section internationale américaine oib tout savoir ou presque

"How important are th eopening pages of a work in establishing what will follow? Discuss using two works you have studied in your iob program."

1)   Shakespeare

• Shakespeare, Hamlet

2)   Novels

• Alice Walker, The Color Purple
• Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
• Conrad, Heart of Darkness
• Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse

3)   Poetry

• Langston Hughes
• Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, WC Williams
• Philip Larkin

4)   Essays

• Martin Luther King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
• George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”
• Henry David
• Virginia Woolf

5)   World literature

• Euripides, Medea
• Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
• Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
• Wole Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman
• Kafka, Metamorphosis

6)   Drama

• Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
• Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Names Desire

Here is some works you could read if you're intending the oib at the "bac". You won't stud all of them but around 12-15 of them I would say.They are all linked since you have to write essays which combine two works.

Here is some rhetorical terms you can use for your essays or your commentaries.

Anagram: Rearranging the letters of a word or an expression in order to form a new word or     expression

                Ex: Nowhere → Erewhon (the title of a novel by S. BUTLER)

Anaphora: The repetition of a word or words at the beginning of a line or sentence.

                Ex: Singing my days. Singing the great achievements of the present. Singing the strong light works of engineers… (W. WHITMAN)

Antithesis: Contrasting words, expressions or ideas in parallel structures.

                Ex: To err is human, to forgive divine. (A. POPE)

Apostrophe: Addressing an absent person, concept or object as if it were present and alive.

                Ex: Blow, blow thou winder wind. (W. SHAKESPEARE)

Chiasmus: A mirror inversion of terms.

                Ex: By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. (B. FRANKLIN)

Euphemism: The use of a vague or pleasant expression to avoid mentioning something unpleasant or that might offend.

                Ex: “He passed away” instead of “He died”.

Hyperbole: Exaggeration to obtain a comic or dramatic effect.

                Ex: I wouldn’t eat insects for a million pounds!

Litotes, under-statement: Denying the contrary, so that you say something in a more indirect way. It can be less offensive

                Ex: He is no Hercules!

Oxymoron: The juxtaposition of contradictory terms.

                Ex: Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! (W. SHAKESPEARE)

Palindrome: A word, expression, or sentence which reads the same way backwards and forwards.

                Ex: Madam, I’m Adam.

Paradox: A statement which seems contradictory but turns out to be true.

                Ex: The child is father to the man. (W. WORDSWORTH)

Personification: Giving human qualities to abstractions or objects.

                Ex: The cruel, crawling foam. (J. RUSKIN)

Pun: A word used in such a way that its similarity to another word is evoked.

                Ex: Fitzwater: Thou liest. Surrey: Dishonourable boy! That lie so heavy on my sword. That it shall render vengeance… (W. SHAKESPEARE) 

This is a subject I had to work on. I chose The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. I don't know when it was at the "bac". I had a 16,5/20 for this essay. I did not want to correct my mistakes before posting it here.



“The past is not a package one can lay away” (Emily Dickinson). Explore how far this statement is true for characters you have studied in oib.

                Whether in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison or in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, the past plays an important role in the protagonists’ life. Thus in reading these works we can understand that in literature and for everyone in general, the past enables to explain why a character has managed to make a success of its life or on the opposite has completely failed. To other terms, we can say that explaining the past is the same than undergoing analysis of a character.  

                First of all, in order to undergo analysis of a character, the author has to appeal to the past of this person. In both The Bluest Eye and in Death of a Salesman, Toni Morrison and Arthur Miller have played with the structure of their work in order to convoke ancient actions.

                Firstly, since the beginning of the two books, the reader or the audience knows that it will be questioned of the past, that the author will search deeply in the past of the characters in order to explain their behavior. Thus, in The Bluest Eye, Morrison already tells us in the prologue the aim of her novel. In saying how the story of Pecola will end, in giving an overview of the principal plot, the woman expecting the reader not to concentrate on the basis of the story but more on questioning about social factors which favored the downfall of the protagonist. Indeed, we know why Morrison wrote the novel: to explain why and how Pecola’s life went on that way as the last words of the prologue tell us that “there is nothing more to say – except why”. Thus, Toni Morrison does not want to discuss about how sad Pecola’s life is – so to discuss about the present – but definitely to search an explanation of this present – so to search deeply into the past, into the events which happened to the previous generation. The same way in Death of a Salesman, in one of the first scenes of the play, the audience can feel a tension between Willy and his two boys Happy and Biff, especially with this last one. Thus, the audience is led to wonder the reason of such a conflict between father and son. And this is completely natural to think that, to explain this, the plot of the play will look into ancient scenes which happened a long time ago. So, in both works, we intend to read or to see the authors doing a kind of psychological approach of their characters through examining their families or their past.

