Final Exam Bonus Option
A Playful Journey
through
Infernal Regions
Open Book Fun Questions- take thirty minutes and read most and answer a few:
1. Who would you choose to guide you through infernal regions?
2. If Mephistopheles is correct, and this is Hell nor are we out of it, how bad can it be? What are the punishments?
3. In what Dantean circle would your friends say you would be assigned?
4. Defend the gluttons.
5. If God is everywhere and in all things, does God suffer in Hell?
6. If all creatures come from god and reflect the divine order, explain the flea, the leech, the mite.
7. If you could journey with Odysseus or Vergil or Dante or Dante and Vergil together- what would you take with you?- something small enough to fit in a pocket.
8. What modern authors would you substitute for those found in Frogs- give a quick explanation.
9. If you got elected mayor of one of the circles of Hell- what would be your first task? How would you organize your world to make it better?
10. Is Faustus and Helen had a child- what would it be?
11. How could our campus serve as a model for one of the Underworlds?
12. Dante’s order is so spherical- what would a different geometrical pattern produce?
13. What if one of our protagonists were female?
14. Would Faustus suffer a tragic fate in our age?
15. Is the wish to explore beyond the boundaries- to see and represent- nothing more than a tour through the world of the individual self/ the ego? To create our own universal journey do we need nothing more than a mirror and massive self-confidence?
16. Are the centaurs just gamboling and having fun?
17. Why isn’t the underworld more fiery?
18. If there were no god, no eternal order, could there be a hell?
19. “Nothing in Hell burns but the self”- do physical punishments really work on spirits?
20. If you were in the Odyssean world of the dead- what living substance would you most miss?
21. Add another sin to the seven deadlies.
22. What modern movie or music offers a glimpse of the Paradise we hope to gain and fear to lose?
23. If Satan seduced Eve and they produced offspring, who/ what would it be?
24. If they have to prune so much every day- and need the help of children to get their work done, isn’t the garden just a leafy version of the world of labor to which Adam and Eve are exiled?
25. Take the wedding setting and ask if the Ancient Mariner is metaphorically wed to some idea.
26. Imagine a conversation between the Ancient Mariner and Wordsworth as they walk together above Tintern Abbey. What becomes of all the water imagery? Would they encounter land snakes and crossbow bearing hunters?
27. Is Conrad’s story of the voyage a conscious rewriting of The Odyssey?
28. If one were to fall into Mister Kurtz’s Abyss, what would one find? Is the fall an echo of Adam and Eve, or Faustus, or…?
29. What if Dante said to Eliot, you have added almost nothing to my Inferno; why not list me as co-author?
30. Is Siduri right- when it is “time,” a tall cold one is the only answer to the dilemmas of “The Wasteland.”?
31. Is Eliot just showing off? Is the boy from Saint Louis striving to be accepted by the Ox/Bridge snobs?
32. How would Hammett’s Op be as a father?
33. Of all the wrecks you have visited, which one most asks you to dive in again?
34. A real bear of course would quickly gobble up Winnie, but if a real bear could talk to you in the moonlight all aglow about the two of you, what would be the wisdom of bear?
35. Can we ever BE- or must we always pretend we are?
36. What should be the true BSC totem animal?
37. If this is Hell, why can we have so much fun?