In a paper of 1000 words, please make an analysis of the theme, characters and/or some other aspect of one of the following pieces of fiction. As with the Poetry Analysis, the object is to make some sort of claim about the story (and its usually easiest to make claims about theme or character in a story). Then you support your claim from evidence found in the story itself. Explain yourself as necessary. Or, the pattern you may remember from class: ClaimEvidenceWarrant.
FOR Some Sample Paper Topics and Possibilities for Writing
Cathedral employs a first-person narrator who seems to experience an epiphany. What does he discover about himself or the world around him? What evidence can you find in the text to justify your claim?
Boys and Girls seems to offer a rich place to begin a discussion of how we come to find and/or define ourselves. When the protagonist seems to accept that she is only a girl, what does that mean to her? What does it mean in the context of the story? Does she come to that conclusion based on social influences or as a result of biological directives? Or, could you argue for a combination of the two?
According to William Faulkner, the only subject worth the sweat and effort of writing is the human heart in conflict with itself. What parts of the heart seem to be competing against one another in any one of the stories we have read? What conflicting motives does the main character feel? How is that conflict expressed?
In some stories, objects, actions, or places seem to take on a significance beyond themselves. That is, they seem to gain more importance than we would normally give them. What events, objects, or actions seem to have particular significance in This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona? What meanings could be ascribed to them? For example, objects like the crate, bullwhip, or even the matchbox might take on larger significance than as things in and of themselves. If they do have other meanings, what might those meanings be?
Sudden, inexplicable, and arbitrary cruelty seem to be features of the story Saboteur.(Or you can substitute Harrison Bergeron.) To what extent can such cruelty be attributed to the political system in which the story is set? How much of that cruelty can be attributed to universal human nature? Does it require a combination of the two to present the possibilities encapsulated in this story? Given the ending, why might you characterize it as ironic? Does Mr. Chu display more, less, or the same concern for human life as his tormentors? Why or why not?
Irony is one of the richest sources of literary pleasure. This includes sophisticated word play and verbal irony. It also includes dramatic and cosmic ironyperhaps we especially respond to instances of cosmic irony. You might examine one or more of the stories weve looked at such as Saboteur or A Rose for Emily, keeping a close eye on how and why the authors use irony in these stories.
In many stories there are questions about the psychology of individual characters and what motivates each of them to act as he or she does. What seems to motivate the principal characters in Why I Live at the P.O. To act in the ways that they do?
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