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OPTIONAL: Paper Topics - La Petite Vendeuse and/or A Small Place

How might you approach a literary-analysis paper about La Petite Vendeuse, or comparing it to another text? What about A Small Place?


Some questions that might lead in the direction of a paper:


  • How is the second-person character, you, created in A Small Place? What is that character like? Why, and what are the effects on the "real" you, the reader?
  • What do you make of the story of the hare in The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun? Why that the "youngest is the cleverest"? What place does this story-telling have in the arc of the film?

Comments

One could write on how the film and Kincaid's story show reality to the places that Westerns call tourist spots. They each give reality to what real people in these societies deal with and live like. Each author and artistic piece uses different techinques to give evidence to their argument but at the end of each is a similar protest.

Although do the film/book have different audiences in mind? How does this change things?

Also, one is definitely about tourists, whereas the other only (possibly) alludes to them. How are tourists "constructed" in each? To what effect?

The young are always the cleverest because they are in the process of learning more. The elders are teaching them the essence of life, therefore they are always the cleverest. They are also the most curious. Curious and cleverest goes hand in hand.

possible thesis:
the way La Petite Vendeuse du Soleil and A Small Place are structured changes the feeling of the target audience although they are both targetting the same group.

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