Essay Assignment
For essay 4, you will be vvriting an analytical literary analysis' 3 to 4 typed pages long (800-1000 words), at home. Review your, handouts, instructor notes on your previous essays, and your textbook Arguing About Literature, including the sample student essay discussed in class, before writing your own. This essay alone is worth 30% of your final class grade.
For this essay you may write about Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, Oyeyemi's flat Is Not Yours Is Not Yours or both. You may use any stories from Oyeyemi's book, including those not assigned to the class. Also you must include a Works Cited Page and an outline. You are not required to use outside sources, but if you do, make sure to document these (even if you are simply borrowing or paraphrasing an idea). Plagiarism will not be tolerated.
It is expected that you will provide specific examples from the novel or/and stories as evidence of your claim in the thesis. These should appear in the form of specific references or direct quotes, followed by MLA parenthetical citations with the page numbers.
Below are possible topics from which to choose. Others are acceptable, with prior approval from the instructor.
1. Whitehead's The Underground Railroad is considered a historical novel, a neo- slave narrative, yet he includes elements of fantasy throughout the book. Identify some of these elements and discuss the effects they have on the narrative.
2. Oyeyemi uses the term fabulism to describe her stories. Some consider fabulism a form of magic realism in which fantastical/ spiritual/ miraculous elements are placed into an everyday setting. Choose three stories that use this technique and explore how it contributes to the tone and themes of the stories, individually and as a whole.
3. Discuss the use of fantasy or fabulism, as Oyeyemi refers to it, as a literary devise in general. Why do writers use it within historical or contemporary realist narratives, such as Whitehead's and Oyeyemi's? How does it contribute to their texts?
4. In Whitehead's novel he includes episodes that allude to real historical events outside the time frame of the noveL Identify these and discuss the author's possible motivation for including these? Could they suggest that the author's intent and thematic scope go beyond the experience of American slavery during the Antebellum? How so?
5. Whitehead's novel uses the episodic structure of the classic picaresque novel, such as the first, Spain's Lazarillo de Tormes, and later Gulliver's Travels and Huckleberry Finn. Why would he use that form? How does it lend itself to Cora's journey? Why make the protagonist a girl instead of the boy as in previous classics?
6. The symbol of "key" is recurring in all of Oyeyemi's stories. Choose at least three stories to explore both its specific meaning in each as well as its possible deeper meaning. What does it have to do with the collection's title?
7. Oyeyemi's stories are populated with a wide variety of diverse characters. Identify three stories that illustrate this. Then discuss what is the effect of this choice and its implications at a literary, social, and even political leveL
8. The main character in The Underground Railroad, as well as in many of Oyeyemi's stories, make for unlikely protagonists if perceived from the point of view of their corresponding societies. For example, not only is Cora an enslaved person, but she is considered an outsider within the slave quarters. Similarly one of the main character in Oyeyemi's story "Books and Roses" is a thief in love with another woman. Explore the theme of the outsider as it manifests itself within these two authors works.