ate nor drank until he had gone as far as the church of the town and seen, once more, a hundred times over, that it was dilapidated, its paint faded, its towers unfinished and its walls full of holes and its floors buckling and its altars worm-eaten. A sad look would come over his face, with all the grief of a migrant from the Northeast whose children and animals have been killed by the drought, who has nothing left and must abandon his house, the bones of his dead, and flee, flee somewhere, not knowing where. Sometimes he would weep, and as he did so the black fire in his eyes would flare up in awesome flashes. He would immediately begin to pray. But not the way other men or women pray: he would stretch out face downward on the ground or the stones or the chipped tiles, in front of where the altar was or had been or would be, and would lie there praying, at times in silence, at times aloud, for an hour, two hours, observed with respect and admiration by the townspeople. He recited the Credo, the Our Father, and the Hail Marys that everyone was familiar with, and also other prayers that nobody had heard before but that, as the days, the months, the years went by, people gradually learned by heart. Where is the parish priest? they would hear him ask. Why isn’t there a pastor for the flock here? And each time he discovered that there was no priest in the village it made him as sad at heart as the ruin of the Lord’s dwelling place.

Only after having asked the Blessed Jesus’ pardon for the state in which they had allowed His house to fall did he agree to eat and drink something, barely a sample of what the villagers hastened to offer him even in years of scarcity. He was willing to sleep indoors with a roof over his head, in one or another of the dwellings where the people of the backlands offered him hospitality, but those who gave him lodging rarely saw him take his rest in the hammock or makeshift bed or on the mattress placed at his disposal. He would lie down on the floor, without even a blanket, and, leaning his head with its wild mane of jet-black hair on one arm, would sleep for a few hours. Always so few that he was the last one to retire at night and yet when the cowherds and shepherds who were up earliest left for the fields they would catch sight of him, already at work mending the walls and roof of the church.

He gave his counsel when dusk was falling, when the men had come back from the fields and the women had finished their household tasks and the children were already asleep. He gave it in those stony, treeless, open spots to be found in all the villages of the backlands at the main crossroads, which might have been called public squares if they had had benches, tree-lined walks, gardens, or had kept those that they had once had and that little by little had been destroyed by drought, pestilence, indolence. He gave it at that hour when the sky of the North of Brazil, before becoming completely dark and studded with stars, blazes amid tufted white, gray, or bluish clouds and there is a sort of vast fireworks display overhead, above the vastness of the world. He gave it at that hour when fires are lighted to chase away the insects and prepare the evening meal, when the steamy air grows less stifling and a breeze rises that puts people in better spirits to endure the sickness, the hunger, and the sufferings of life.

He spoke of simple and important things, not looking at any person in particular among those who surrounded him, or rather looking with his incandescent eyes beyond the circle of oldsters, men and women, children, at something or someone only he could see. Things that were understandable because they had been vaguely known since time immemorial, things taken in along with the milk of one’s mother’s breast. Present, tangible, everyday, inevitable things, such as the end of the world and the Last Judgment, which might well occur before the time it would take for the town to set the chapel with drooping wings upright again. What would happen when the Blessed Jesus looked down upon the sorry state in which they had left His house? What would He say of the behavior of pastors who, instead of helping the poor, emptied their pockets by charging them money for the succor of religion? Could the words of God be sold? Shouldn’t they be given freely, with no price tag attached? What excuse would be offered to the Father by priests who fornicated, despite their vows of chastity? Could they invent lies that would be believed by a God who can read a person’s thoughts as easily as the tracker on earth reads the trail left by a jaguar? Practical, everyday, familiar things, such as death, which leads to happiness if one comes to it with a pure and joyous soul, as to a fiesta. Were men animals? If they were not, they should pass through that door dressed in their very best, as a sign of reverence for Him whom they were about to meet. He spoke to them of heaven, and of hell as well, the domain of the Dog, paved with burning-hot coals and infested with rattlesnakes, and of how Satan could manifest himself by way of seemingly harmless innovations…

1. Answer ALL in about one paragraph each. Each carries 5 marks. (4×5 = 20)
2. What is the kind ofatmosphere or moodthat thefirst novel creates in its beginning?
3. Comment on the description offered in the first paragraph of the second novel. Does the description help you in imagining the character?
4. With which character can you identify easily and immediately? Why so?
5. Point out and comment on any one similarity and one difference between both the beginnings.

1. Answer ALL in about three or four paragraphs. Each carries 15 marks.                                                                                                                     (2×15 = 30)
2. Indecision and hunger seem to be linked very deeply in the beginnings of ‘Crime and Punishment’. What other emotional and physical states does it deal with? Do you think it is an arresting way of beginning a novel? Respond by quoting words or phrases from the passage.

6. The character in ‘War of the End of the World’ seems to be a humble preacher. The narrator says nothing about his past and yet describes his present condition with clarity; doesn’t know his name and yet describes his behaviour; doesn’t know where he comes from and yet seems to know where he is headed. The narrator tracks the movement of this preacher as though he were one of his followers. Why do you think the narrator adopts this technique? How do you think the narrative may unfold further and what might be the fate of this character? Respond using your imagination.

