Analysis Paper #1
AP English
Analysis paper #1
Assigned November 5. Due November 25. Plan to spend at least eight hours on this.
Length: 4-5 pages, typed.
Format: double spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt.
Papers submitted in any other format will be returned to the author. The adjusted paper will be considered late and penalized at the rate of twenty percent per day. No papers will be accepted via email unless you talk to me in advance and I say it’s okay.
Choose your topic from the list below.
1. Rebellion is a theme common to all three works read this marking period. Compare the protagonists of two (2) works in light of the issue of rebellion. Include a treatment of fire and/or ice imagery in your paper, where applicable, or other images symbolically associated with rebellion. Do not stop at simple comparison. Work toward a statement about the significance of rebellion in both works as products of the societies that produced them.
2. Antigone: Who is the tragic hero(ine)—Antigone or Creon? You must choose. You can’t say “both.” Pick one, and defend your choice using criteria for defining a tragic hero. If you choose Antigone, you must address why Creon is NOT the tragic hero, and vice versa.
3. Victor, Victor, Victor. Is Mary Shelley serious about Victor? How are we supposed to read him? You know my views—I think he’s awful. But how am I supposed to feel about him? Sympathetic? How, in your opinion, did Shelley intend for us to read Victor? Is her treatment of her protagonist satirical, or are we really supposed to believe that Victor is “the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration”? Consider the viewpoints of the other characters as well as Victor’s own remarks. Remember that Victor is a potentially unreliable narrator, so look beyond his words and examine his actions as well.
4. Shelley’s original subtitle for Frankenstein was “A Modern Prometheus.” Read the Prometheus story. There’s a version at the back of each edition of the novel. If you’re feeling really ambitious, read Percy Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound,” too. Discuss the relationship between Shelley’s Prometheus and the wise Titan of Greek mythology. Do not stop at a simple comparison. If the exploratory stage goes well, the comparison will give you new insight into the novel. This will be the point.
5. This comes right off page 225 of the EMC edition. Read Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Shelley knew it well and alludes to it frequently. Compare the two works. Why does Shelley allude to the Coleridge poem? How does this enhance our understanding of the novel? Why would Shelley subtitle her work “A Modern Prometheus,” suggesting that Victor is an admirable character, and then subvert this by alluding to AM, whose title character is a bad guy?
6. Women in Frankenstein. I got this from the EMC version too, p. 226. The seizing of a woman’s power takes two forms in Frankenstein: in giving life to the creature, Frankenstein takes over a woman’s role of giving birth and at the same time steals the power of Nature, which in the novel is portrayed as a female force. In what ways might this reflect Shelley’s sense of male attitudes toward and treatment of women in her society? In your essay, consider her portrayal of the female characters in the novel as well as her decision to give the narrative voice exclusively to men. Take care when you support your thesis to use sufficient examples from the text. Stick to the story. This topic is not intended to prompt a philosophical reflection or a biographical study of Shelley. You must support every point you make with evidence from the novel.
7. The third free-response question for the 2005 AP reads:
“One of the strongest human drives seems to be a desire for power. Write an essay in which you discuss how a character in a novel . . . struggles to free himself or herself from the power of others or seeks to gain power over others. Be sure to demonstrate in your essay how the author uses this power struggle to enhance the meaning of the work.”
Respond to this question using The Handmaid’s Tale. Look at both sides of the power struggle. Include in your argument a treatment of tactics used by both the government (to oppress) and the oppressed (to free themselves). Focus on Offred and the strategies she uses to maintain her sense of individuality in a social system bent on dehumanizing women. Give the bulk of your attention to language—both narrative language and the language of the oppressor.
8. Read Otto Reinert’s observations below. Look up any unfamiliar words so you don’t lose the meaning of the lines. Analyze Victor, Offred, the creature, or Antigone in light of Reinert’s remarks. Your analysis should look beyond a simple statement such as “Victor is tragic because . . . examples . . . the end.” Do not simply use Reinert as a formula and plug in the appropriate plot elements. Naturally you will do some of this, but do not stop there. DO consider the whole statement, particularly the last sentence
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In tragedy, man is a paradox in a paradoxical existence. Fallible and vulnerable in his mortal finity, he is yet capable of transcendent greatness. Freely exercising his will (a passive hero is pathetic rather than tragic), he is yet the plaything of destiny. Acting on his virtue, he incurs guilt. Divided within by impulses and imperatives in conflict and beset without by other willful selves and by his physical environment, he pits his naked strength against forces that inhibit him and enrage him and that he can neither control nor understand. Flawed by his human nature, he is incapable of compromise. He demands that an imperfect world conform to his notions of right and good, and he is defeated because discord, injustice, pain, and moral evil are the world’s warp and woof. The final paradox is man in his tragic vision saying, “I do not believe in the invincibility of evil but in the inevitability of defeat.” . . . But in the absoluteness of his commitment, the tragic hero triumphs in the very inevitability of his defeat. Foolishly, pitifully, magnificently pressing his human potential beyond limits, he asserts man’s significance and dignity in the face of the unanswering unknown; tragic man matters.
Otto Reinert, ed., Classic Through Modern Drama: An Introductory Anthology (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970), xxvi.