Paper #2

For this assignment you have the option of writing on one text or on more than one.  The topics below offer a range of possibilities to explore, but you are not limited to these and should feel free to design your own question.  If you do design your own question, please be sure to discuss your topic with your preceptor first.  Whatever you decide to write on, develop an essay focused on a clearly defined central thesis whose argument emerges through detailed moments of close reading.

1. Discuss the role of architecture and/or built space in one or more of the following texts: The Great Gatsby, Typical American, or Dark Fields of the Republic.  How do authors make use of architectural spaces, motifs, or even theories?  Be sure to anchor your analysis in the close interpretation of specific scenes or passages.

2. What is the significance of narrative voice (tone, diction, register, etc.) or point of view (first- or third-person, say) in our experience of one or more of the following texts: The Great Gatsby, Typical American, or Dark Fields of the Republic?  How does the perspective from or the manner in which a story is told -- or a poem is spoken -- affect the reader's perception of that text?  Topics you might consider include character development (or characters' relationships), a narrator's reliability, the text's stance toward its subject matter, and so on.

3. Perhaps more than any work we've encountered so far, Typical American is in many ways a very funny text.  What is the function of humor in this novel?  What role does it play, and why?  Does Jen's use of humor have an effect on our perception of the immigrant experience?  If so, how?  If you like, you may also make this a comparative essay.

4. Write an essay on the role of money, wealth, and/or materialism in The Great Gatsby, Typical American, and/or Dark Fields of the Republic.  This is potentially a very broad topic, so be sure to focus closely on a particular aspect of this topic, selecting very specific scenes for analysis.  Otherwise you may find yourself making very broad generalizations instead of mounting a specific argument.

5. Both Typical American and The Great Gatsby seem centrally concerned with the idea of the "self-made" individual.  Both also introduce versions of self-help manuals (or model persons) as narrative intertexts.  Write an essay on "self-making" in one or both of these books.  What values or ideals underlie the self-help mode, and how do the self-help manuals or models that appear in the texts inspire, or perhaps disappoint, the characters who consult them?  Are such texts particularly appealling to the immigrant figure -- and if so, do they always "work" for that figure?  Why or why not?

6. What does it mean to be male in the texts we have read so far?  What are the responsibilities or privileges -- or burdens, or limits -- of American manhood?  You might do well to focus your paper on a specific aspect of being male, perhaps examining an author's use of particular images or objects to represent manhood.  Feel free to write on a single text or to make this a comparative paper.  Texts you might consider include The Great Gatsby, Typical American, and, particularly if you didn't write on Komunyakaa for paper #2, Magic City.

PLEASE NOTE REVISED DUE DATE

Length:    5 pages, typed, double-spaced, standard font and 1" margins
Due dates:    Rough draft due Tuesday, August 14 (bring to writing workshop)
                       Final draft due by 4:00 PM on Wednesday, August 15 (to preceptor's mailbox)
 

Click HERE for useful electronic handouts on all aspects of writing
 

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