1. Franz Kafka, the great Czech novelist and short story writer, once wrote:
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.
Which work (poem, drama, short story) from our course has been like an axe for the frozen sea within you? Write an essay that explores how a work affected you in a way similar to howKafka describes. You can focus on how it illuminated or changed the way you thought about an experience or problem you have had. Or you can focus on how it changed the way you think about a specific issue (i.e., one that may not be personal). While your focus will be on explaining your response to the work, be sure to discuss and analyze the work itself in some detail.
2. Choose one of our short stories to write on, identify a key theme or issue to analyze in it, and then use one or more other works we've read to help you with that analysis. In other words, write an essay that focuses primarily on one story, but integrate comparisons and contrasts to other readings as a means to explore your topic. The key to success here is to have a clear, specific analytical focus on one short story, and to use the other(s) to gain insight and understanding that you would not attain if you looked at the story by itself.
3. One of the goals of the liberal arts curriculum is to make connections across disciplines. We have been exploring most of our readings in isolation but in class discussions students have made connections to readings they have done in other classes or on their own. For this essay, choose one of the short stories we have read and use an outside source that is not about the work itself to help analyze some specific issue within the story. Readings from philosophy, theology, psychology, sociology, and women's studies are probably valuable, but feel free to use a reading from any discipline to achieve insight and understanding.
4. Enter the debate we engaged in on Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Adopt a position on the issue and write a paper in which you argue for your interpretation of the issues raised in the passage we read about the story. But you must synthesize other readings in substantial fashion. I have created a folder that includes the full versions of the essays from which our passages on the story came. I have also added to other documents related to the story. These are your sources and you must integrate them all (to different degrees) in your paper.
5. Joyce Carol Oates dedicated "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" to Bob Dylan and has said that she was inspired to write the story by Dylan's song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." Find the lyrics to this song and then write an analysis in which you use them to illuminate the story in some unique and interesting way.
Criteria for Evaluation:
• Specific, complex, interesting argument, analysis, synthesis, and/or reflection
• Rigorous, detailed development of your major ideas through precise elaboration and...
• Detailed analysis, illustration, and support, all smoothly integrated.
• Some quoting that supports and illustrates your main ideas. (Use MLA in-text citations.)
• Clear, effective organization
• Clear, grammatical, and engaging writing