Literature essay

Where the first essay emphasized the ability to read the text carefully, select interesting and relevant details, and explain what

those details mean with respect to the larger problems or questions, this essay emphasizes what you are able to interestingly and

convincingly say about the text. In this essay, we want to see (1) what you think and (2) the reasons [shown in details and

explanations] you have to believe that you are right.

In order to emphasize this, you will need to write a paper that engaged with at least two texts we’ve read this term. Your goal is

to think about how one text challenges, transforms, critiques, or extends, an idea, theme, or concept presented in another: thus,

you are NOT to just compare two texts. Rather you should use one text to read the other text.

This essay is NOT a compare and contrast paper. The point is not to tally up differences and similarities between texts but to use

a single moment in one text to comment on another.

For example:

Yes:
“Virginia Woolf uses the walk with Charles Tansley to show the importance of memories in our everyday experience of the world. I

will look at the disruptive power of memories in Zone One, in order to show that, despite the importance of memories in Woolf, she

is committed to seeing them as a part of everyday experience. Only by attending to the force of memories in Whitehead can we see

that, for Woolf, memories are part of the fabric of life in a way that we hardly notice them.

No:
Memory is an important theme in both To the Lighthouse and Zone One. Both novels contain passages in which characters recall things

that happen in the past. In Woolf, these memories are of domestic things, relationships, births, and deaths. For Whitehead, the

memories are different because they are of surviving. Both have memories of death. In conclusion, sometimes memories are the same

but sometimes they are different.

You MAY write about ONE of the texts you’ve already written about. This writing should be substantially new. This paper requires

you to take a different angle on the material, simply reusing sentences is a recipe for a poor grade.

Warning: it is easy to accidently end up with boring arguments that just assert the fact of difference or similarity. Yes, things

might be similar or different. Cool, what does it mean that they are different or similar, why is it surprising, what does it

reveal to us that we didn’t know before.

Details:
Length: ~1600 words
Outside Research: Not necessary or recommended.

Two books to choose from:
– Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
– Tom McCarthy, Satin Island
– David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
– Yoko Tawada, The Memoirs of a Polar Bear
– Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant