Final Paper Assignment (Due on Exam Day)

In all cases, your paper should be between 6 and 8 pages in length, formatted to MLA standards, double-spaced, and stapled in the upper left corner.  Your work should quote from the text/s you are using, and it should feature a clearly articulated, personal thesis statement, as well as sufficient evidence and a practical conclusion. 

Option 1:  Compare and contrast two (2) of the texts we have worked on this semester (including all novels, stories and Rashomon) as they relate to the theme of this course (“Truth in Fiction”).  Your should carefully select texts which 1) deal with the course theme in interesting and related ways, and 2) enhance one another (that is to say, each text should “know” something about the course theme that the other doesn’t, and these points should be compared and  contrasted).  The dangers for this option are: 1) picking two texts which don’t speak to each other in any kind of an interesting way, and 2) dealing too explicitly with plot and not explicitly enough with themes and the “meaning” of the text.  You should start by thinking: how do each of the texts we have dealt with this semester illuminate and complicate the idea(s) of “Truth in Fiction”?

Option 2:  Use the following quote to discuss six (6) of the texts we have worked on this semester:

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? [...] We need the 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 inside us."

- Franz Kafka, in a letter to Oskar Pollak, written 27 January 1904

Your essay should spend equal time on each of the texts you use, and it should include a clearly articulated thesis statement which answers the following question: Why is the kind of fiction Kafka describes valuable and how does it facilitate our understanding of Truth?

Option 3:  Select one (1) of the texts we have read so for this semester and explain how it has personally affected your life.  You should begin by spending an hour alone thinking about the texts: what one(s) did you enjoy the most?  What lessons did you learn from them?  Do you feel your life is any different—for better or worse!—because of something you read in this course?  Another way of imagining this question is to think about the Kafka quote from Option 2 as it personally relates to you: did any of these novels accomplish what Kafka says all good fiction should?  How?  The key to answering this question is to think both honestly and critically: it will not be enough to simply say you loved one of the books—you need to tell me 1) specifically what moved you, 2) why it moved you, and 3) what lasting impact it has had.  Your paper should still have an introduction, thesis, body, evidence and conclusion.   Please use specific quotes from your selection.

  

Reading Response: White Noise

If you choose to submit a reading response for Don DeLillo's White Noise, please do so in the comments section of this post.  Remember: your response should be thoughtful, it should evidence a careful consideration of the text, and it should include at least one question for your instructor/your classmates about the text.  Your response should be no less than 200 words and no more than 500 words, and at least relatively well-written (you will not be graded on grammar, but please remember that poor grammar/syntax reflects poorly on you/your ideas).  If other students have posted before you, your response can be, in part, a response to their posts--feel free to take up other students questions or concerns and use this space as a forum for intelligent discussion.  You may also post more than once, particularly if your initial post is short or ambiguous.  Your grade for the reading response will be based on your collective input in the comments sections of this post.

Reading Response: Life of Pi

If you choose to submit a reading response for Yan Martel's Life of Pi, please do so in the comments section of this post.  Remember: your response should be thoughtful, it should evidence a careful consideration of the text, and it should include at least one question for your instructor/your classmates about the text.  Your response should be no less than 200 words and no more than 500 words, and at least relatively well-written (you will not be graded on grammar, but please remember that poor grammar/syntax reflects poorly on you/your ideas).  If other students have posted before you, your response can be, in part, a response to their posts--feel free to take up other students questions or concerns and use this space as a forum for intelligent discussion.  You may also post more than once, particularly if your initial post is short or ambiguous.  Your grade for the reading response will be based on your collective input in the comments sections of this post.

Reading Response: Slaughterhouse-Five

If you choose to submit a reading response for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five, please do so in the comments section of this post.  Remember: your response should be thoughtful, it should evidence a careful consideration of the text, and it should include at least one question for your instructor/your classmates about the text.  Your response should be no less than 200 words and no more than 500 words, and at least relatively well-written (you will not be graded on grammar, but please remember that poor grammar/syntax reflects poorly on you/your ideas).  If other students have posted before you, your response can be, in part, a response to their posts--feel free to take up other students questions or concerns and use this space as a forum for intelligent discussion.  You may also post more than once, particularly if your initial post is short or ambiguous.  Your grade for the reading response will be based on your collective input in the comments sections of this post.

Viewing Response: Rashomon

If you choose to submit a reading response for Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, please do so in the comments section of this post.  Remember: your response should be thoughtful, it should evidence a careful consideration of the film, and it should include at least one question for your instructor/your classmates about the film.  Your response should be no less than 200 words and no more than 500 words, and at least relatively well-written (you will not be graded on grammar, but please remember that poor grammar/syntax reflects poorly on you/your ideas).  If other students have posted before you, your response can be, in part, a response to their posts--feel free to take up other students questions or concerns and use this space as a forum for intelligent discussion.  You may also post more than once, particularly if your initial post is short or ambiguous.  Your grade for the reading response will be based on your collective input in the comments sections of this post.

