1. Compare Claggert in "Billy Budd" with the narrator of "The Black Cat". How are both figures of evil and self-loathing?
2. Show how Whitman in "Song of Myself" uses ideas from Emerson to depict what America means? How does he define an American?
3. Take any 2 narrators from Poe to show how they are unreliable.
4. Compare how death is depicted in Thanatopsis to how it is depicted in Dickinson's poem #479.
5. Discuss how Hawthorne uses the coming of age theme in "Young Goodman Brown" and "My Kinsman, Major Molineux."
6. Compare Section 11 of "Song of Myself" to Dickinson's poem # 269.