EngL1401W - Fall 2006: Introduction to "Third World" Literature

What suggestions do you have for Persepolis paper topics that could sustain a literary analysis paper? Do you have an idea you want others to comment on? These are topics that could work for the second literary-analysis paper, due the last day of class.

• What does it mean that Satrapi learns about communism from a comic book, and we learn her story from a comic book? What might this say about the simplification of her ideas, and what’s missing from Persepolis? (This idea belongs to Shawna, but you certainly can comment on it.)

• Why are there no images of Khomeini, or specifics about him in the way there are specifics about Reza Khan or the Shah? (This idea belongs to Dave, unless he chooses to give it away, but you might help him out with your thoughts.)

• Is Satrapi trying to sway readers to a particular position, for or against the use of the headscarf/veil?

• What are the blind spots of a child narrator? In what way is this an effective or ineffective tool in this story?

• What is Satrapi’s relationship to religion in this book?

• Your ideas below...
  

Posted by Marcia Lynx Qualey at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

• What is Friday's silence about? Is it resistance? Is Friday refusing to communicate, or is he unable? Is he communicating, and we are unable to hear him?

• Is Coetzee trying to undermine or criticize Western feminism? (Are Susan and Friday "equally oppressed"?)

• Why does Coetzee choose to tell his story from the point of view of a female narrator who is "erased" in Daniel Defoe's version, Robinson Crusoe? Why does he choose a white woman and not, for instance, Friday's perspective? Or Daniel Defoe's perspective?

• What is this "child" that is stalking Susan? Is she a bad mother? Is it a not-real, "father-born" child?

• Why does Susan need to have her story told so badly? Is it just about money?

• Add your own as you think of them...
  

Posted by Marcia Lynx Qualey at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

These are not topics for the response paper due Sept. 25. They are topics for the literary-analysis paper due Oct. 16. Why are we talking about the literary analysis paper already? Because, basically, literary analysis is hard. Literary analysis is neither a book review nor a response paper; it's 1) a close analysis of the features of a text that 2) results in the writer taking a position about the book, and 3) defending that position.

If you want to know more, you can download the literary analysis paper assignment and the grading rubric. These also are available on the course website.

Topics can be phrased as a statement or as a question.

Possible topics (please add one or more below!):

• Are words or actions more important in Things Fall Apart? In "Outpost of Progress"? What does this mean for the book, for Achebe/Conrad's ultimate message? What is the relationship between language and power?
  

  
  

• Compare/contrast gender roles in "Outpost of Progress" and Things Fall Apart.
  

  
  

• Who does Okonkwo fail? Does his failure extend to a failure of Umuofia? To the Igbo?
  

  
  

• What is Achebe trying to say about cultures and their blindspots?
  

  
  

• How is the idea of society and "culture" presented differently/the same in "Outpost of Progress" and Things Fall Apart?
  

  
  

• Why does Achebe give the last word in Things Fall Apart to one of the colonizing British? What does that mean about language?
  

  
  

• Gender roles and cultural flexibility
  

  
  

• In "Wedding at the Cross" and Things Fall Apart, the main male characters are reacting against a male in his past--father or father-in-law. Okonkwo and Wariuki's personalities are defined by this state of reaction. What larger significance could these states-of-reaction have? Why do they dominate both works?
  

Keep the list going below...

Posted by Marcia Lynx Qualey at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)