                Secondly, while in The Bluest Eye, the past is showing through different points of view, in Death of a Salesman, we see former scenes through the eyes of Willy himself. Thus the role of the psychoanalyst or the psychologist is quite different in the two works. In the novel, this is not the character himself but others who are linked to him, narrators who are extern to the story. Thus, we have Toni Morrison herself but also Claudia as a child or as an adult, Pauline, Soaphead Church who represent a lot of different points of view. In these conditions, this is difficult for the reader to arrange all the information given by these peoples and this is our job to put all these events together to make a conclusion ourselves, to find Toni Morrison’s message, which is in short that what happened to parents in the past happens to their children in the present and will happen to the next generations in the future. In Death of a Salesman, the past is appealing through a kind of dramatic irony. Indeed this is Willy by his own who is doing his own retrospection of himself through his dreams in order to find why he is so disappointed of Biff, to find if he has missed something with him when the boy was younger. And no one of the present knows what he is thinking about. Since he is dreaming, Willy is the only one on stage who is watching the past. Thus only himself and the audience can understand the important of the past in the play since what happens on stage which belongs to the past is the fruit of Willy’s remembrance of his own past with his children. This is only his questioning which is played, his own psychoanalysis. It concerns himself since he does not tell anyone about this past.

                Thirdly in The Bluest Eye, the work is built in a way in order to emphasize the message of the author, which is that the actions, the education will not change throughout time. Indeed the structure shows the important of the past. The names of the chapters accentuate the notion that life is a full circle which is constantly repeated since the season – Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer – were, are and will be always the same and in the same order. Furthermore the conclusion of the novel shows that Morrison has achieved her main goal, the reader is now enable to understand why and how Pecola had such a misery childhood and life. The last sentence is related, is a response to the beginning of the novel, of the second prologue. So the analysis is over, the aim of the writer has been achieved. Also we see that the last words of the book are linked to the past since the word “late” in the sentence “it’s much, much, much too late” in the present shows that the explanation is combined with facts which had happened before.

                In short through the way the two authors have written their stories, it is sure that they will combine the past in the present in order to explain the actions of a character.

                After seeing that the structure was significant for the writers in developing the idea that the past had an importance through looking in one’s mind, we can now study that the content of a work and the way the yesteryear is convoked also show that the past is something a person has to deal with in order to understand the sense of his life.

                To begin with, in order to convoke the past, the two authors have used two different ways. Firstly, in the Bluest Eye, to make the psychoanalysis of Pecola, Morrison chose to resort, to insert flash backs which relate Cholly and Pauline’s lives. Thus in appealing the past we can discover the reasons why these parents are so indifferent or hateful to their children. Indeed if someone has only known one way of education, we can assume that this person cannot invent his own way of raising a child. Plus, all the difficulties, all the pains, all the sufferings they had to face to have developed in them the fact that they will later hate everyone for having let these brutalities to happen, even their own kids. Furthermore there are much more stories about the past of the parents than stories about present, about Pecola’s own life, which is the main subject of the novel. So, at first sight, it can seem to be a paradox, and yet it is totally logical since the main goal of the novel is to wonder why Pecola is living in such conditions. And the answer to this question is to be found in the past, in events the girl’s parents had to deal with. Secondly, in Death of a Salesman, the returns in the past when Willy is thinking about when his boys were young are shown by theatrical techniques, unlike in The Bluest Eye. Thus, in the play, the change of the chronological order in shown by the crossing of the imaginary wall, but also by the lights and by the presence of young Biff, young Happy and young Ben. And these returns into the past are surely the cause of another return: Biff’s one. Indeed, the thing which provokes the dreams is the reflect Willy has of himself through his son’s failure in his professional and sentimental life. So Willy wonders, looks why he has failed in making his son the other man he did not manage to become himself.

                Finally both Toni Morrison and Arthur Miller inserted in their stories a scene which shows how an author can manage to make an episode in the present linked with the past and vice versa.