SECTION – B

• Answer ANY FIVE questions in about two or three paragraphs. Each carries 10 marks. (5×10 = 50)

7. In the story ‘Classmate’ what are the different techniques that Bhagavan uses to cure Basavegowda of his illness? What symbolic significance does it carry?
8. Compare the story ‘The Overcoat’ with ‘Classmate’ and compare AkakiyAkakievitch with Shivappa. Do you think there are any parallels to both these stories and characters?
9. The title of the prose poem ‘Let’s Beat Up The Poor!’ seems to be very provocative. The poem also aims for one particular thing: provocation. Whom do you think is the provocation intended: to the beggar in the poem or to the reader of the poem? And, is it successful in provoking?
10. We seem to think of colonialism and racism as a thing of the past. Yet, traces of both are visible everywhere. How are they both dealt with in the story ‘India is a Strange Country’ and the poem ‘Telephone Conversation’?
11. Write about any two vachanas that you have read in the class.
12. Both ‘Like the Sun’ and ‘The Card-Sharper’s Daughter’ begin with an explicit message which the rest of the story would drive home. Compare both the stories and point out the similarities or differences in terms of the theme, style and structure of the writing.

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St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)

End Semester Examination – March/April 2015

B.Com – IV Semester

ADDITIONAL ENGLISH

Duration: 3 hours                                                                                           Max Marks: 100

Section -A

1. Answer ALL the following questions in a word, phrase or a sentence.

                                                                                                                                        (5×2= 10)

1. What game is Holden describing at the beginning of the novel?
2. Why does Holden get in to a fight with Stradlater?
3. What piece of clothing did Holden buy during the team’s trip to New York?
4. Name any one of Holden’s teachers at Prency prep.
5. Holden wonders about the fate of which animals in Central Park?

1. Write short notes on any FOUR of the following questions in about 100 words.

(4×5=20)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

6. Holden’s sense of isolation and disconnection.
7. Holden’s obsession with phonyness.
8. The characters who are admired by Holden Caulfield.
9. The ending of the novel “Catcher in the Rye”
10. J.D. Salinger, the author and the person.

III. Answer any THREE questions in about 200 words.                                      (3×10 =30)

11. Based on your reading of the novel attempt a character analysis of Holden Caulfield. Use specific instances from the text to support your observations and conclusions.
12. What are the major themes explored in the novel. Are they relevant to adolescent life in today’s world. Which elements of the novel are specific to American culture and which do you think are universal? Use examples from the text.
13. Holden often behaves like a prophet or a saint pointing out the phoniness and the wickedness in the world around him. Does he manifest signs of phoniness and hypocrisy himself? What does this reveal about his character?
14. Attempt a review of Salinger’s novel, meant to be published in a news paper literary column.

Section – B

1. Answer the following questions in about 200 words.        (3×10=30)

15. The women characters like Sinachari’s mother, Pewali and the daughter-in –law break the typical image of the pious Indian women as they are not the upholder of the honour of the family. Do you agree to this statement? How is Sanichari different from them?
16. Give a character sketch of Sanichari.
17. What aspects of caste and gender oppression in Indian society does ‘Rudaali’ shed light on? What are your learnings from reading this play by Mahaswethadevi?

Section – C

18. Write an essay on the topic “India as a nation in 2050 – Opportunities, Challenges and possibilities.                                                                                                      (1×10=10)    

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St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)
End Semester Examination – APRIL 2015
B.Com – II Semester
ADDITIONAL ENGLISH

Duration: 3 Hours                                                                                       Max. Marks:  100

Section – A

1. Answer any THREE of the following questions in about 200 words. (3×15=45)
2. We all know that honesty is the best policy. But sometimes the truth hurts people’s feelings. In “Like the sun”, a school teacher is determined to be honest, even if it puts a strain on his relationships. What dilemma does Sekhar face in the story? How has Sekhar’s truthfulness affected his relationship with the headmaster?
3. ‘When Akakiy returns from the dead, he appears to symbolize divine retribution or moral indignation. Like the Furies of ancient Greek mythology, he bedevils evildoers–in this case, the bureaucrats and aristocrats who prey on the weak. And he brings an implied warning from the author: Unless Russia changes, Akakiy will be millions, and he will bring down society itself’.
   What was life like for lower-class Russians in the first half of the 19th Century?
   In Gogol’s fantasy world, does Akakiy really rise from the dead? Or is the notorious cloak robber one of the bearded men who stole ….Akakiy’s cloak?
4. Compare narrations of Indian setting in the short stories of P Lankesh and Mohammed Basheer.
5. What is the message that you infer from the short story ‘India is a Strange Country’, by Khuswanth Singh?

Section – B

1. II) Answer any TWO of the following questions in about 150 words. (2×10=20)
2. ‘Baudelaire, a sharp social critic, presents us with a narrator in isolation—a self-titled philosopher who, after claiming to have read many “fashionable” books about “public happiness,” has a startling revelation about how he can end poverty’.
   What social commentary is Baudelaire trying to convey through his satire? What does Baudelaire think of philanthropy?
3. Wole Soyinka brings out a great use of irony and sarcasm in the poem ‘Telephone Conversation’. Do you think Soyinka’s poem is an effective way of making others aware of prejudice?

