For your final assignment, you are called upon to write a 6-
For your final assignment, you are called upon to write a 6-7 page literary analysis essay (MLA style, double-spaced, with in-text parenthetical citations and a bibliography) in response to one of the five following prompts. Your job in this paper is to undertake close readings of some of the works we have explored together over the course of the semester, making clear claims (via a thesis) about the significance of the literature and its function, contextualizing its relevance, and establishing clear argumentation with ample substantiation throughout the body of the essay. For each of these prompts, you are expected to engage in a developed dialog with the source matter, using quoted material from the primary texts of your choosing, and to present a clear thesis that articulates your claims regarding the texts/figures under scrutiny:Frederick Douglass was adamant that facility with knowledge and language—the ability tomakemeaning, rather than be merely subjected to it—was necessary to ensure the true freedom of American citizens (especially those under the shadow of slavery), as well as of the republic as a whole. Walt Whitman, similarly, understood language to be an inextricable part of the American social fabric, going so far as to call the nation itself “essentially the greatest poem.” Explore the importance of language in American literature prior to the Civil War for Douglass and Whitman, and discuss how these two authors demonstrated their deep and abiding appreciation for the significance of words in the New World, utilizing examples from their own respective writings to support your claims. Chinua Achebe’s novelThings Fall Apart is a compelling and provocative example of post-colonial literature, at once presenting the completeness and complexity of a non-Western culture as it existed prior to European colonization and Christian conversion, while also showing the tragedies that can arise from imperialist settlement. Please explore three or four significant scenes from Achebe’s novel that help you understand the relationship between colonizing forces and colonized communities (feeling free to engage the critical essays at the end of your Norton editions of the text, as well as Chimamanda Adichi’s TED talk, “The Danger of The Single Story”). Explain how these scenes/examples from the book can help us understand what is at stake in colonial activity, what the relationship is between colonized communities and the powers that colonize them, as well as what you see to be Achebe’s perspective regarding Western influence on African culture (which is not as one-dimensional as.The absolutist, unyielding character that Okonkwo maintains inThings Fall Apart is undeniably one of the traits that dooms Achebe’s central figure to the tragic fate we witness at the conclusion of the novel—and is potentially to blame for the ease with which the colonizing forces of the British are able to subsume Umofia in Parts II and III of the text. Be it with regard to his view of what constitutes power and authority, his limited vision of masculinity and his reflexive rejection of femininity, or his faith in the infallibility of the traditional systems of governance and religion which have historically dominated Ibo life, Okonkwo’s worldview is mono-focal at best, monomaniacal at worst. In this way, Achebe calls his readers to question the ethos of Okonkwo’s character, especially when juxtaposed with the absolutist monotheism of the missionaries’ Christianity and Westernized culture. For this question, compare and contrast Okonkwo’s character with the major representatives of the colonial force in Things Fall Apart—namely, Mr. Brown, Mr. Smith, and the District Commissioner. Is Okonkwo more like or unlike these figures, and how does Achebe make these distinctions clear? And if Okonkwo’s character is not so different from the colonizing forces that overwhelm his culture and heritage, what does this fact potentially mean in terms of how we read Achebe’s novel? South American and Central American poetry and prose in the 21stCentury recognizes magic and supernatural forces to be very real parts of the observable world and of human experience. What conditions—social, political, historical, artistic—might have compelled this trend in literature, in these global regions particularly? Please select three examples of works that you think explore the themes of magical realism that we have engaged thus far this semester, articulate what dimensions of their form/content evidence their existence as works of magical realism, and explain what you understand to be their significance within the context of Latin-American literature. Write an original critical essay of your own making, either comparatively analyzing separate works of literature that you perceive to be somehow linked, or delving deep into a single author/piece of writing that we have studied. Any of the work we have dealt with all semester is fair game here, but please clear ideas with me before getting underway, and share your thesis prior to writing your paper, so that I can provide direction.
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