More details on the final research paper are forthcoming. I’ll update this page soon.
Writing About Literature
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More details on the final research paper are forthcoming. I’ll update this page soon.
For my Final Research Paper I am planning on writing about the Short Story the Lottery. Some examples I am thinking about writing about for this paper is the way Tessie was stoned and how the village Tessie lived in condoned this type of behavior because society manipulates or uses it power to make certain people think and act a certain way. In a way the story basically revolves around how the ritual and the black box in the village has basically installed fear into people and affects the way they think or approach certain situations. Its also sad how people tend to refused to change this tradition and are brain washed into thinking this is ok. These are the ideas that I am building around for my essay so far.
I like this plan, Tayyab. Try and comment on the lengthy description of the black box and its state of wear. Also try to cite a few other critical readings of “The Lottery” by literary scholars and point out what you agree or disagree with in those readings.
For the final essay, I am thinking of writing about Emma by Jane Austen. I want to discuss Emma’s sense of reality (but the lack of it actually… does that make sense?). Although Emma prides herself in match making and being emotional intelligent it is not the case. Emma does not know what people want or desire. She lacks the basic understanding of it. This may be a result of Emma being extremely sheltered by her father and her wealthy privileged life. The essay would follow Emma’s character development and whether her sense of reality changes.
Guadalupe, based on your other blog posts about Emma, I think you’re to the challenge of researching this question. Cory posted a link to an article on Austen, Emma, the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the problem of self-deception. This might be an inroad to a scholarly discussion about Emma’s sense of reality. Also, if you want to talk about wealth and privilege, look to the chapters I mentioned today concerning the gypsy attack and Emma’s attempt to encourage Frank to “create problems” for himself (III.iii and III.vi).
For the final paper, I want to write about James Joyce’s Araby. I want to frame the main character’s love for Mangan’s sister and his final epiphany as a kind of loss of innocence or of a more romantic worldview that is associated with childhood and adolescence. This is something that is touched on in some of the sources I found. I also want to talk about what Mangan’s sister actually symbolizes to him and how it relates to this topic as well as what the bazaar symbolizes. Perhaps both can seen as something exotic or foreign and as an escape for the main character from his own dreary life.
Good plan, Ilya. I think it’s interesting to focus on the otherness of Mangan’s sister and the way she is idolized (perhaps overmuch, as it turns out) by the narrator. It might be helpful to think also of the provincial and colonial associations Ireland bore at the time. It was essentially subordinated to England, and so those two Englishmen flirting with the girl at the end of the story might carry added significance. You’ll have little trouble finding commentary on “Araby,” James Joyce, and Irish literature of the early twentieth century.
My proposed thesis for the final research paper centers around the protagonist of Emma, Emma and her struggle to acknowledge a sense of reality in her character, solely focusing on the dynamics between her and Harriet’s relationship in the novel. Emma seems to be blinded by her more rich and prosperous upbringing to give notice to the actual reality of the world when she tries to help Harriet and in doing so meddles in her life negatively. Besides having a very narrow perspective of the world, Emma’s struggle to confront her own feelings also clouds her sense of reality and in turn makes her project her intentions onto Harriet’s life making it even more difficult for her to understand the complexities she faces (I don’t know if this is the right phrasing but the gist of it).
Lanz, closely examining the relationship Emma has with Harriet will make for a great research paper. It might be especially good to focus on the word “intimacy” as it appears throughout the novel, and with a particular emphasis on the intimacy between Emma and Harriet. How is this word a serious reflection on their friendship, and how is deployed ironically or satirically by the narrator, particularly at moments when Emma’s pity or sympathy for Harriet (“Poor Harriet!”) turns into condescension or manipulation.
For my essay, I want to discuss “The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson. I want to further analyze how Tessie struggled with society. The people in her village were known to perform an annual ritual in which they would stone someone to death. Tessie, the only one with a sense of how wrong this was, was the outcast for attempting to show others how old traditions don’t always have to be enforced. Because everyone else was scared of breaking from tradition, she was chosen and had the unfortunate fate of dying.
Karyna, do you mean to argue that you think the lottery was rigged to ensure Tessie’s death? If you find other sources corroborating this view, it might be worth exploring in greater depth.
Although Emma and the film adaptation, Clueless (1995) is set in a different period and setting, the characterization of Emma and the theme of social status is preserved. Regardless of the time, social status exists in all societies. In Emma, people are separated by class and family history, and for Clueless, high school students are separated by popularity. Both instances use a form of social structure that generates the image of certain characters and justifies their behavior. For example, since Emma is considered to be of high social class, both Emma and Cher are portrayed as high maintenance with a clean “expensive” look. On the other hand, characters such as Robert Martin, who falls lower in the social structure, is portrayed as the opposite of a gentleman. In the movie, he is played as a careless and underachieving student.
Initially, I wanted to write about the Bollywood film adaptation, Aisha (2010), because the social hierarchy has been a part of India’s culture but I haven’t found the right sources for it yet. If I do find sources, I might be mirroring the same characters from Emma with characters in Aisha while still talking about how regardless of cultures, social status is still significant in all societies.