Facially, I am brunette, but, madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blond.
Comment on these lines from the poem.

7. Comment on any two vachana’s from the text. What insights do you draw from them?

Section – C

Read the below passages and answer the questions.
Nurture your Brain cells

We live in a world with 300 exabytes (300 billion billion) of information, an amount that is rapidly expanding to ever greater amounts from this already brobdingnagian level. And yet the processing capacity of the conscious mind is a mere 120 bits per second. This presents a challenge to not only our processing capacity, but also our decision-making ability:

“Neuroscientists have discovered that unproductively and loss of drive can result from decision overload. Although most of us have no problem ranking the importance of decisions if asked to do so, our brains don’t automatically do this. … The mere situation of facing … many [small] decisions in daily life creates neural fatigue, leaving no energy for the important decisions. Recent research shows that people who were asked to make a series of meaningless decisions … showed poorer impulse control and lack of judgment about subsequent decisions. It’s as though our brains are configured to make a certain number of decisions per day and once we reach that limit, we can’t make any more, regardless of how important they are. One of the most useful findings in recent neuroscience could be summed up as: The decision-making network in our brain doesn’t prioritize.

“Today, we are confronted with an unprecedented amount of information, and each of us generates more information than ever before in human history. … Information scientists have quantified all this: In 2011, Americans took in five times as much information every day as they did in 1986 — the equivalent of 175 newspapers. During our leisure time, not counting work, each of us processes 34 gigabytes or 100,000 words every day. The world’s 21,274 television stations produce 85,000 hours of original programming every day as we watch an average of 5 hours of television each day, the equivalent of 20 gigabytes of audio-video images. That’s not counting YouTube, which uploads 6,000 hours of video every hour. And computer gaming? It consumes more bytes than all other media put together, including DVDs, TV, books, magazines, and the Internet.

“Just trying to keep our own media and electronic files organized can be overwhelming. Each of us has the equivalent of over half a million books stored on our computers, not to mention all the information stored in our cell phones or in the magnetic stripe on the back of our credit cards. We have created a world with 300 exabytes (300,000,000,000,000,000,000 pieces) of human-made information. If each of those pieces of information were written on a 3 x 5 index card and then spread out side by side, just one person’s share — your share of this information — would cover every square inch of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.

“Our brains do have the ability to process the information we take in, but at a cost: We can have trouble separating the trivial from the important, and all this information processing makes us tired. Neurons are living cells with a metabolism; they need oxygen and glucose to survive and when they’ve been working hard, we experience fatigue. Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport, or how best to reconcile with a close friend you just had an argument with.

“The processing capacity of the conscious mind has been estimated at 120 bits per second. That bandwidth, or window, is the speed limit for the traffic of information we can pay conscious attention to at any one time. While a great deal occurs below the threshold of our awareness, and this has an impact on how we feel and what our life is going to be like, in order for something to become encoded as part of your experience, you need to have paid conscious attention to it.

“What does this bandwidth restriction — this information speed limit mean in terms of our interactions with others? In order to understand one person speaking to us, we need to process 60 bits of information per second. With a processing limit of 120 bits per second, this means you can barely understand two people talking to you at the same time. Under most circumstances, you will not be able to understand three people talking at the same time. We’re surrounded on this planet by billions of other humans, but we can understand only two at a time at the most! It’s no wonder that the world is filled with so much misunderstanding. With such attention restrictions, it’s clear why many of us feel overwhelmed by managing some of the most basic aspects of life.”

Selection –from The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin.

III) Answer the following questions in about 150 words                                (2×10=20)

8. Discuss the role of ‘Information’ technology in contemporary life? Do you think it curbs the growth of individual creativity and uniqueness? Justify.
9. Has coding and decoding effected human mind? How do we manage ourselves in a changing world of technology?
10. IV) The matchless career and woeful undoing of Bob Hope

Bob Hope was the most popular entertainer of the twentieth century, the only one who achieved the highest level of success in every major genre of mass entertainment: vaudeville, Broadway, movies, radio, television, popular song, and live concerts. His undoing began with his active support of the Vietnam war:

“By the time he died — on July 27, 2003, two months after his hundredth birthday –Hope’s reputation was already fading, tarnished, or being actively disparaged. He had, unfortunately, stuck around too long. …

“Hope never recovered from the Vietnam years, when his hawkish defense of the war, close ties to President Nixon (who actively courted Hope’s help in selling his Vietnam policies to the American people), and the country-club smugness of his gibes about antiwar protesters and long-haired hippies, all made him a political pariah for the peace-and-love generation. His tours to entertain US troops during World War II had made him a national hero. By the turbulent 1960s, he was a court-approved jester, the Establishment’s comedian — hardly a badge of honor in an era when hipper, more subversive comics, from Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce to George Carlin and Richard Pryor, were showing that stand-up comedy could be a vehicle for personal expression, social criticism, and political protest. Even before Hope became a doddering relic, he had become an anachronism.

