(1) Summarize the tone and personal values of “I Shall Go Back,” “Pity Me Not,” “Sonnet xli,” and “Sonnet xcv” in light of feminist progress toward political and economic equality in the early 1920s.
(2) Contrast the refined protest of Millay’s “Justice Denied in Massachusetts” with the more strident outbursts of Allen Ginsberg and the Beat movement.
(3) Analyze the everyday details and psychological realism of Millay’s Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree. Account for her sympathy with the mismatched farm couple.
(4) Determine the value of literature and music to Millay in the fervid apostrophe “On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven.”
(5) Discuss how Millay characterizes nature in “The Return.”
