a Essay One: Literary Analysis b
This project will enable you to utilize the critical reading and analysis skills that we have been practicing in class as we discuss short fiction, and will test your ability to carefully and thoughtfully explain an important issue or theme in one of these works. Think carefully about the topic you choose. A good essay should go beyond what weíve done in class, and demonstrate your ability to think on your own. The suggestions below are very general topics or questions to help you get started; they are not thesis statements. You will need to adapt and/or focus them to suit your approach to the story(ies), and are welcome (in fact encouraged!) to develop your own topic. Keep in mind the following requirements: 1) You must write about one or two (maximum) works of short fiction from the class syllabus, up to and including Sherman Alexie's "The Lone Ranger and TontoÖ." 2) You must include in your discussion one or two (maximum) of the critical commentaries included in the Charters' anthology that is relevant to the story or stories you discuss in your essay. Be sure also to keep in mind the following basic rules of good writing: begin with a clear and focussed thesis (main idea or assertion)
2. Poe frequently wrote about the importance of a "single effect" to leave with the reader: incident, action, characterall help to make this effect. What effect do you think he wanted to leave with the reader in "The Cask of Amontillado" or "The Tell-Tale Heart"?
2. Consider this notion: "A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes the redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong" (592). To what degree does Montresor accomplish his objective? Does the original "wrong" justify the objective in his mind? In Fortunato's?
4. Compare and contrast the monologue in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" with that in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" or "The Tell-Tale Heart."
5. How is "Bartleby the Scrivener" a story about social responsibility, homelessness, and/or rebellion?
6. Read the excerpt from Melville's review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse, discussing what Melville calls "the power of blackness" in Hawthorne's tales. Can you find the same "power of blackness" in Melville's description of Bartleby's situation?
7. Explicate the paragraph beginning "For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me." A close reading of this passage may bring you closer to realizing the complexity of Melville's portrayal of the lawyer's relationship to Bartleby.
8. Analyze the conclusion of the story. How can Bartleby's life be compared to a dead letter?
9. Identify what has driven the narrator to the brink of madness in "The Yellow Wallpaper." How does she try to free herself from this element? What is her greatest desire? What is the central irony of the story?
10. Discuss the significance of Lydia Anderson's point-of-view in "Luella Miller."
11. Analyze "Luella Miller" in the context of Lydia's vision at the end of the story. Was Luella innocent of what she was: "a baby with a scissors in its hand" (34-5)? See Peter Newell's illustration of the story's ending by clicking here <http://www.litgothic.com/Images/luella_pic.html>.
12. "Luella Miller" presents us with very different images of Victorian women: Lydia Anderson and Luella Miller. Analyze the story in light of the contrasts between these two characters. What might Freeman be telling us by presenting us with these two extreme possibilities for women?
13. Analyze the conflict between the female characters' feeling about Mrs. Wright and the male characters' approach to justice in Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers."
14. Analyze the significance of the settings in Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers."
15. Nineteenth-century domestic ideology exalted the position of the Victorian mother and homemaker. As "angels in the home," middle-class women could use their "natural purity and goodness" to create a potent redeeming and reforming environment within the "woman's sphere" of the home. Discuss ways that Gilman, Freeman and/or Glaspell have subverted this traditional notion of the female "angel of the house" by examining one or two stories.
16. Analyze Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" as a Gothic tale.
17. How literally should the conclusion of Oates's story be taken? Is there more going on here than a trespass and kidnapping? Explain.
18. Discuss Dee's final comment to her mother that she (the mother) "doesn't understand" her heritage in Walker's "Everyday Use."
19. Discuss the positive and negative aspects of Wangero's and Hakim-a-barber's search for identity.
20. Some critics have suggested that Alexie is making a career by manipulating white Americans' guilt over the destruction of the Native American peoples. Discuss this idea in terms of the actions of the protagonist in "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven."
21. A number of the stories we have read might be described as being about money and the effects of economic power and/or powerlessness. Choose one of two stories to analyze from this perspective.
a Reminders b
ïBe sure to use examples and specific details (short, relevant quotes) from the sources you read for your project to help clarify and substantiate your discussion. When you quote, be sure to cite the work and page number correctly, using MLA style; provide a "works cited" page at the end of your paper. Integrate quotations smoothly into your own discussion.
ïBe sure to proofread your work carefully to eliminate careless errors that can distract and detract from the quality, clarity and effectiveness of your writing.
ïThis is a critical essay, not a research project. Use only the text you are writing about to provide evidence.