CORE 102-18 Spring 2006 Prof. Szajda
Writing Assignment: Due date depends on your group number. Choose any one of the
topics below for your 6-7 page essay. You may also propose a topic of your choosing,
but such a topic must first be approved by me.
Submission Procedure: As with last semester, I expect hard copies of papers delivered
to my office. Please be sure to place a blank sheet of paper at the end of the essay. The
last four digits of your student number must be placed on the back of the blank piece of
paper. Under no circumstances should your name appear anywhere on the paper!
Failure to adhere to this will cost you a letter grade.
1. Consider Pilate: she retains her autonomy by living at the edges of civilized
society – one might say she refuses the role of “the Other” in her personal
relationships, while remaining very much a community outsider. How does she fit
and/or not fit the conception of “Other” that de Beauvoir provided in The Second
Sex?
2. Alternatively, consider (at least two of) Ruth, Lena, and Corinthians, three women
who find transcendence difficult to achieve within the confines of the Dead
household. How do these women fit and/or not fit the images of woman that de
Beauvoir provided in The Second Sex? If appropriate to your essay, how do
Macon Dead and Milkman fit and/or not fit the images of men provided by de
Beauvoir?
3. I wonder why Toni Morrison wrote this book; what was her purpose? We might
safely assume that the novel’s epigraph has something to do with the answer to
this question (an epigraph is “A motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a
literary composition, setting forth a theme.”) If we’re right, the words fathers,
soar, children, know, and names would seem to hold the key to discovering her
purpose, whether that purpose is personal, cultural, historical, political, … . Write
a paper in which you tie the author’s purpose as you interpret it to the themes set
forth in the epigraph.
4. Fear and power seem so prevalent in The House of Mirth, especially in Lily’s
emotions and thinking. If you had to add a third motivating factor for our
heroine, what would it be? Justify your answer, supporting your contention with
ample textual references.
5.
We haven’t spent too much class time on the men in Lily’s life. Perhaps a paper
exploring their ‘situations’ and ‘characters’, leading to their functions in
Wharton’s novel would be interesting and worthwhile.
6. In her 1935 introduction to the Oxford University Press edition of The House of
Mirth, Wharton spoke of ‘the key’ to the story in Darwinian metaphors:
Nature, always apparently wasteful, and apparently compelled to create
dozens of stupid people in order to produce a single genius, seems to reverse
the process in manufacturing the shallow and the idle. Such groups always
rest on an underpinning of wasted human possibilities; and it seemed to me
that the fate of the persons embodying these possibilities ought to redeem my
subject from insignificance.
Explore Darwin-like metaphors in the text of The House of Mirth with an eye
toward ‘Nature’, ‘reproduction and genius ’, ‘possibilities and fate’. I suppose
you’ll consider Lily’s plight within the framework of ‘survival of the fittest’ – it’d
be best I think to concentrate on Wharton’s metaphors, making your case without
yielding to any temptation you may have to say something like “Survival of the
fittest explains the whole novel”, since that type of thesis won’t lead to a very
interesting paper in my estimation (too simple, trite, cliché).
7. Instead of Darwin, you might offer a Marxian interpretation of the society in
which House of Mirth takes place. Topics such as “ideology vs. materialism”,
“fetishism of commodities”, “the secret of primitive accumulation”, “the sale and
purchase of labor power”, “bourgeois society and values”, “class conflict” ...
come to mind – you won’t be able to treat all of these so narrow your thesis to
some specific aspect offered by Marx. Note: it may be useful to distinguish
between “petit bourgeoisie” and “haute bourgeoisie” if you decide to approach the
paper from the bourgeois angle – you can look up these terms.
8.
In the chapter of The Second Sex entitled Situation and Character (p624), de
Beauvoir writes, “It is evident that woman’s ‘character’ – her convictions, her
values, her wisdom, her morality, her tastes, her behavior – are to be explained by
her situation. The fact that transcendence is denied her keeps her as a rule from
attaining the loftiest human attitudes: heroism, revolt, disinterestedness,
imagination, creation; but even among males these are none too common.”
Examine Lily Bart and the men in her life, their relationships to each other or to
their social milieu in 1905 New York, in light of de Beauvoir’s philosophy.
9. Wharton writes much about “the two Lilys” and “the real Lily”. Think about the
contexts within which these allusions to public and private personae appear.
Think about Lily’s encounters with mirrors throughout the novel and discuss
whether the light in which Lily perceives herself changes as the novel goes on.
You might choose to address such questions as: How is an aesthetic appreciation
of Lily as a work of art and beauty bound up with relations of power and
manipulation of others? How does Lily manipulate and deceive others, and how
do they manipulate and deceive her? How do women wield power in this social
world anyway?
10. Speaking of aesthetic appreciation of women, perhaps a comparison of Lily and
Sita would be interesting; one could start with the women themselves and
comment on how the qualities being appreciated reflect the interests of the
societies to which these women belong.
11. In her last days, Lily speaks with Rosedale, Selden, and Nettie Struther as she
considers society’s treatment of individuals, human fellowship, the conditions of
life and personal happiness. Imagine de Tocqueville were to speak to Lily about
government, saying:
We must first decide what the purport of society and the aims of
government are held to be. If it be your intention to confer a certain elevation
on the human mind, and to teach it to regard the things of this world with
generous feelings, to inspire men with a scorn of mere temporal advantage, to
give birth to living convictions, and to keep alive the spirit of honorable
devotedness; if you hold it to be a good thing to refine the habits, to embellish
the manners, to cultivate the arts of a nation and to promote a love of poetry, of
beauty, and of renown … -- if you believe such to be the principal object of
society, you must avoid the government of democracy, which would be a very
uncertain guide to the end you have in view.
