1
College English: Literary Analysis and Research
For your final project for this course, you will read, analyze, and research one of the literary works from the approved list. Each one of the novels or plays is part of the literary canon (Or, they are on their way to becoming part of the accepted canon). Therefore, when you analyze the novel, play, or collection of poetry, you will have plenty of time to study, analyze, and research. Most of these books are available through the English Department; and your English teachers have read or taught these books. This means that we will be able to help you throughout this process of reading, analyzing, and researching.
The book that you choose for this assignment must be new to you. In other words, it cannot be a book that you have studied in a classroom. The point of this assignment is for you to work through the process of analysis and research independently and to apply your knowledge of literary analysis to a new and unfamiliar novel.
The approved list of literary works includes several different kinds of stories, so there should be something for everyone. In this list, you will find a synopsis of each work. After you have chosen a book, do a little preliminary research; discover what other critics say is important about the book, and keep these things in mind as you begin to read. As you are reading your book, you should look carefully for specific literary techniques evident in the novel or collection of poems. For example, if you are reading Beloved by Toni Morrison, you might look for the recurring motifs of cold, darkness, and light as the main character works through her struggles. Better, you will keep track of the page numbers in the book where you see such motifs, so that in your analysis, you will be able to refer to specific passages to support your analysis. This will also be helpful when you’re writing your outline.
So, this brings us to the paper. You will write a 5-7 page literary analysis (double-spaced, typed, 1” margins, Times New Roman) of the book you have read. You will not be doing this on your own. The point of the assignment is to read a book, analyze it, and find out what (published) literary critics say about your author and his/her work. This kind of research with help add validity and weight to your own observations. It may even help to shed some light where only confusing shadows have been lingering throughout your reading experience. You are responsible for developing your thesis, though the literary critics will certainly point you in the right direction. Your essay will conclude with a Works Cited Page listing the minimum of six sources you have cited throughout the paper. The essay must be written in MLA format.
Approved List of Literary Works
1984 by George Orwell
Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmare vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life--the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language--and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Mark Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, tells the story of a teenaged misfit who finds himself floating on a raft down the Mississippi River with an runaway slave, Jim. In the course of their perilous journey, Huck and Jim meet adventure, danger, and a cast of characters who are sometimes menacing and often hilarious.
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Feisty Marietta Greer changes her name to "Taylor" when her car runs out of gas in Taylorville, Ill. By the time she reaches Oklahoma, this strong-willed young Kentucky native with a quick tongue and an open mind is catapulted into a surprising new life. Taylor leaves home in a beat-up '55 Volkswagen bug, on her way to nowhere in particular, savoring her freedom. But when a forlorn Cherokee woman drops a baby in Taylor's passenger seat and asks her to take it, she does. A first novel, The Bean Trees is an overwhelming delight, as random and unexpected as real life. The unmistakable voice of its irresistible heroine is whimsical, yet deeply insightful. Taylor playfully names her little foundling "Turtle," because she clings with an unrelenting, reptilian grip; at the same time, Taylor aches at the thought of the silent, staring child's past suffering. With Turtle in tow, Taylor lands in Tucson, Ariz., with two flat tires and decides to stay. The desert climate, landscape and vegetation are completely foreign to Taylor, and in learning to love Arizona, she also comes face to face with its rattlesnakes and tarantulas. Similarly, Taylor finds that motherhood, responsibility and independence are thorny, if welcome, gifts. This funny, inspiring book is a marvelous affirmation of risk-taking, commitment and everyday miracles.
Biloxi Blues by Neil Simon (play)
Biloxi Blues continues Simon's dramatization, begun in Brighton Beach Memoirs, of Eugene Morris Jerome's adolescence and young manhood. The sequel follows Eugene and his fellow recruits through basic training at an Army base in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1943. Eugene's rite of passage has its basis in the playwright's own experiences. One expects humor from this writer and is not disappointed, but a more sober side is also revealed. The script is after all about a young man's education in the real world, and the reader is always aware of the fearful adventure awaiting the recruits. Though its form and theme break no new ground, the play evokes a nostalgic feeling for its period and elicits genuine response to its characters.
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin is a tale of two sisters, one of whom dies under ambiguous circumstances in the opening pages. The survivor, Iris Chase Griffen, initially seems a little cold-blooded about this death in the family. But as Margaret Atwood's most ambitious work unfolds--a tricky process, in fact, with several nested narratives and even an entire novel-within-a-novel--we're reminded of just how complicated the familial game of hide-and-seek can be.