“Yet the scope of Hope’s achievement, viewed from the distance of a few years, is almost unimaginable. By nearly any measure, he was the most popular entertainer of the twentieth century, the only one who achieved success — often No. 1 — rated success — in every major genre of mass entertainment in the modern era: vaudeville, Broadway, movies, radio, television, popular song, and live concerts. He virtually invented stand-up comedy in the form we know it today. … A tireless stage performer who traveled the country and the world for more than half a century doing live shows for audiences in the thousands, he may well have been seen in person by more people than any other human being in history. …

“He began in vaudeville, first as a song-and-dance man and then as an emcee and comedian, working his way up from the amateur shows of his Cleveland hometown to headlining at New York’s legendary Palace Theatre. He segued to Broadway, where he costarred in some of the era’s classic musicals, appeared with legends such as Fanny Brice and Ethel Merman, and introduced standards by great American composers such as Jerome Kern and Cole Porter. Hope became a national star on radio, hosting a weekly comedy show on NBC that was America’s No. 1 — rated radio program for much of the early 1940s and remained in the top five for more than a decade.

“He came relatively late to Hollywood, making his feature-film debut, at age thirty-four, in The Big Broadcast of 1938, where he sang ‘Thanks for the Memory’ — which became his universally identifiable, infinitely adaptable theme song and the first of many pop standards that, almost as a sideline, he introduced in movies. With an almost nonstop string of box-office hits such as The Cat and the Canary, Caught in the Draft, Monsieur Beaucaire, The Paleface, and the popular Road pictures with Bing Crosby, Hope ranked among Hollywood’s top ten box-office stars for a decade, reaching the No.1 spot in 1949. … ‘I grew up loving him, emulating him, and borrowing from him,’ said Woody Allen, one of the few comics to acknowledge how much he was influenced by Hope — though nearly everyone was. …

“When television came in, Hope was there too. Others, such as Milton Berle, preceded him. But after starring in his first NBC special on Easter Sunday in 1950, Hope began an unparalleled reign as NBC’s most popular comedy star that lasted for nearly four decades. … That would have been enough for most performers, but not Hope. Along with his radio, TV, and movie work, he traveled for personal appearances at a pace matched by no other major star.

“On a podium, no one could touch him. He was host or cohost of the Academy Awards ceremony a record nineteen times — the first in 1940, when Gone With the Wind was the big winner, and the last in 1978, when Star Wars and Annie Hall were the hot films. His suave unflappability — no one ever looked better in a tuxedo — and tart insider wisecracks (‘This is the night when war and politics are forgotten, and we find out who we really hate’) helped turn a relatively low-key industry dinner into the most obsessively tracked and massively watched event of the Hollywood year.

“The modern stand-up comedy monologue was essentially his creation. There were comedians in vaudeville before Hope, but they mostly worked in pairs or did prepackaged, joke book gags that played on ethnic stereotypes and other familiar comedy tropes. Hope, working as an emcee and ad-libbing jokes about the acts he introduced, developed a more freewheeling and spontaneous monologue style, which he later honed and perfected in radio. To keep his material fresh, he hired a team of writers and told them to come up with jokes about the news of the day — presidential politics, Hollywood gossip, California weather, as well as his own life, work, travels, golf game, and show-business friends.

“This was something of a revolution. When Hope made his debut on NBC in 1938, the popular comedians on radio all inhabited self-contained worlds, playing largely invented comic characters: Jack Benny’s effete tightwad, Edgar Bergen and his uppity dummy, Charlie McCarthy, the daffy-wife/exasperated-husband interplay of George Burns and Gracie Allen. Hope’s monologues brought something new to radio: a connection between the comedian and the outside world. … His monologues became the template for Johnny Carson and nearly every late-night TV host who followed him, and the foundation stone for all stand-up comics, even those who rebelled against him.”
Selection — from Hope by Richard Zoglin.
Answer the following question in about 200 words                                           (15marks)

10. How do you relate the passage with present comedians of world of cinema? What do you learn from the story of Bob Hope? Narrate your experience of watching humors scene from your favorite comedy.

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St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)

End Semester Examination – Oct/Sept 2015

BCOM- III Semester

 C1 12 3 AE: ADDITIONAL ENGLISH

Duration: 3 Hrs                                                                                               Max Marks: 100

SECTION – A

1. Answer the following questions in a word, sentence or a phrase.        (5×2=10)

1. Name the film whose artistry is analyzed in the essay ‘Film as Art’.
2. In which Film Festival did, Rashomon win a first prize?
3. What is special about, Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Kick’? Which he uses as a gesture in his films.
4. Which famous musician of Akbar’s court is mentioned by Haresh Bakshi in his essay?
5. Whom did Florence Brooks interview in the essay ‘No More Questions’?

