note: if you skipped one of the first 3 essays, this is not optional, it is necessary to insure you have 3 essay scores

If this is an optional paper for you, why would you want to do it? It is a way of possibly earning more points in the class because it will take the place of a lower score as long as this is not the lowest score you have for the semester (in which case it will not lower your grade; it can not hurt you, but it can possibly help you). You will want to do this paper if any of the following apply:

- You feel you scored too low on one of the first two essays and you want a chance to raise the score.

- You are taking the class with an Honor's Contract. If so, you must do the Drama paper to fulfill the contract.

- You just get inspired to do this for the heck of it.

Choose one of the questions below; write a thoughtful, considered, brief essay (at least four full pages). Wherever possible, try to include quoted, documented examples from the books. Good luck!

  1. On one level Hiroshima Mon Amour is about barriers which exist between individuals and cultures (this can be between the two characters, between each character and his/her own culture, between the two cultures, whatever). What barriers stand between people in the film/screenplay? Which barriers do the characters manage to break through? How? Which barriers are too big for these characters to overcome? Why?

    Tip: try to apply these ideas to the world now; cite concrete examples if possible.

  2. In Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author the Father argues that the characters are more "real" than the live actors:

    Ours is an immutable reality...your reality is a mere transitory and fleeting illusion, taking this form today and that tomorrow, according to the conditions, according to your will, your sentiments, which in turn are controlled by an intellect that shows them to you today in one manner and tororrow...who knows how? (2194-5)

    This problem of the difficulty of knowing what is really real is central to much modern fiction. Show how this problem is presented in Six Characters in Search of an Author, Borges's "Garden of Forking Paths" and (if you've seen it) Run, Lola, Run. Feel free to bring in outside works in addition to these (They Live and The Matrix and nearly anything by Philip K. Dick and Haruki Murakami come easily to mind...there are others).

  3. Gabriel Garcia-Marquez once commented that the biggest influence on his own writing was Kafka's Metamorphosis. What connections do you see between Metamorphosis and Marquez's "Death Constant Beyond Love"? You may consider similar qualities of style, or you might look at a shared theme of alienation/solitude; you'd certainly want to look at both surreal and satirical elements in both.

  4. The creative option: If you watched Run, Lola, Run, you realize that it's open to limitless possiblilities. Write Lola's fourth run.

  5. The other creative option: Someone else was knocked unconscious by the Bevatron explosion in Eye in the Sky; create a short chapter showcasing the world filtered through that characters personal world view.

  6. Write an analysis of any modern (from the 20th century to the present) literary work from a country either not represented or under-represented in our text. Consider works from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America, Oceania, The Caribbean, etc. DO NOT select work from North America or Europe (yes, including the UK) for this paper.

    For this analysis you will concentrate on theme or style or some issue or idea that is suggested by the work, or you may want to explore how the work is characteristic of the area from which it comes or characteristic of a specific literary movement from that country. Develop your essay with your observations which are supported with several documented quotations from the text. Feel free to include secondary source material (reference material from the library, etc.) to add even more support to your analysis (if you do use reference sources, be sure they are properly documented as well). Since the work will not be from our textbook, you will also want to have a Works Cited page including bibliographic information for the literary work you've chosen and for any research material you may use (this does not count as a page of the body of your essay).

    Note: if you read one of Haruki Murakami's works for this week's discussion, you are certainly welcome to use that work for this topic ;)

For some tips on writing about literature, go to

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