Movie Options and Voting

After Spring Break, we will be watching a movie before we get into the last three novels of the course.  The goal is to use a film to introduce our next unit, Unit 3: Historical Truth.  This unit deals with the "truth" of history as 1) a synonym for "the past," 2) a man-made, subjective record of that past, and 3) an ever-pressing influence on the ways we conceptualize our relationship to time.  I know that's complicated, but the short version is this: we want to investigate what art can tell us about the way we think about who we are and where we've been. 

As I said on Thursday, movies tend to put classes in a bit of a bind: it's great to watch them, especially in a course like this one, but it's difficult to organize because 1) there isn't really enough time to watch a movie in class and 2) it's hard to get 35 people together any other time!  So, here's what we're going to do: below, I have listed five movies for you to consider.  One of them--Rashomon--is short enough that, if we start 5 minutes early, we can watch it all in a single class period.  The other four are longer, and so they would require a meeting most likely during the evening of the week of 3/15-3/19.  The day and time of that meaning have not been determined yet--that's something we would work out together.  The plan, then, is to use this comments section to vote, as a class, on what you want to do.  We can either:

1.  Meet 5 minutes early on 3/18 to watch Rashomon in its entirety, and then discuss it on 3/23,

or

2.  Meet one evening at the time that is most convenient for the majority of you to watch one of the other four movies listed below.  If we do this, we will meet in a screening room here on campus and I will bring food...let's say, pizza...and if you bring a few bucks with you, we can eat and watch the movie.  If you cannot attend the screening at the agreed-upon time, you will be responsible for watching the film on your own before the next class period and writing a one-page essay reflecting on it.  The essay will not be required of those who attend the screening.  I know this sounds unfair, but I've done this enough times before to know that if I give you an option to skip the screening and watch the movie on your own, 1) you won't go to the screening and 2) you won't watch the movie. 

***Please vote on which option you would prefer (1 or 2) and which movie you would prefer (1-5) in the comments section of this post!***

THE MOVIE OPTIONS:


1.  Rashomon (1950):  In 12th century Japan, a samurai and his wife are attacked by the notorious bandit Tajomaru, and the samurai ends up dead. Tajomaru is captured shortly afterward and is put on trial, but his story and the wife's are so completely different that a psychic is brought in to allow the murdered man to give his own testimony. He tells yet another completely different story. Finally, a woodcutter who found the body reveals that he saw the whole thing, and his version is again completely different from the others.

2.   Jarhead (2005):  Anthony "Swoff" Swofford, a Camus-reading kid from Sacramento, enlists in the Marines in the late 1980s. He malingers during boot camp, but makes it through as a sniper, paired with the usually-reliable Troy. The Gulf War breaks out, and his unit goes to Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield. After 175 days of boredom, Desert Storm begins. In less than five days, it's over, but not before Swoff sees burned bodies, flaming oil derricks, an oil-drenched horse, and maybe a chance at killing. Where does all the testosterone go?

3.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004):  A man, Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend Clementine underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realizes that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.

4.  Inglourious Basterds (2009):  In Nazi occupied France, young Jewish refugee Shosanna Dreyfus witnesses the slaughter of her family by Colonel Hans Landa. Narrowly escaping with her life, she plots her revenge several years later when German war hero Fredrick Zoller takes a rapid interest in her and arranges an illustrious movie premiere at the theater she now runs. With the promise of every major Nazi officer in attendance, the event catches the attention of the "Basterds", a group of Jewish-American guerilla soldiers led by the ruthless Lt. Aldo Raine. As the relentless executioners advance and the conspiring young girl's plans are set in motion, their paths will cross for a fateful evening that will shake the very annals of history.


5.  The New World (2005):  When 17th century explorer John Smith and a few men go up the river to trade with the Indians, he befriends the princess Pocahontas and they fall in love. While in love, Smith must obtain his duties as president of Jamestown fort and challenges to himself what is the better path for himself to take: stay with the fallen apart colony or go up the river and love Pocahontas in the wild.

Reading Response: Everything Is Illuminated

If you choose to submit a reading response for Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, please do so in the comments section of this post.  Remember: your response should be thoughtful, it should evidence a careful consideration of the text, and it should include at least one question for your instructor/your classmates about the text.  Your response should be no less than 200 words and no more than 500 words, and at least relatively well-written (you will not be graded on grammar, but please remember that poor grammar/syntax reflects poorly on you/your ideas).  If other students have posted before you, your response can be, in part, a response to their posts--feel free to take up other students questions or concerns and use this space as a forum for intelligent discussion.  You may also post more than once, particularly if your initial post is short or ambiguous.  Your grade for the reading response will be based on your collective input in the comments sections of this post.