English Final Essay
Instructions:
1) Write a comparative essay that deals with two of the texts from our reading list. As always, your essay should advance a critical argument. That is, instead of simply describing the similarities and/or differences between the two texts you have chosen, your essay must argue that those similarities and/or differences are significant of something.
2) You are not required to consult any secondary sources for this assignment. However, if you choose to incorporate external research, you must acknowledge all of your sources both within the body of your essay (with in-text citations) and in your works cited page. You must also limit your use of secondary sources to scholarly books and journals and steer clear of Wikipedia and other non-scholarly web resources. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about using or citing secondary sources.
N.B.: Please note that you may not write on the same text or topic on which you focused for Essay #1.
1) Analyze the significance of familial and/or generational conflict in two of the following texts: “A Rose for Emily,” “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” “Dogs in Winter,” and “Simple Recipes.”
2) Analyze the portrayal of women of color in Oryx and Crake and “Rachel.”
3) Analyze the representation of motherhood and/or parenting in two of the following: “When Twilight Falls on the Stump Lots,” “Little Pilgrims,” “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” “Dogs in Winter,” and “Simple Recipes.”
4) The domestic realm, traditionally a realist space, is depicted as a gothic space in several of the texts we have read this semester. Analyze how two of the following texts draw on gothic conventions to evoke the dangers/fears/anxieties that lie behind the seemingly “homely” veneer of the domestic realm: “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “A Rose for Emily,” “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and The Turn of the Screw.
5) Analyze how Oryx and Crake and “Rachel” interrogate essentialist/traditional understandings of “nature” and/or the “human.”
6) Several of the texts we have read this semester feature “writerly” characters who stand as figures of authorship and, as in some cases, as figures for the author him/herself (i.e., Del Jordan in Alice Munro’s “The Flats Road”). Analyze how two of the following texts represent the figure of the writer, taking into consideration the significance of this figure to the broader thematic concerns of the texts in question: Dracula, The Turn of the Screw, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” “We Must Sit Opposite,” and “The Flats Road.”
7) Analyze the significance of geographical locale in two of the following: “A Rose for Emily,” “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” and “The Flats Road.”
8) Analyze the function of irony and/or satire in two of the following: “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” “A Rose for Emily,” and “We Must Sit Opposite.”
9) Analyze the theme of confinement/imprisonment in two of the following: “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Dracula, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and The Turn of the Screw.
10) Analyze the treatment of psychological trauma in “Dogs in Winter” and “Simple Recipes.”
11) Analyze the treatment of outsider figures in two of the following: “A Rose for Emily,” “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” “The Flats Road,” “Dogs in Winter,” “Simple Recipes,” Oryx and Crake, and “Rachel.”
12) Examine the relationship between scientific rationalism/enlightenment humanism and folklore/superstition in Dracula and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
13) Examine the relationship between empiricism/scientific rationalism and myth/storytelling in Oryx and Crake and “Rachel.”
14) You are welcome to develop an essay topic of your own which engages with any two of our texts. Essays that are written on independent topics which have not been pre-approved will not be accepted.