A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Huxley's classic tale of future dystopia seems to become more relevant with the passing of time. At its original time of publication, some of the novel's social commentary was safety masked inside science fiction. Today's readers may relate more to Huxley's vision of over medicated, over-sexed consumerism. With topics like genetics, DNA testing and stem-cell research constantly in the news... perhaps the yuppies of today aren't so far off from the Alpha's of the future.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams (play)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof first heated up Broadway in 1955 with its gothic American story of brothers vying for their dying father's inheritance amid a whirlwind of sexuality, untethered in the person of Maggie the Cat. The play also daringly showcased the burden of sexuality repressed in the agony of her husband, Brick Pollitt.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins, "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them." His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Color Purple is one of the strongest statements of how love transforms and cruelty disfigures the human spirit that this reviewer has ever read. Alice Walker gives us Celie, 14 years old when the book opens, who has been raped, abused, degraded and twice impregnated by her father. After he takes her children away from her without a so much as a word, he marries her off like a piece of chattel to her husband, who is so cold, distant and inhuman to her that she can only refer to him as Mr; and this person deprives her of her sister Nettie, the only one who ever loved her.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (short stories)
With a keen eye for the dark side of human nature, an amazing ear for dialogue, and a necessary sense of irony, Flannery O'Conner exposes the underside of life in the rural south of the United States. One of the powers in her writing lies in her ability to make the vulnerability of one into that of many; another is her mastery of shifting "control" from character to character, making the outcome uncertain. Sexual and racial attitudes, poverty and riches, adolescence, old age, and being thirty-four which "wasn't any age at all" are only some of the issues touched on in this collection.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (play)
On a dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered first by a pair of watchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost resembles the recently deceased King Hamlet, whose brother Claudius has inherited the throne and married the king’s widow, Queen Gertrude. When Horatio and the watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead king, to see the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring ominously that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was murdered by none other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge on the man who usurped his throne and married his wife, the ghost disappears with the dawn.
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
A stunning literary achievement, The Joy Luck Club explores the tender and tenacious bond between four daughters and their mothers. The daughters know one side of their mothers, but they don't know about their earlier never-spoken of lives in China. The mothers want love and obedience from their daughters, but they don't know the gifts that the daughters keep to themselves. Heartwarming and bittersweet, this is a novel for mother, daughters, and those that love them.
Maus Iby Art Spiegelman
Some historical events simply beggar any attempt at description--the Holocaust is one of these. Therefore, as it recedes and the people able to bear witness die, it becomes more and more essential that novel, vigorous methods are used to describe the indescribable. Examined in these terms, Art Spiegelman's Maus is a tremendous achievement, from a historical perspective as well as an artistic one. Spiegelman, a stalwart of the underground comics scene of the 1960s and '70s, interviewed his father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor living outside New York City, about his experiences. The artist then deftly translated that story into a graphic novel. By portraying a true story of the Holocaust in comic form--the Jews are mice, the Germans cats, the Poles pigs, the French frogs, and the Americans dogs--Spiegelman compels the reader to imagine the action, to fill in the blanks that are so often shied away from. Reading Maus, you are forced to examine the Holocaust anew.
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (play)
Leonata lives in the idyllic Italian town of Messina. Leonato shares his house with his lovely young daughter, Hero, his playful, clever niece, Beatrice, and his elderly brother, Antonio. As the play begins, Leonato prepares to welcome some friends home from a war. The friends include Don Pedro, a prince who is a close friend of Leonato, and two fellow soldiers: Claudio, a well-respected young nobleman, and Benedick, a clever man whoconstantly makes witty jokes, often at the expense of his friends.Don John, Don Pedro’s illegitimate brother, is part of the crowd as well. Don John is sullen and bitter, and makes trouble for the others.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Douglass begins by saying that he does not know his birthday and this bothers him. What a simple statement yet is conveys so much of the laments of an ex slave and the cruelty of the slave system. Douglass was a famous orator who wrote his memoirs as a means of discussing abolition. The writings of Frederick Douglass are seen as being the most influential in the 19th century and helped strengthen the abolitionist movement.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, and you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse? In fact they can and they do.
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school's marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it's all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, "fun with a purpose."
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (play)
A Raisin in the Sun portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, an African-American family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. When the play opens, the Youngers are about to receive an insurance check for $10,000. This money comes from the deceased Mr. Younger’s life insurance policy. Each of the adult members of the family has an idea as to what he or she would like to do with this money. The matriarch of the family, Mama, wants to buy a house to fulfill a dream she shared with her husband. Mama’s son, Walter Lee, would rather use the money to invest in a liquor store with his friends. He believes that the investment will solve the family’s financial problems forever. Walter’s wife, Ruth, agrees with Mama, however, and hopes that she and Walter can provide more space and opportunity for their son, Travis. Finally, Beneatha, Walter’s sister and Mama’s daughter, wants to use the money for her medical school tuition. She also wishes that her family members were not so interested in joining the white world. Beneatha instead tries to find her identity by looking back to the past and to Africa.