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In an essay of 1,000 to 1,250 words (4-5 pages), please answer one
of the following questions. Essays should be typed and double-spaced
throughout, with one-inch margins on both sides and at the top and
bottom of each page, and use the MLA system of documentation.
Brief
guidelines to the MLA system are provided in
The English Critical Essay. Future English specialists may wish
to invest in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers,
sixth edition, by Joseph Gibaldi.
Secondary critical sources are neither required nor permitted,
though you may use dictionaries, glossaries of literary terms, and
other reference works as necessary. Essay folders and cover pages
are discouraged.
If the question you answer contains a quotation, that quotation
doesn’t necessarily have to be the centrepiece of your discussion,
but it must appear somewhere in the body of your essay.
Please be sure to identify the question to which you are responding,
either by number or by using the question itself as your title, and
to include your TA’s name on the essay’s first page.
Due date:
Friday, 3 February, in tutorial.
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What is the effect of Humbert
Humbert’s voice in Nabokov’s Lolita? How is your reaction
to the novel’s characters and events affected by the style in
which it is written? Be sure to write about the impact of
specific examples/literary techniques in your answer.
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Early in Lolita, Humbert
remarks that “the artist in me has been given the upper hand
over the gentleman” (71). Discuss the role of visual art (i.e.
painting) or music in this novel. How does Humbert use other
arts to help tell his story?
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At one point, Humbert claims that
their trip’s “sole raison d’être. . .was to keep my
companion in passable humor from kiss to kiss” (154). What role
does Humbert and Lolita’s road trip play—literally and
thematically—in Nabokov’s novel?
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“I want my learned readers to
participate in the scene I am about to replay...” (57). Discuss
the role of the reader, as constructed by Humbert, in Lolita.
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Discuss how death is experienced (by
the characters) and portrayed (by the story) in any two or three
stories from Gabriel García Márquez’s Leaf Storm and Other
Stories.
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“[T]hey never found out whether it was
because he was an angel or because he was an old man that in the
end he ate nothing but eggplant mush” (García Márquez 108).
Discuss.
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The old man with enormous wings is
ugly and alive; the handsomest drowned man in the world is
beautiful and dead. Discuss the significance of these
differences to the reception of these characters by the
villagers and the reader.
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Both “A Very Old Man with Enormous
Wings” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” are
subtitled “A Tale for Children.” How does, or can, this subtitle
affect our reading of the stories?
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Discuss how two or three major life
events (e.g. childbirth, romantic betrayal, illness and
hospitalization) are presented throughout Ariel—with what
specific words, and why. Do not make reference to the events of
Sylvia Plath’s life in your essay.
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Consider the motif of the colour red
in Ariel—what does it represent? Is it a metaphor or a
symbol? Is its meaning constant over the collection, or does it
change from poem to poem?
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Consider Plath’s use of religious
imagery in any one poem from Ariel. How does the poem
deploy Christian images and to what end?
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“The bees are flying. They taste the
spring” (“Wintering” 76). Explain the connection between any one
or more of the so-called bee poems in Ariel (“The Bee
Meeting,” “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” “Stings,” “The Swarm,”
“Wintering”) and a better known poem like “Daddy” or “Lady
Lazarus.”
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Discuss the relation between Hedwig
and the Angry Inch and either of the source texts included
in your edition, the excerpts from the Gospel of Thomas and
Plato’s Symposium.
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In one of her monologues, Hedwig
complains, “All I ever get is the unhappy meal” (16). Discuss
the significance of pop culture references in Hedwig and the
Angry Inch.
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“There ain’t much of a difference /
between a bridge and a wall / Without me right in the middle,
babe / you would be nothing at all” (8). Discuss walls and/or
bridges in Hedwig.
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Discuss how Hedwig addresses
the control of knowledge in various cultures (Judeo-Christian,
Greek, German, American). What does the play tell us about
forbidden knowledge?
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Analyze one of Hedwig’s musical
numbers as performed in the film version. How is the song
presented? Is it part of the plot, or is it somehow separate
from it? How do the lyrics, setting, costumes, etc. relate to
some of the key themes explored in the rest of the play/film?
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The back cover of Lynn Crosbie’s
Missing Children describes the book as “a bold fusion of
genres [that takes] traditional elements of the novel—dialogue,
plot, and description—and weav[es] them through a series of
narratively linked poems.” Is Missing Children poetry?
How do you know?
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Though children chant “sticks and
stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” our
experience (as well as Crosbie’s poetry collection) suggests
otherwise. Discuss the relation between violence and the written
word in Missing Children.
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Analyze the speaker’s story of the
Falcon (pp. 89-90) by relating it to other poems in Missing
Children.
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Consider mittens, tigers, or any other
recurring image in Missing Children—what does it
represent? Is it a metaphor or a symbol? Is its meaning constant
over the collection, or does it change from poem to poem?
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