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Position Papers

Your position papers should be approximately 500 words (they should be no more than two typed pages), so you'll have to think carefully about what you want to say and make every word count.  You’re required to turn in 8 position papers over the course of the semester. Remember that late position papers are not accepted.  You may either respond to one of the suggested topics or come up with your own if you’d prefer. 

Click on the book to see specific topics for each.

Slaughterhouse-Five  (Due Date:  Monday, September 8)

Possible Topics: 
--Why do you think Vonnegut chooses to begin with the very self-reflective first chapter that explains his difficulties writing the book?  What does he gain by such an opening chapter; what do you think he’s trying to accomplish here?
--Do you believe this is an anti-war book or not?  Vonnegut concedes in the opening chapter that trying to stop wars is like trying to stop glaciers.  Is he a fatalist, as some critics have charged, or does he think change is possible?
--Comment on the book’s style.  What makes it unique, interesting?  Does the style seem to underscore the content?  Or does it detract from the content?
--What are we supposed to think about the Tralfamadorians and their world-view? Does Vonnegut believe (and want us to believe) that the Tralfamadorian  philosophy of life is more sane and reasonable than that of earthlings?  Or do you believe that Vonnegut satirizes the Tralfamadorian view--that he presents it ironically?

White Noise  (Due Date:  Monday, September 15)

Possible Topics:
 --What do you think the “white noise” of the title refers to?   Where in the book itself do we see this white noise manifested?  What does the white noise suggest about contemporary American culture?
--Do you think DeLillo critiques or appreciates our media-obsessed, consumerist society? Or does his vision involve a more complicated mixture of the two?  Cite particular scenes, instances in the book to support your view.
--Choose a particular supporting character (Heinrich, Denise, Stephie, Wilder, Murray Jay Siskind, Babette, Orest Mercator, etc.) and discuss what role this character seems to play in the book. 
--Look one of these particular scenes in the book and provide a close reading of what you think’s going on here:
1)  The scene beginning in Chapter 39 (p. 304), when Jack confronts Willie Mink.
2)  The scene at the hospital with the German nuns, beginning on p. 315.
3)  The scene at the very beginning of Chapter 40 (p. 322), in which Wilder rides his tricycle across the highway.

Mumbo Jumbo  (Due Date:  Monday, September 22)

Possible Topics:
--What do you think “Jes Grew” is?
--What do you think Reed is saying about the Western view of art?  Why are museums called “centers of art detention”?  Does he imagine a different kind of art?  How does the style of the novel challenge traditional notions of literary art?
--What does Reed have to say about monotheism vs. pantheism?  What people/groups in the book is each associated with?
--Talk a bit about the mythic background Reed uses toward the end of the novel.  What is he doing with the ancient Egyptian myths of Isis/Osiris/Set?
--This is certainly not a traditionally “realistic” novel.  How would you characterize it instead?  Discuss the style of the novel and what you think Reed is trying to accomplish with the form he has chosen.
 

Going After Cacciato  (Due Date:  Monday, September 29)

Possible Topics:
--Sort out, as best as you can, the novel’s structure.  What are the different types of chapters?  What are the major timeframes?  What events occurred in the past?  What’s happening in the present?   Was there a point in the book when the novel’s structure became more clear to you?
--Discuss the figure of Cacciato.  How is he described?  What does he seem to represent to the rest of the men?
--Provide a close reading of the chapter when the men fall down the hole in the road to Paris.  Why do they fall?  What do the tunnels suggest?  What happens down there and why?  How do they get out?  What role does Sarkin Ang Wan play in this?
--What happens to Lt. Sydney Martin?
--Examine the scene in Chapter 44 which mocks the Paris peace talks.  Whose argument do you find most convincing, Sarkin Ang Wan’s or Paul Berlin’s?  Which position do you think O’Brien advocates?  Does Paul Berlin ultimately fail in courage, or do the right thing by returning to the war at the end?
 

