Writing prompts
This week, you will choose the topic you would like to explore, offer some information on what interests you about this topic, and supply a working thesis and key ideas you would like to develop. Though it might seem early to choose your topic, with only five weeks in the course, it is important to start early to best set yourself up for success. After reviewing the list of prompts, choose one that you would like to explore. In addition, you should choose a literary work to discuss that relates to your topic of choice. The suggested literary works for each topic are listed beneath each prompt. Once you have decided on a prompt and text, respond to the directives below using the Proposal for Final Paper Worksheet . Please make sure your document is double spaced. Here are the choices for paper. Pick what you want. what ever topic you choose there are some questions to go with it. List of Writing Prompts For students: There are three prompts below each with four texts. For your literary analysis essay, choose ONE prompt and text pairing that interests you. Then, take a look at the guiding questions for the text you choose. You don’t necessarily need to answer all of these questions in your paper. The questions are there to help get you thinking in a direction that will be more likely to lead you to a successful literary analysis. PROMPT 1. Write an analysis of a key character in a literary work. Focus on two or three key actions of that character. Discuss the character’s motivations and decisions in terms you can support with clear evidence from a critical reading of the text. Consider whether this character’s actions fit together or contradict each other. You may also want to consider whether or not any other characters in the story are aware of this conflict, and if so, how they influence the character you are writing about. Literary Works (choose one): “Interpreter of Maladies” (Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999) Guiding Questions: 1. How does a new outsider community member like Mrs. Das influence Mr. Kapasi, who seems to have become bored with his life and his role in the community? 2. How does Mr. Kapasi’s desire for Mrs. Das make him unable to understand Mrs. Das’ desires, leading to his failure to fulfill his role as the Interpreter of Maladies? 3. How do the Das family’s actions surrounding their children show that their desires or interests do not accord with their obligations? “What You Pawn, I Will Redeem” (Sherman Alexie, 2003) Guiding Questions: 1. How does the grandmother’s property at the pawn shop help to define the narrator’s desires and feeling of obligation to recover it? Why is it so important? 2. How does the character accomplish his objective, and how is this surprising considering all of the unfortunate events and bad decisions he makes along the way? 3. How do the other charactersthe Aleuts, the pawn shop owner, the waitress, the police officer, the other Indians at the bareach play an important role in showing how the narrator is committed to an important mission he is worthy of completing? “We Came All the Way from Cuba so You Could Dress Like This?” (Achy Obejas, 1994) Guiding questions: 1. To what conflicts does the title allude (social? Political? Cultural? others?)? 2. The firstperson narrator switches tenses (from present to future). How does this create tension in the story? 3. How is the narrator’s internal conflict (“man v. self”) merely an internalization of political, familial, and social conflict? “The Things They Carried” (Tim O’Brien, 1990) 5.4 in Journey into Literature Guiding Questions: 1. The second paragraph of the story begins, “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity” (O’Brien, 1990). Were the soldiers truly able to carry everything they needed? What needs were left unfulfilled by these items, and what in the story suggests this? 2. The narrator also lists specific items that each man carried. How do these items symbolize the emotions that they carried with them, and how does this understanding enrich our understanding of the characters? 3. Often a comparative analysis can help us to notice elements of a story that we might not otherwise notice. Choose two or three characters and compare the things they carried. How does this comparison help qualities of each come to the surface? PROMPT 2. In some stories, characters come into conflict with the culture in which they live. Often, a character feels alienated in his/her community or society due to race, gender, class or ethnic background. The texts below all contain a character who is ‘outcast’ or otherwise disconnected from society in some way, reflecting important ideas about both the character and the surrounding society’s assumptions, morality, and values. Choose a text and consider the questions below as you critically…