Shanjida, I wonder if there’s a way to comment on the liberties Aisha takes in its adaptation of Emma by looking for sources about the persistence of the importance of caste in Indian society and culture, and perhaps particularly in literature and film. These sources don’t necessarily have to talk about Aisha, but maybe you’ll find that they comment on this issue in ways that could be applied to your focus.
Hey, I came across this piece in Hunter’s database! It can be of some help!
Adapting Jane Austen: the surprising fidelity of clueless by William Galperin
For my essay I would like to write about narration and how it can be perceived as biased. I was initially thinking about basing this on a poem but am currently thinking about writing it in the short story “Sonny’s Blues”. Much of the short story talks about the tumultuous relationship between Sonny and his older brother, however it is only told through the older brother’s perspective, allowing for the story to perhaps be biased.
Kyla, you’ll have to be more specific what you mean about “biased” narration. Narration is, like all creative and argumentative prose, subjective. But “biased” implies a political motivation behind narration and this rarely the case. Baldwin in particular worried a great deal about infusing his fiction with politics, even though he was a champion of civil rights and a major cultural critic during the 1950s and 1960s. Rather than biased, perhaps you might want to comment on the reliability of the narrator. Do you perceive the narrator to be unreliable?
Would writing about how the narrator is unreliable and presents only his perspective on matters dealing with drugs and family to the readers be more appropriate?
A topic that I am thinking about writing is John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” and the protagonist (Ned’s) sense of reality. It talks about him diving into pools of his different neighbors and that might reference to him falling into an addiction. The work “drink” is sometimes italicized which suggests he can have an alcohol addiction which might affect how he looks at reality because he’s drunk. The idea that I want to explore is about what one perceives as true and fake and the allusions that one has when one is addicted or drunk on something. On some sites, it references the story as an allusion to the American Dream and that he realizes that the American Dream is a hoax so maybe a possible thesis would be about how Ned’s sense of reality is blurred when he dives in the waters and the differences between the reality he dreams of and what is actually true.
Petvy, writing about “The Swimmer” would also be an excellent choice. One caveat: anytime someone writes about the American Dream, it’s usually to discredit it as an ideal. This is kind of predictable. Rather than deploying that phrase, it might be more generative to write about the story’s treatment of middle-class malaise, boredom, ennui, or despair, and subsequent attempts to mask the emptiness of bourgeois lifestyle with more consumption (in this case, of alcohol). Again—-the story doesn’t have much to say directly about the American Dream, so I would hesitate to parrot the things you may have read on blogs or other websites. But you could probably find a lot to say about the thingsin the story: water, changing seasons, leaves, yards, pools, houses, suburban streets, cocktails, and much more besides. Lots to think about here but again I like your insights!
In my research paper I want to talk about the psychology of scapegoating and how this is shown in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. I want to explore how scapegoating has been used throughout human history and why it is done while using “The Lottery” as an example to support my argument. In the story I believe that Tessie Hutchinson is the scapegoat of which society blames for its problems.
Good idea, Jordan. You should be able to find plenty of scholarly articles on the psychology and sociology of scapegoating. The landmark text, again, is Rene Girard’s Violence and the Sacred. If you can find the introductory chapter to this text as an electronic resource, you might find it difficult, but ultimately very helpful. Otherwise, I’m sure you’ll be able to find plenty of article-length resources on the same topic, and probably even some related to Jackson’s short story.
For my final proposal, I would like to write about innocence and the perception of innocence in “Young Goodman Brown”. More specifically, I would like to analyze the protagonist’s accusatory nature towards those around him once he finds out that they practice what they preach against. He believes others to be evil, yet he is not aware if the occurrences were a dream or reality. However, he still chooses to be suspicious and no longer finds comfort in those around him. If it was all a dream, it was him who dreamt of these ‘nightmarish’ events, meaning that these ideas came from his own head and shows a possible lack of ‘innocence’ that he claims to have. If it was reality, it was him who chose to further investigate the ‘evil’, which means that he is not innocent due to his inquisitiveness. I would like to further explore the idea of innocence and evil in this piece.
Chiara, I’m all for the idea of comparing two ways of reading “Young Goodman Brown,” the one literal and the other allegorical or figurative. One thing to think about, perhaps with resonance for the tensions the story experiments with between innocence and knowledge (or purity and corruption, good and evil, etc.), is the importance of that crossing of the threshold at the very beginning. Is Young Goodman Brown literally walking out of his house on an errand into the wilderness, or is it all a dream?
I know this is crazy late but my proposal will be on Ulysses’ perspective of reality in “Ulysses” by Alfred Tennyson. My thesis is that the poem is a way of the author to describe the struggles of growing old and how it feels.
My thesis is: Emma’s perceptions, which shape her reality, are influenced by her upbringing, misunderstandings, and others’ deceptions; as the novel progresses, her reality is contrasted by the sensible reality of Mr. Knightley and it begins to have a duality with the omniscient narrator.
I wanted to dive into the relationship between misfortune and appreciation through the use of the poem “Stopping by the woods no a snowy evening”. My thesis is that misfortune forces one to consider what is right and what is wrong through self-experimentation (through stepping outside). Through grief or even isolation, one starts to find beauty in their own lives.
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