1. Write short notes on any four of the following.                                  (4×5=20)

6. Film as art versus film as business.

7. Multiple versions of truth and reality in Rashomon and its impact on the audience.

8. The specialty and significance of Charlie Chaplin’s body language.

9. The nature of rapport between the musician and his listeners in a concert of Indian classical music.

10. The roles and functions of author interviews.

SECTION – B

• Answer the following in about two pages each.                            (4×10=40)

11. In the movie Rashomon what do the symbols- the ruined gate, the rain, the forest, the rescued infant, the patterns of light and shadow, represent?
12. What specific qualities make possible the appreciations and enjoyment of Indian classical music according to Harish Bakshi? Why do you think classical music is not as popular as film music? Discuss in the light of your own listening experience.
13. How does Chuck Cklosterman, understand and elaborate the notion ‘Nostalgia’? Travel down your memory lane and give an example of your own experience of nostalgia.
14. Pick any historical or contemporary personality of your choice from any field and ask them any three questions, in an imaginary interview that you are conducting. Also provide a brief justification for each question that you ask.

SECTION – C

Read the below given interview and answer the questions:

INTERVIEWER: Has the theme of survival always been intrinsic to your work?

MARGARET ATWOOD: I grew up in the north woods of Canada. You had to know certain things about survival. Wilderness survival courses weren’t very formalized when I was growing up, but I was taught certain things about what to do if I got lost in the woods. Things were immediate in that way and therefore quite simple. It was part of my life from the beginning.

INTERVIEWER: When did you make the leap from considering survival to be a physical battle to considering it to be an intellectual or political struggle?

ATWOOD: When I started thinking about Canada as a country it became quite evident to me that survival was a national obsession. When I came to the States in the sixties, I felt that nobody knew where Canada was. Their brother may have gone there to fish or something. When I was at Harvard, I was invited as a “foreign student” to a woman’s house for an evening for which I was asked to wear “native costume.” Unfortunately I’d left my native costume at home and had no snowshoes. So there I was, without native costume with this poor woman and all this food, sitting around waiting for the really exotic foreign students in their native costumes to turn up—which they never did because, as everybody knew, foreign students didn’t go out at night.

INTERVIEWER: You’ve written about the theme of foreignness a good deal.

ATWOOD: Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

INTERVIEWER: Where have you been treated better as a writer, would you say?

ATWOOD: I suffer more vicious attacks, more personal attacks, in Canada, because that’s where I’m from. Families have their most desperate fights among themselves, as we know. However, if you look at per capita sales figures, people recognizing me in the                               street, of course it’s more in Canada. If I sold as many books per capita in the United States as in Canada, I’d be a billionaire.

1. Answer any two from the following questions.                             (2×10=20)
2. How different is an interview from any other form of literature?
3. In the above interview, what is that the interviewer is trying to unravel beyond Atwood’s writings?
4. Create a personality profile of Margaret Atwood from the above interview?

SECTION – D

18. Give a personal response to any two of the following.                 (2×5=10)
19. “You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in the drop.”

(a quote from  Jallauddin Rumi)

1. “Hell is other people”

(a quote from  Jean Paul Satre)

1. “All of us have two lives. The second one starts, when we realize that we have only one.”

(a quote from   Tom Hiddlestol)

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St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)

End Semester Examination – SEPT/Oct. 2015

B.Com – I Semester

C1 15 1 AE: ADDITIONAL ENGLISH

Duration: 3 Hours                                                                                       Max. Marks: 100

Note:  Read the questions carefully and answer.

Do not exceed the paragraph limit.

            Each paragraph should contain at least four sentences.

            Do not copy sentences or paragraphs from the passage.

SECTION -A

Read the passage below and answer the questions.

Method and madness

Vitor Pordeus makes a good Hamlet. Bearded, handsome, angry at the world, he stands at the centre of his group of actors. Like a force of nature that fights to be heard against the wind blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean, he rails against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to a backdrop of palm trees and hot-dog stands.

Behind him, the sun drops like a giant orange behind the DoisIrmãosor Two Brothers, the picture‑postcard hills behind Ipanema beach and home to the recently gentrified Vidigal favela in Rio de Janeiro. The old King of Denmark sits on his throne, immutable. He’s a thin, frail man with only one leg. ‘Serounãoser,’ the chorus around him rises up: ‘To be or not to be.’ Then, a low hum, as the group starts to chant and dance their way around the circle. ‘Renascer,’ they sing –meaning: be reborn, revive.

This is no group of pampered actors. A banner with carnival streamers is emblazoned in gold, blue and orange with ‘Madness Hotel’, the name of the collective behind this production. The 20-odd performers have arrived at the sea’s edge from a psychiatric hospital in Rio’s densely populated and overheated North Zone. Pordeus is their doctor, though it might be more accurate now to describe him as an actor-director.

Theatre provides a rare stimulus for psychotic, schizophrenic and depressed patients, giving them an opportunity to communicate and interact constructively with others. ‘We are all actors; we take on our identity, we take on our culture,’ Pordeus says. Released from their fixed roles as catatonic[1], belligerent[2] or withdrawn patients, his actors – Pordeus calls them clients rather than patients – are free to don different masks as characters from Shakespeare, and to live out a different reality for a few hours. In the safe, performative setting, new things can be said or tried out. As the circle moves round, it breaks at times for people to hug each other, for spats to be heard then ironed out, and for each player to start new chants which the others then follow.

Pordeus says that the success of his work can be seen clearly in the thousands of films and photographs he records of the performances, both beachside and in the ‘Madness Hotel and Spa’ at the Nise da Silveira Mental Health Institute in Rio de Janeiro. When the patients review these later on, they can see the progress they’ve made, but also better understand their own behaviour and interactions with others. He claims that patients who never spoke before joining the Madness Hotel and who now smile or spontaneously interact with others are proof of the healing power of theatre.

The project has attracted a wave of publicity in Brazil, and an artists’ residence now takes place once a year at the Madness Hotel hospital unit. Yet Pordeus is not without his critics. Funding for the project through the municipal authority is an ongoing challenge, and there is a clash between the Madness Hotel and those in charge of other units in the hospital.

‘There is a lot of conflict between us and the other doctors,’ Pordeus admits. ‘They attack us, they say it agitates the patients. They say the basis of therapy is drugs, and that’s not true.’ Pordeus’s critics say that the emphasis on freedom of expression away from the clear doctor-patient hierarchy creates insecurity and confusion among patients rather than providing a healthy outlet. Yet this is to miss the point, since Pordeus is an activist as much as a doctor; he seeks to challenge mainstream ideas about illness and treatment, and that is bound to stir protest.

In wider perspective, the Madness Hotel performances, with their songs and costumes, can be seen as a continuation of Brazilian cultural traditions. Samba, for example, has always brought people together to seek redemption through collective remembrances of past suffering.

During carnival in Rio, the streets are filled with people singing songs such as Agoniza Mas NãoMorre: ‘Samba: agoniza mas nãomorre/ Alguémsempretesocorre/ Antes de suspiroderradeiro’ (Samba: agonise but don’t die/ Someone will always rescue you/ Before the final breath). Lyrics recall the shared traumas of slavery and the massacres of the poor by colonial authorities, while the powerful rhythms restore the African culture from which many of Brazil’s people were once violently removed. Crucially, this redemption is often to be found collectively and not individually in Brazilian culture – collectivism, of course, being a strong element of theatre.

The idea of using theatre as a tool for change was pioneered in Brazil by the late director and activist Augusto Boal who in the 1950s created the Theatre of the Oppressed, now world-renowned. In the Theatre of the Oppressed, drama became a framework in which people could visualise and understand the power dynamics at work in society and explore new possibilities through role play. These Boal-inspired ‘dress rehearsals for real life’ have been used in strife-torn locations such as Israel and Palestine, as well as all over Latin America and Europe. Boal believed that everyone is a self-contained spectator, actor and theatre in one; if we start by observing our actions and interactions, we can then go on to do things differently in the future.

Plato and Socrates believed that poets and priests could commune with the gods through accessing a kind of ‘divine madness’, thereby identifying the source of creative inspiration and insanity as one and the same, and the ‘mad artist’ has remained a persistent motif in many cultures, from Vincent van Gogh to Kanye West. Eccentric behaviour is indulged, encouraged or even expected in creative people, who enjoy a privileged position outside of the normal rules of society, and who often play up to this idea as if to underscore their untrammelled creativity.

In her book Touched with Fire: Manic-depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (1991), Kay Redfield Jamison points to a wealth of evidence that supports such a link, among them studies that show elevated rates of mood disorders in highly creative people, and which further suggest that the link is genetic. Jamison, an American clinical psychologist, who is Professor in Mood Disorders at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and who is bipolar herself, quotes the study of 113 German-speaking artists, writers, architects and composers compiled by the Austrian psychiatrist Adele Juda in 1944. Juda found that there were more suicides and more ‘insane and neurotic’ individuals in this group than could be found in the normal population, and that the same predisposition existed in many of the artists’ family members. Seen this way, madness might be a blessing of sorts, a kind of portal into a unique vision of the world.

Yet suffering can be alleviated through the discipline of creative practices that serve to weave formless, unarticulated pain into something tangible, ordered and ultimately pleasurable. As Jamison writes: ‘Creative work can act not only as a means of escape from pain, but also as a way of structuring chaotic emotions and thoughts, numbing pain through abstraction and the rigors of disciplined thought, and creating a distance from the source of despair.’ Thus some artists with mental health problems might have partly sought out their profession because of the relief it provides, consciously or not. For poets or painters, the outlet for these emotions is individual, while a shared theatrical or musical experience has the potential to effect a collective catharsis[3] and transformation.

1. Answer the following in about TWO or THREE paragraphs each. (4 x 10 = 40)

1. What role, according to this article, can theatre play in the lives of ‘psychotic, schizophrenic and depressed patients’? What other roles do you think theatre plays in our society?
2. What is the criticism levelled against Pordeus’ method of dealing with the patients? What is your view on Pordeus’ method of treating his patients?
3. What have you understood by the term ‘divine madness’? Is there a method in madness? Comment on the link, if any exists, between creativity and madness.
4. Write about a performance (theatre, dance, singing, rituals, magic, cinema or any other performance) that you have seen and which has transformed the way you look at life and the world or has given a cathartic experience.

SECTION – B

1. Answer any FOUR of the following questions in about FOUR or FIVE paragraphs each.                                                            (4x 15 = 60)

5. In V. S. Naipaul’s ‘India: A Wounded Civilization’ what is the ‘wound’ that has still not healed in Indian civilization? Comment on the method of using works of fiction like R. K. Narayan’s novel Sampath in trying to understand the Indian society. Is it possible to understand a society through fiction?
6. Compare the writing styles of Harriet Jacob’s A Lover and Siddalingaiah’s Ooru Keri. What might be the reason for writers to adopt different writing styles? Is it possible for autobiographies to reveal more than the writer’s life? What are the other things that you got to know while reading excerpts from the autobiographies?
7. According to Mario Vargas Llossa what is the function of literature in a society? What are his views on technology and its impact on the physical book? Do you share his views or do you choose to disagree with him? Provide evidences and examples to defend your position.
8. You have read and discussed a few essays which deal with reason, rationality, faith, belief and religion. Write about any two ideas from the essays which either interested you or irritated you very much. Which essay did you like the most and why?
9. “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” ― Alan Bennett. Have you had any such experience when you were reading a book, an article or an essay? Write about your reading life: the kind of books you read, how you choose books and your experience of reading books.

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[1]Catatonia: abnormality of movement and behaviour arising from a disturbed mental state (typically schizophrenia). It may involve repetitive or purposeless over-activity, or catalepsy, resistance to passive movement, and negativism

[2]Belligerent: hostile and aggressive

[3]Catharsis: the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.

St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)

End Semester Examination – March / April 2016

B.COM (T.T.) – IV SEMESTER

 C2 12 4AE :ADDITIONAL ENGLISH

Duration:  3 hours                                                                                        Max. Marks: 100

Section -A

1. Write short notes on any FOUR of the following in about two paragraphs each.

                                                                                                                         (5×4=20)   

1. Holden’s experience at Pency Prep and Elkton Hills.
2.  Allie’s baseball glove.
3. Holden’s meet with Sally Hayes.
4. Holden’s visit to the Museum of Natural History.
5. The Red Hunting hat

1. II) Answer any FIVE of the following questions in about 200 words.  (5×10=50)
2. “I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be” Discuss the significance of the title The Catcher in the Rye in the life of Holden Caulfield. Realizing it to be ‘crazy’ what makes Holden associate himself to be the catcher in the rye? Use incidents from the text to write your answer.
3. Describe Holden’s relationship with his siblings -DB, Phoebe and his dead brother Allie. Through specific examples bring out each one’s influence on Holden’s life. Also comment whether Phoebe or Allie had a major role to play on Holden’s thought process and his take on life.
4. According to you what is the most interesting encounter or interactions of Holden in the novel?  Keeping the encounter at the background, analyze Holden’s character, nature and the progress or decline of him as a person.
5. Why Holden becomes so happy seeing Phoebe on the carousel at the end of the novel? Does this event signify his final breakdown or his recovery from the stress, grief and from his immature perspective on life?
6. Holden’s narrative presents a stark divide of the world of children from that of adults. Do you think his struggle to protect the two -world merging into each other is right? As readers how do you perceive Holden – as a person who is mentally unstable or as a righteous person who puts up a fight with the world?
7. After reading the text The Catcher in the Rye, how do you comprehend the future of the Holden Caulfield? Describing his positive and negative traits make a future assessment of his life.

Section – B

1. Answer ALL the following questions.     (3X10 =30)
2. 12. Discuss the various types of power politics portrayed in the play Rudaali. Also comment on the representation of the powerful and the marginal in the play.
3. Compare Sanichari’s character with any other character read by you in a novel, film or in real life situation who has set an example of courage and has fought bravely against the ills of society.
4. Describe your experience of reading The Catcher in the Rye and watching the play Rudaali? Which particular narrative you felt connected to and why?

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St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)

End Semester Examination – March / April 2016

B.COM (T.T.) – II SEMESTER

 C2  15 2AE: ADDITIONAL ENGLISH

Duration: 3 Hours                                                                                             Max. Marks: 100

Section -A

1. I) Answer the following questions in about 200 words.   (6×10 =60)
2. Compare and contrast the village setting of Kirumallige in the story Classmate and of the village surroundings in Card Sharper’s daughter. Use specific examples that the authors of the two texts have used to describe the village and its people.
3. Examine the role of Dyamappa in Classmate and Petrovitch in The Overcoat. Do you find any parallels in their role and performance that offers the stories its uniqueness?
4. What is the argument presented in the prose poem Let’s Beat up the Poor.  Do you agree with the writer’s approach to treat the poor? If no, what can be an alternative to it?
5. India is a Strange Country and Telephone Conversation present two alternative ways of tackling racism and discrimination. According to you which text has a more powerful appeal and why?
6. Amongst the three vachanas taught in the class, which one is more relevant to end racism and casteism in society? Also explain your reasons for it.
7. Compare the circumstances that led to the death of Basvegowda in Classmate and death of Akakiy in the Overcoat. What is the metaphorical significance of death in the two- story?

Section – B

1. Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions in about Two paragraphs each.  (4X10 =40)

The works of Satyajit Ray ( 1921-9 2) present a perceptive understanding of the relation between different cultures, and his ideas remain pertinent to the major cultural debates in the contemporary world – not least in India. In Ray’s films and in his writings, we see explorations of at least three general themes on cultures and their interrelations: the importance of distinctions between different local cultures and their respective individualities, the necessity to understand the deeply heterogeneous character of each local culture (even that of a community, not to mention a region or a country), and the great need for inter-cultural communication while recognizing the difficulties of such intercourse. A deep respect for distinctiveness is combined in Ray’s vision with an appreciation of the importance of inter-cultural communication and also the recognition of much internal diversity within each culture. In emphasizing the need to respect the individuality of each culture, Ray saw no reason for closing the doors to the outside world. Indeed, opening doors of communication was an important priority in Ray’s work. In this respect his attitude contrasts sharply with the increasing tendency to see Indian culture (or cultures) in highly conservative terms – wanting it to be preserved from the ‘pollution’ of Western ideas and thought. Ray was always willing to enjoy and learn from ideas, art forms and lifestyles from anywhere – within India or abroad.

Ray appreciated the importance of heterogeneity within local communities. This insight contrasts sharply with the tendency of many communitarians – religious and otherwise – who are willing to break up the nation into some communities and then stop dead exactly there: ‘thus far and no further’. The great film-maker’s eagerness to seek the larger unit (ultimately, his ability to talk to the whole world) combined well with his enthusiasm for understanding the smallest of the small: the individuality of each person. Distinctions and Communications There can be little doubt about the importance that Ray attached to the distinctiveness of different cultures. He also discussed the problems that these divisions create in the possibility of communication across cultural boundaries. In his book Our Films Their Films, he noted the important fact that films acquire ‘colour from all manner of indigenous factors such as habits of speech and behaviour, deepseated social practices, past traditions, present influences and so on’. He went on to ask: ‘How much of this can a foreigner – with no more than a cursory knowledge of the factors involved – feel and respond to?’ He observed that ‘there are certain basic similarities in human behaviour all over the world’ (such as ‘expressions of joy and sorrow, love and hate, anger, surprise and fear’), but ‘even they can exhibit minute local variations which can only puzzle and perturb – and consequently warp the judgment of – the uninitiated foreigner’. The presence of such cultural divides raises many interesting problems. The possibility of communication is only one of them. There is the more basic issue of the individuality of each culture, and questions about whether and how this individuality can be respected and valued even though the world grows steadily smaller and more uniform. We live at a time when ideas and practices spread across boundaries of countries and regions with great rapidity, and the possibility that something extremely important is being lost in this process of integration has aroused understandable concern. And yet cultural interactions, even in a world of deep inequalities, can also create space for creative innovations, which combine construction with vulnerability. The individuality of cultures is a big subject nowadays, and the tendency towards homogenization of cultures, particularly in some uniform Western mode, or in the deceptive form of ‘modernity’, has been strongly challenged. Questions of this kind have been taken up in different forms in recent cultural studies, especially in high-profile intellectual circles influential in the West (from Paris to San Francisco). While these questions are being asked with increasing frequency in contemporary India as well, there is perhaps some irony in the fact that so much of the Third World critique of ‘Western modernity’ has been inspired and influenced by Western writings.

Indeed, I find no evidence in Satyajit Ray’s work and writings that the fear of being too influenced by outsiders disturbed his equilibrium as an ‘Indian’ artist. He wanted to take full note of the importance of one’s cultural background without denying what there is to learn from elsewhere. There is, I think, much wisdom in what we can call his ‘critical openness’, including the valuing of a dynamic, adaptable world, rather than one that is constantly ‘policing’ external influences and fearing ‘invasion’ of ideas from elsewhere. The difficulties of understanding each other across the boundaries of culture are undoubtedly great. This applies to the cinema, but also to other art forms as well, including literature. For example, the inability of most foreigners – sometimes even other Indians – to see the astonishing beauty of Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry (a failure that we Bengalis find so exasperating) is a good illustration of just such a problem. Indeed, the thought that these non-appreciating foreigners are being wilfully contrary and stubborn (rather than merely unable to appreciate across the barrier of languages and translations) is a frequently aired suspicion. The problem is perhaps less extreme in films, in so far as the cinema is less dependent on language, since people can be informed even by gestures and actions. But our day-to-day experiences generate certain patterns of reaction and non-reaction that can be mystifying for foreign viewers who have not had those experiences. The gestures ­ and non-gestures – that are quite standard within the country (and understandable as ‘perfectly ordinary’) may appear altogether remarkable when seen by others.

Questions:

7. What are the various themes explored in the films of Satyajit Ray? According to you which themes are least presented in the contemporary Indian cinema? You can use your own experiences of watching films in answering the questions.
8. Explain the term ‘inter- cultural communication’. Do you think such forms of intercultural dialogue can be a threat to the culture and traditions of the local Indian communities?
9. What are the fears and apprehension expressed by Amartya Sen in being limited to one’s cultural background? In what ways can various art forms create a larger space for homogenization of subjects?
10. This semester you have read pieces from Indian Literature in English, Indian Literature in Translation and World Literature in Translation. In context of the above passage and your semester readings write about your experiences of reading translated works.

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