But if you hold it to be expedient to divert the moral and intellectual
activity of man to the production of comfort, and to the acquirement of the
necessities of life … if, in short, you are of the opinion that the principal object
of a Government is … to insure the greatest degree of enjoyment and the least
degree of misery to each of the individuals who compose it … you can have no
surer means of satisfying (these desires) than by equalizing the conditions of
men (and women), and establishing democratic institutions.
Which alternative would Lily choose? Is that choice significantly different from
what she experiences in the novel? What arguments would she employ to
convince us of the correctness of her choice?
12. In his Confessions, Augustine looks back over his life through the eyes of the
ascetic he has become. How are the retrospective evaluations he makes of his
experiences similar or different from the evaluations that Nietzsche’s ascetic
priest would make of them?
13. There are (at least) three pairs of opposites running through the novel:
a. Light/Dark
b. Sun/Moon
c. Truth/Lies
Choose two such pairs, trace their usages throughout the novel think about
whether the usages are acting in concert to produce a single effect or whether
Bulgakov uses each pair for slightly different purposes.
14. As individuals, how are the Master and Margarita different from other characters
in the novel? What is the basis for their relationship -- i.e. what does each see in
the other or get from the other? For this last part, look for specific clues in the
scenes they share and in their expressions of longing when they are separated.
15. Would Bulgakov agree with Nietzsche that sins (whether small or large) are what
make people interesting?
16. Nietzsche's perspectivism (see p. 119, Third Essay in the Genealogy of Morals)
has been described as the view that all views are but interpretations. Take a look
at the accounts of the week between Palm Sunday and Easter given in Master and
Margarita (Pilate's perspective) and The Gospel of Matthew (gospel writer's
perspective). Examine the relationships between interpretation and fact in these
two accounts. Develop an interesting thesis and support your contention using
specific examples. For the Gospel of Matthew, the following chapters and verses
should suffice (21:1-27, chapters 26 and 27).
17. Examine parallels between the Moscow story and the Yershalaim story with a
view to answering this question: Why did Bulgakov choose to present these
stories in the framework of a single novel?
18. The lure of life’s sensual pleasures seems to bedevil both Augustine as a young
man in Confessions and Antony as an older man in Shakespeare’s Antony and
Cleopatra. What relationship does that lure bear to a sense of self for each of these
two men, and is that relationship essentially the same in the two cases or is it
essentially different? Does the relationship shift over time for either men or both?
19. Both Antony and Augustine struggle to reconcile what they owe to self and what
they owe to higher claims—to Rome, in the case of Antony, and to God, in the
case of Augustine. What light does each man’s struggle with these conflicting
claims shed on the struggle of the other?
20. What is Nietzsche saying in his description of the “dark workshop” where “ideals
are made” (46-48), and how does this passage fit into the overall meaning of his
text? In your essay, be sure you examine the passage in detail and subject it to
close analysis. Consider not only what the passage is saying, but how it conveys
its meaning.
21. In one of her short stories, author Katherine Anne Porter has written:
The difference then between mere adventure and a real experience might be this:
that adventure is something you seek for pleasure, or even for profit, like a gold
rush or invading a country; for the illusion of being more alive than ordinarily, the
thing you will to occur; but experience is what really happens to you in the long
run; the truth that finally overtakes you.
Is this distinction between adventure and experience of any value in comparing
the life of Augustine, as retold in his Confessions, with the life of Mark Antony,
as told in Antony and Cleopatra? Why or why not? Be sure to consider carefully
what each man seeks, or wills, to occur and why, and what “truth” or truths finally
overtake each of them.
22. Compare the role friendship plays in the life of Enobarbus in Antony and
Cleopatra and in the life of Augustine in Confessions. Consider in each case such
questions as the nature and meaning of friendship, the ways it comes into conflict
with other claims, and the risks and rewards it entails.
23. Are the main protagonists of Shakespeare’s play “good” in the sense in which
Nietzsche employs this word? Describe a Nietzschean synthesis of the Roman
and Egyptian values presented in Antony and Cleopatra or explain why, based on
evidence from the play and from Nietzsche’s writings, you believe no such
Nietzschean synthesis is possible.
24. Is it possible to conclude from Shakespeare’s play that societies exist not to reign
in the powerful, but only to permit them to exercise power on a grander stage?
How might Nietzsche have chosen to resolve the sorts of conflicts between
personal affairs and affairs of state experienced by Cleopatra and Antony? Does
Caesar, for example, represent such a resolution? Support your thesis with lines
from both major and minor characters in Shakespeare’s play.
25. From Caesar, Antony, and Cleopatra we get eagle's-eye views of other eagles (i.e.
consider the term "eagle" equivalent to Nietzsche's "beast of prey"). While
Enobarbus is not exactly a lamb, he is certainly a non-eagle. He observes the
eagles, makes value judgments about their actions, responds with both emotion
and calculation. What is his view of himself and particularly, what is it he wants
from the eagles in exchange for his service to them? Which of their qualities
inspire his loyalty and which does he despise? Though not exactly a lamb, is he
nevertheless a victim in this play?
26. Compare any two of the texts we’ve read this year. Ideally, your choice of a topic
will reflect a genuine curiosity about a particular aspect of the two texts. Your
choice should also lead you to take a fresh look at the texts—that is, to approach
them from a new angle and, ideally, to uncover important meanings that we
overlooked when we originally discussed the texts. As you begin to think about
possible topics, you may find yourself focusing on general areas of similarity, but
by the time you write your paper you should settle on a very specific topic, one
not previously considered or emphasized in class discussion or in earlier essay
assignments or on examinations.