MIDTERM PAPER BASED ON COMPARING AND CONTRASTING TWO GOTHIC STORIES

This essay asks students to compare between two and four characters. Students should compare characters from two stories that we have read so far. Select from the following list: The Lottery -Jackson The Black Cat -Poe Young Goodman Brown -Hawthorne The Yellow Wallpaper -Gilman A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings -Marquez An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Bierce A Rose for Emily -Faulkner Prologue to Invisible Man -Ellison A Hunger Artist -Kafka By this point, there is no question that these texts are gothic, so lets focus on what the characters teach us about gothic limits, violence, death, and a return to normalcy. Do some characters reveal what we should do and some reveal what we should not do? More specifically, this essay asks students to compare and contrast between two and four characters in order to address some (not all) of these key ideas: Allan Lloyd-Smith encourages readers to ask about the Puritan inheritance, fear of democracy, and fear of overturning race, gender, and sexuality codes. How do characters react when faced with these issues? Lloyd-Smith ultimately believes that the Gothic explores chaos and wrongdoing in a movement toward the ultimate restitution of order and convention the Central Gothic Irony (5). Do the characters you write about desire normalcy or fight against it? Do events or scenes in the story fall under the definition of Todorovs three terms: uncanny, fantastic, or marvelous? Do the characters seem to follow the Spirit of Perverseness? How does the stories narration style alter reader sympathy or understanding? What does the focal distance or internal/external narration do to readers understanding? Do the actions/emotions of the character lead readers to consider redemption or how they provide an allegory for our present world? Essay Details:1. Make sure to begin with a strong thesis that you support by using evidence from the text. Also, use direct quotations from the original text.2. Write using clear paragraphs that contain declarative topic sentences.3. Minimum 900 words.4. You should not use outside sources use notes from our class and handouts such as my handout on gothic definitions–plus the handouts on Todorov and Lloyd-Smiths chapter. [I will not accept papers that use outside sources]5. If you have questions about Modern Language Association (MLA) format, writing a thesis, paragraph structure, conclusions, or citations, please study the Purdue OWL website that is on our Open Lab course page. If you still have questions after trying to answer questions on your own, then ask me.6. Above all: choose characters and stories that interest you. Grading Rubric: 1. First Page: A clear introduction, title, thesis, and method (25 points) 2. Formal Writing: Concrete nouns, well-structured sentences, and clear paragraphs (25 points) 3. Story knowledge: Accurate character, plot, narrator, and setting knowledge; correct weaving of at least four quotations from the stories/articles (25 points) 4. Gothic terms: Accurate understanding and usage of specific gothic terms such as the gothic definition, hallmarks of the gothic, central gothic irony, betrayal of innocence, and Todorovs uncanny, fantastic, and marvelous (there are others) (25 points)