Modern Fiction Final Paper

In a well-written paper in MLA format, write about what you have learned this semester.

Things you may want to consider when writing your essay:
• How do the author’s styles, forms, and themes register the impact of major events and developments of the times?
• How are they informed by changing concepts of the self, the nature of reality, the possibilities of human knowledge, and our place in the universe?
• How did your understanding change about yourself as a literate citizen of the world, as a student of literature, as a person in general?
• How have the books we have read helped to inform you about a given time, culture, concept?
• How has the literature changed you, effected you, pushed you to see something differently?

You need to use at least three novels that we read in class to help demonstrate what you have learned. Use specific examples from the text. You can check the books out with me, but they must be returned on the last day of class. You can also use your journals as a resource.

This paper must be at least three pages, but no more than 6 pages, long. (Think about it as one to two pages per book—although you should integrate the texts within the given point you are addressing.) It must be thoughtfully written and carefully edited. It must be in MLA format. I am very particular about this!

It is due the last day of the semester, but I would appreciate getting it as soon as you are finished writing it. (The sooner you get it turned in, the sooner I read it, the fresher my eyes, and mind, are in grading it.)

God of Small Things Journal Topics

1. Roy says about her book “…my book is not about history but biology and transgression. And the fact is that you can never understand the nature of brutality until you see what has been loved being smashed.” Do you think this true in terms of the book? Of life? Does this statement apply to the whole book or just to some incidents?

2. Various dwellings are important to the unfolding of Roy’s story. How is each described? To what extent does each embody or reflect the forces and burdens of history, social order, and custom?

3. Is Time as destroyer the novel’s most insistent theme? How are the blue Plymouth, the pickle factory, Rahel’s toy wristwatch (which always reads “ten to two”), the children’s boat, and other objects related to this theme?

4. What importance does Roy ascribe to story, storytelling, and playacting, including the Kathakali dances and stories? To what extent is the telling of a story more important than the story itself?

Cuba

While watching the national news on NBC tonight, I heard the following facts about Cuba that I thought was interesting:
7,000 Cubans fled to America this year saying that the considers in Cuba are unbearable.
This week: 40 people, including children, may have died on a smuggler’s boat that disappeared.
A group of Cubans made a home-made boat to try to reach the U.S. No one has heard from them so their families do not know if they made it or not.

Hopefully, we'll hear about these missing people soon, but I wonder how many people try to take refuge or immigrate to the another country that just go missing...

Communist Countries in the World

I wanted to double check the info about Communist countries and I was wrong. The Communist countries in the world include China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam.

Ms. Peifer

Going After Cacciato Journal Topics

1. Pick a quote from “How to Tell a True War Story” and respond to it in terms of Going After Cacciato.

2. The book illustrates the “intersection of public events and private lives.” Has there been a public event in your lifetime that impacted your personal life? How did you, or will you, deal with it?

3. Going After Cacciato has been called a work of the "surreal.” What is the impact of this stylistic approach on the story and the reader?


Topics for discussion

1. Look at the order—they things are presented. We have three different kinds of chapter—how do they relate or correct. Look for patterns and connections.

2. How do people die? Which parts of the book seem most “real”? Why?

3. Cities—symbols for ideas? Why is going to Paris important, as opposed to going to London or Vienna or Rio de Janeiro?

4. What is this book about? Why set it in the Vietnam War? Is it a war book? An anti-war book?

5. Don’t forget style, which is easy to do because the narrative is so captivating. What kind of allusions does he use? Symbols?

Sula: Things To Think About

1. Shadrack: Can you explain him? What is his significance and the meaning of National Suicide Day in the novel?

2. The “Bottom” was what sociologists call a face to face community. What do you think this means? Does a community have to be a place or will a group of people make a community? How did living in the Bottom affect Sula and Nel? Relate the community in this book to the one in Their Eyes Were Watching God.

3. Toni Morrison writes of the people in the Bottom: “They did not believe death was accidental—life might be—but death was deliberate.” How might this statement apply to the structure of the novel? Who dies? Do only people die?

4. What are people looking for in terms of relationships in this book? In terms of love? In terms of sex? In terms of companionship?

5. What is the function of Sula in this story beyond her role as a character in the narration?

6. In some ways Sula asks us to suspend judgment about the morality of the events in the book. What are examples of this?

7. In her essay “Rootlessness” Morrison says a novel should have something in it that enlightens; something in it that opens the door and points the way; something in it that suggests what the conflicts are, what the problems are. What is it in Sula that does this—what are the conflicts and the problems?

8. The end of the book: was it necessary? Was it satisfying?

Sula Journal Topics

Sula: Journal Topics

Choose at least one of these topics to write about. You may write on all four if you choose, or you may follow your own inquiry through the book.

1. Why, at the end of the book, is Nel missing Sula and not Jude? Do you and your friends neglect each other when you are dating or in love? What can you get from friendships that you cannot get from a loving and/or sexual relationship?

2. On page 66 Hannah asks Eva if she ever loved her children. She spends the next few pages saying she did, but defining love in a way that Hannah finds surprising. Was she a good parent? According to Eva, what is a good parent? Do you accept her definition? If not, what is wrong with it?

3. Morrison, like Faulkner, challenges our assumptions about the way communities work. Associations like neighborhoods and families have a different dimension in this book. Pick one that interests you and compare the way the two authors develop them.

4. Morrison states: "...one can never really define good and evil. Sometimes good looks like evil; sometimes evil looks like good--you never really know what it is. It depends on what uses you put it to. Evil is as useful as good is..." Locate specific places in the novel where "good" and "evil" are intertwined; where what might be assumed to be "evil" is explained in terms of "goodness" or vice versa.