LITERATURA NORTEAMERICANA II.

2: DESDE 1945 HASTA EL PRESENTE

(2021-2022)
PEC
DUE: April 18, 2022 (23:55 Mainland Spanish time)

This PEC consists of two parts:

- The first part is worth 5 marks (=1 mark when course percentages are applied). You are
expected to write a short but coherent ESSAY on the topic proposed, and to give examples from
the set literary texts. Use no more than 300 words.

- The second part is worth 5 marks too. COMMENT upon the excerpt proposed using the
questions that follow as a guideline for your analysis. Use critical vocabulary adequately and give
examples from the literary text to support your arguments. Use about 200 words for the
complete commentary.

- For both parts: focus on the questions, make sure you develop your ideas well, and proofread
your work for English before submitting it. You may use bibliographical references, but do not
plagiarize in any way. This link can help you acknowledge the sources you use.

Identify your work (name and local center) and upload it onto Alf in Word format. For a revision
of your PEC, contact your Tutor within 7 days after the publication of your mark on Alf. Please
note: the PEC deadline time is local time in mainland Spain.

PART 1

DISCUSS the use of expressionism in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Make sure to
provide examples from the play citing specific instances and scenes. (300 words max)

PART 2

COMMENT upon the following excerpt. Contextualize the fragment into the whole of the
work to which it belongs. Discuss the characterization of the protagonist at this point in the
story, and give an interpretation for the symbols in the text. (200 words max)

It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, “I drank too much
last night.” You might have heard it whispered by the parishioners leaving church, heard it from
the lips of the priest himself, struggling with his cassock in the vestiarium, heard it from the golf
links and the tennis courts, heard it from the wildlife preserve where the leader of the Audubon
group was suffering from a terrible hangover. “I drank too much,” said Donald Westerhazy. “We
all drank too much,” said Lucinda Merrill. “It must have been the wine,” said Helen Westerhazy.
“I drank too much of that claret.” This was at the edge of the Westerhazys’ pool. The pool, fed
by an artesian well with a high iron content, was a pale shade of green. It was a fine day. In the
west there was a massive stand of cumulus cloud so like a city seen from a distance—from the
bow of an approaching ship—that it might have had a name. Lisbon. Hackensack. The sun was
hot. Neddy Merrill sat by the green water, one hand in it, one around a glass of gin. He was a
slender man—he seemed to have the especial slenderness of youth—and while he was far from
young he had slid down his banister that morning and given the bronze backside of Aphrodite
on the hall table a smack, as he jogged toward the smell of coffee in his dining room. He might
have been compared to a summer’s day, particularly the last hours of one, and while he lacked
a tennis racket or a sail bag the impression was definitely one of youth, sport, and clement
weather. He had been swimming and now he was breathing deeply, stertorously as if he could
gulp into his lungs the components of that moment, the heat of the sun, the intenseness of his
pleasure. It all seemed to flow into his chest. His own house stood in Bullet Park, eight miles to
the south, where his four beautiful daughters would have had their lunch and might be playing
tennis. Then it occurred to him that by taking a dogleg to the southwest he could reach his home
by water.