Wolfe/Didion Essays  (Due Date:  Monday, October 6)

Possible Topics: 
--What are the four specific techniques that Wolfe says the New Journalists learned from the realistic novelists?  Look at “Radical Chic” and/or “Mau-mauing the Flak Catcher” and discuss how Wolfe himself uses these techniques.  How successful do you think he is?
--How legitimate do you believe the New Journalism is?  Can it really be called “journalism,” as Wolfe claims?  Or do you agree with critics who claim it’s a form much too subjective to claim to be non-fiction?  Is it useful or cumbersome to retain old distinctions between fact and fiction anyway?
--Why do you think Didion chooses the particular sort of brief snapshot-type style she uses for her essay?  What, according to Didion, has happened to traditional plot, narrative?
--Does Didion present a slightly darker view of the 60’s than you are used to?  How so?  Why?  What seems to be her overall take on that decade? 
     

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test  (Due Date:  Monday, October 13)

Possible Topics:
--Do you think Tom Wolfe himself is “on the bus or off the bus”? In other words, how fully do you trust Wolfe's depiction of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in the book?  Do you detect any bias in Wolfe's account?  Does he seem to like and admire the Pranksters, possibly romanticize them even?  Or do you think Wolfe finally undermines the Pranksters?
--What is Kesey’s relationship to the older radical movements and ideas that he displaces—the 1950’s bohemians, the hipness of black culture, political activism, the Perry Lane crowd, even Timothy Leary and his group?  Is there a sense that STYLE has replaced true political involvement?  If so, how does Wolfe present this—is it a good thing or a bad thing?
--Look at the theme of control in the book (perhaps best represented by the “Tower of Control” at the Tripps Festival).  Does Kesey become increasingly controlling as the book progresses?  How are we to feel about the ethics of what’s happening?  (What about the schism among the pranksters?  People who don’t quite fit in such as Stark Naked, Sandy, or the Who Cares Girl?)
 

The Executioner’s Song  (Due Date:  Monday, October 27)

Possible Topics:
-- In a review of The Executioner's Song, Diane Johnson writes that the novel may be considered "literary ambulance-chasing."  Other readers have criticized Mailer for writing a basically and fundamentally "immoral" novel because it devotes so much dispassionate attention (over 1,000 pages worth) to a cold-blooded murderer. Other critics, though, argue that the novel is Mailer's best work to date. Which view do you take?  Is the novel immoral and exploitative?  Does it glorify Gilmore?  Or does it manage to be a "true-crime" story that works, that rises above the status of "literary ambulance-chasing"?
--Does your view of Gilmore change as the novel progresses?  Does he become more monstrous the more we see of him?  Or does he, as at least one critic argues, become increasingly heroic, especially after he’s arrested and imprisoned again?
--What are we to think of Lawrence Schiller?  How does Mailer present him?
--What do you think of Mailer’s depictions of Gilmore’s victims?  Does he treat them fairly or condescendingly?
--What do you think about some of the admissions Mailer makes in his afterword to the novel?
   

Song of Solomon  (Due Date:  Monday, November 3)

Possible Topics: 
--Look at either Macon Dead II, Ruth, or Pilate and talk about this character’s function in the novel.
--Examine a particularly memorable image or recurring motif in the novel (Ruth’s watermark, eggs, gold/ginger, the rose petals sewn by Lena and Corinthians, the peacock, etc.)
--Discuss the emphasis on names and naming in the novel.  Perhaps examine individual character’s names?  Talk about the relationship between names and history?
--What are we supposed to think about Guitar Baines and The Seven Days?  Is Guitar an appealing character or a appalling character?  Explain.
--Provide a close reading of the very end of the novel.  How are we supposed to read and interpret what happens here?
 

