Paper #1: English 106W
Due Date: February 26th, Friday
Some thesis topic questions to help you find your thesis statements. You can either choose directly from the following topics or come up with your own. Please make sure it is related to the course theme and short stories we've read so far.
Make sure to use examples from the story and to cite them with parenthetical citations. Also use one LiterActive document source and cite it please. Thank you.
1. Jamaica Kincaid’s story, “Girl,” consists of a mother’s monologue telling her daughter how to become a successful Antiguan woman, with a couple lines of the daughter’s denying some of the mother’s assumptions about her character interspersed in the lecture. Mother is full of good intentions but difficult and rigid expectations from her daughter. Examine the types of expectations Mother has to determine their source. Who is the Mother teaching the daughter to please? Why? What does this say about Antiguan society? Who is really in control? Women? Mothers? How do you know? Is it the same today in twenty-first century America? Are women still taught to please the same people as Mother teaches Girl to please? How do you see that happening today? Why is this the case?
2. Xingjian’s “The Accident” asks us to understand the difference between story and plot. Briefly explain how Xingjian does this and define these terms, so that you can focus your essay on why understanding this distinction is important for us today when we consider the knowledge we have about everyday events that occur. How often do we really have story? If we are reading plots more often than story, what does this say about truth in the twenty-first century? What do you think about this? Are there truths and not truth, or what?
3. Select one or two stories and write on the topic of a person’s invisibility. Think about Girl and whether her mother really knows who she is. Consider the man killed in the accident, and think about how many people really care about him at all. Think about the street being cleaned up; check the text and re-read what it says after that. Consider the girl in “Hills like White Elephants”; does her boyfriend really hear what she is feeling and saying? Consider the man in “Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat;” does the girl care about what he thinks? What about Emily and her relationship with her father and Homer in Faulkner’s story? Do either of them know her? Pick one character and one story, or two stories (your choice), and think about how people can be in the same family or part of a relationship and not ever see, hear, or understand the other person. What does this say about human relationships? Can you relate to this? Does this happen today? Can you think of some good examples of this you can explain in detail? Are there people in America today that are productive members of our society that we treat as invisible?
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