Thesis Topics for Paper 3

Paper Topics for the Third & Last Paper
Thirty Percent of Your Grade
Due Date: Wednesday, 5 May 2010

Instructions for the Essay:
Minimum number of outside sources: Three LiterActive sources and one internet source used in class
No outside sources may be used that have not been shown in class (on Monday or during your Wednesday and Friday class).
All summaries, use of quotations, and/or use of ideas from sources must be cited appropriately using MLA Style citation form.

Write a well-developed essay with an interesting introduction, a debatable thesis statement, and paragraphs that build in interest. Write a conclusion that discusses the points of your essay without repeating yourself. You may discuss the relevance of your ideas to life today or the importance of the stories, or figure out some other way to end your essay, but do not repeat yourself, and do not start on a new topic.
Make sure each paragraph of the paper has strong evidence for your viewpoint with clear analysis, and that it is easy for your reader to understand how your evidence proves your paragraph’s idea and your thesis statement.

Topics to Choose From:

1.One definition of enslavement is taking complete control of a group of people against their wills (i.e., involuntarily) and doing whatever it takes in order to use them for your own benefit economically, sexually, socially, and in whatever other ways you wish to have authority over them. Select two stories that embody this definition of the term enslavement; briefly demonstrate the major way in which each story fulfills the above definition. Then, focus on the central issue of this question which is the following:
Upon first looking at the above definition, you would most likely say enslavement is not a part of American daily life. Think about what things in our culture and society control us most today? How are these things communicated to us? What is the vehicle in twentieth and twenty-first century America through which the above definition of enslavement is fulfilled? Provide concrete examples that this is the case and see if you can draw parallels between what is happening now and what you see happening in the two stories you selected. Don’t forget to include your LiterActive documents.

2.The value of life, land ownership, and human relationship is central to many stories we’ve read this semester. In diverse racial, cultural, social, political, and historical contexts, some characters we’ve encountered have shed their blood or risked their lives for a sense of belonging to a community and/or to a relationship.

For your final paper, write a fully developed literary analysis, using research, as assigned above, about one or two of the short stories read in class, in which you examine the way the author(s) use the literary devices of setting, plot, character, and point of view to relay a theme. Include a very brief biographical sketch of the author and a review of the literary criticism in your paper. In your thesis statement, be sure to identify a specific issue the protagonist struggle with and/or confronts. Your essay must demonstrate what the characters represent and what the story reveals (or what the stories reveal) about all of humanity.

3.In the story “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie,” the narrator makes broad generalizations about what a guy can expect when dating females of different racial/ethnic backgrounds; these generalizations are less than flattering and are, frankly, prejudicial. Why would a writer like Diaz, a Dominican who immigrated to the United States at the ages of seven and received his MFA from Cornell University, indulge in this type of language and writing. To what end? What could he be trying to accomplish by including these prejudicial stereotypes? Justify your viewpoint with textual evidence and LiterActive documents.

4.When a person is raised in an abusive environment, often she or he grows up with low self-esteem because of the way s/he has been treated through his or her lifetime. A person may feel less than when meeting with constant disapproval of a parent with unrealistic expectations of that individual throughout his/her childhood or when a person’s race makes the teacher expect less of that student than of others, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of a student who learns less than others. Many early childhood situations that silence a person have an impact on a person’s self-image later in life.

Select three stories we have read and figure out how and why the major characters have become emotionally enslaved to their or in their dysfunctional relationships (whether it be with their romantic partners or whether it enmeshment in their families of origin). Explain what makes these characters feel less than; use your text to support your argument; make sure you analyze the passages you select and that your thesis does not just focus on a single character but discuss the issue of the impact of the way we are treated in society or perceived by society and the level at which we function emotionally in our lives. Make the thesis inclusive.

5. In his letter to Peter Wilhelm Lund, dated August 31, 1835, Existentialist Philosopher, Soren, Kierkegaard writes:
What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain knowledge must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. ... I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of knowledge and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing (emphasis added).
Rejecting the conventional and systematic way of doing things, the existentialist characters seeks to find his/her own meaning to life in his/her own way. Consequently, s/he is often alienated from the majority though s/he chooses to have the freedom to seek what is important and meaningful to him/her rather than to blindly follow the crowd. Using Kafka’s A Hunger Artist and one more story we have read this semester, of your own choice, discuss the way society treats characters who depart from the social constructs to find their own meanings. Explain why society treats people who don’t follow social constructs in this way. Find evidence for your viewpoint and be sure to use LiterActive and to relate it to today’s world.

6. Consider the story, The Lottery the article, The Newest Abuse Excuse for Violence Against Women, and the short film, Submission. How do these reflect community and traditions within communities? How are these similar, and what do these similarities mean? How are they different, and what do these differences represent?