Tracks  (Due Date:  Monday, November 10)

Possible Topics: 
--What do the "tracks" of the title refer to?  Are there literal "tracks" in the novel?  How do tracks work as a metaphor in Erdrich's fiction?  Why do you think Erdrich chose to title this novel Tracks?
--Discuss the structure of the novel.  Why does Erdrich choose two alternating narrators?  How does this form relate to the novel’s content?
--What are we to think of Pauline Puyat?  Is she simply crazy?  Are we to feel any sympathy/admiration  for her at all?  What does her function in the novel seem to be?
--Look at Erdrich’s prose style.  Is it lyrically beautiful, as many readers believe?  Or is it overwrought, too writing-schoolish as some critics have charged?  How does Erdrich’s style affect you?  Do you think it works or not?
--Why doesn’t Fleur tell her own story?  What are we to think of Fleur?  Why does she hasten her own destruction at the end?
 

A Thousand Acres  (Due Date:  Monday, November 17)

Possible Topics: 
--Consider the novel’s epigraph from Meridel Le Seur.  How does this quote shape and inform the book?
--Is Ginny an entirely reliable narrator?  Can we completely trust her perception of events?  Why do you think Smiley chose Ginny to narrate the story?  How would the book have been different with a different narrator?
–If you’re familiar with King Lear, talk about Lear parallels in the novel.  How well do you think these work?
--Some reviewers arged that Smiley went too far in making Larry Cook sexually abuse his own daughters—that such a decision robs the Lear character of his majesty, making him unambiguously bad.  Do you agree or disagree with this assessment?
--What are we supposed to think about Jess Clark?  Is he a villain or a victim?
--How do you read the ending of the novel?  Is it entirely tragic?  Does Smiley leave us with any hope for the future?
 

The Woman Warrior  (Due Date:  Monday, November 24)
 

Possible Topics: 
--Briefly discuss the theme of silence vs. speaking in the book.  Is silence associated more with being Chinese or American?  Why does the narrator torment the silent girl so cruelly?  Are there real political reasons for keeping silent?  Why does the mother cut the narrator’s tongue?  Why the scene in which the narrator spills out her list of grievances?
--How does the book seem to you to challenge or upset traditional forms of autobiography?
--The book won a National Book Critics Circle Award for the best work of nonfiction published in 1976.  Would you classify the book as nonfiction?  Why or why not?  Talk about the book in relation to previous class discussions about how contemporary American literature blurs the line between fact and fiction.
--Several Chinese American male writers and thinkers have criticized the book for its portrayal of Asian men.  They argue that one reason Kingston’s book has been so popular with a mainstream American audience is because it reinforces stereotypes about Chinese.  What do you think about this view?  Do you agree or disagree?
--What do you think is going on in the last section—“Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe”?  Why does Kingston choose to end her book with this particular story?
 

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius  (Due Date:  Monday, December 1)
 

Possible Topics:
-- Explore your general reactions to the book.  Do you like it?  Dislike it?  Like certain parts and dislike others?  Why?  Is it too self-conscious, cynical, "gimmicky" as some critics have charged?  Or perhaps you think the book works because of (or despite) its self-reflexivity?  Were you genuinely moved by the book?  Or were you annoyed, offended?
--Analyze the cover and title of the book.  Are these meant to be serious?  Ironic jokes?  What effect do you think they’re intended to have on readers?
--How does Eggers parody the conventions of memoir, of autobiographical writing?
--Comment on this remark, made by James Poniewozik in a Time magazine review of the book: "Another young author, Jedediah Prudy, last year published For Common Things, about the threat of the "ironic individual," possessed of acute self-awareness and mistrust, which, Purdy argued, led to cynicism.  Heartbreaking Work is a resounding rebuttal.  In it, literary gamesmanship and self-consciousness are trained on life's most unendurable experience, used to examine a memory too scorching to stare at, as one views an eclipse by projecting sunlight onto paper through a pinhole.  This is not irony obscuring sincerity.  It is, finally, irony in the service of sincerity."

• English 700 page
• Susan Farrell homepage
• CofC homepage

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  Annotated Bibliography

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  Research Paper  

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Presentation  

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Final Exam  

The final exam will consist of identifies, short answers, and longer essay questions. I'll give you more information about the final near the end of the semester.

• English 700 page
• Susan Farrell homepage
• CofC homepage