                In The Bluest Eye, we see that actions of the past can be repeated in the present. Thus, the rape of Pecola finds its explanation in a former event. Indeed her father was also raped, but mentally. Thus the unforgivable act Cholly did to his daughter can be explicated in the fact that when he was the victim of the same action, Cholly felt extremely humiliated and a feeling of hatred sprang up against the other victim of the rape, Darlene instead of against their perpetrator. Moreover, when reading the extract of Pecola’s rape, the reader’s attention is then called to the scene of the incident when Cholly and Darlene were having sex. We can find similar expressions that Toni Morrison used in order to define the father’s mind. Indeed, in both extracts, he wants to kill either Darlene or Pecola. Thus he desires “to strangle” Darlene and later desires “to break” Pecola’s “neck”. So the author put forward the view that Cholly has projected his hatred for Darlene on every weak young girl, and maybe even on virgin ones, just like Pecola. This is why, in this novel, we see that the past cannot be laid away in order to explain the present. As well in Death of a Salesman, the central episode which is the mistress scene in Boston is the answer of a question asked by Bernard to Willy “What happened in Boston, Willy?” since Biff’s life began to go down right after he saw his father after he failed at his maths graduation. Thus in discovering that his father was unfaithful to his mother, the boy gave up his entire project for his future, like going to university. But this scene also explains why the son does not trust his father, why he does not respect him anymore. Thus, while at the beginning of the play, the audience could not understand the behavior of Billy toward Willy, through seeing the past of these two characters, we are now enable to understand and maybe to accept this disrespect.

                To conclude, because when the author looks into the past of his characters, he can find the deep roots of their personality, the deep reasons of their behavior, or the deep origin of their trauma, he shares his conclusion of the psychoanalysis of his characters with the reader. Thus we – the readers – debrief that the past is, as Emily Dickinson said, “not a package one can lay away”. In short, someone must never forget his past or he will not be able to find himself.

• Given the difficulty, linguistic errors are not penalized except when they impair overall intelligibility. Only English will be used.
• In general candidates take the written exam at their own school. Oral exam generally takes place at the regional examination center
• Coefficients (written + oral)   L = 6 + 4                      S = 5 + 4                   ES = 5 + 4

The written exam

                Four hours: all answers written in English. Texts may not be taken into the examination.

• Candidates must choose either option A  or option B (two hours for each essay or commentary)

1. Write on one of the four essay topics given in Part 1 and write a commentary on one of the two passages given in Part 2 (poetry or prose)
2. Write on two of the four essay topics given in Part 1

• Passages may be accompanied by a glossary of 3 or 4 “difficult words” (specialized, archaic, dialect, slang or foreign words)
• Credit is given to judgments with which the examiners might disagree, provided they are satisfactorily argued. In many cases there no standard answers.

Subject details

                Part 1: Four essay topics are given to choose from

                Part 2: Two passages are given, one of previously unseen poetry and one of previously unseen prose. Note that the prose excerpt is not necessarily from a work of prose fiction; it could come from travel writing, letters, diaries or essays.

The oral exam

• The preparation time is 30 minutes and the oral time is 30 minutes. The candidate is given a passage (35-40 lines) from one of the works studied in depth on which he or she makes a 10 minute detailed presentation.
• Then they relate the text to other works studied (5 minutes). Then a more general discussion begins discussing other works studied in the program in the Terminale year (15 minutes). Approximately three or four works from the program should be selected by the examiner to evoke responses of some depth from the candidate.
• The candidate is allowed access only to the book containing the passage.
• Giving an oral presentation means commenting on such aspects as: meaning, themes, characters and relationships, point of view, diction, images, metaphors, symbols, stylistic devices.
• Examiners give credit for what the pupil knows, understands and can express well, rather than detecting and penalizing areas of ignorance.
• Candidates who score between 8 and 10 for the total Baccalauréat are entitled to a second oral examination in two subjects. They may choose an OIB subject. In literature this will be a conversation involving most or all the works studied.

Donc je me présente. Je suis élève en section oib américaine. Et avant d'entrer dans la section et ainsi qu'au début, je me posais avec mes amis sans arrêt des questions sur ce qui nous attendait vraiment: emplois du temps, les épreuves au bac, le travail... Alors étant donné que ce n'est pas une option très facile, assez stressante, contrégnante mais tout de même reconnue, je trouve que les prochaines secondes qui se posent des questions doivent savoir à quoi s'attendre. Mais je mettrai aussi des aides, des plans d'essays, des questions qui sont tombées au bac etc. J'allais oublier : une grande partie des info seront en anglais ;-)