AML 4503: American Fiction:1950-present (Spring 2007)    

Professor Richard Schwartz

1st Formal Essay                                                                              

Choose one (1) of the questions below and write a well organized, well developed, carefully thought-out essay in response (3-5 pages, typed, double-spaced, standard font size and margins).   Due in class on Monday, February 26.

            You are welcome to read outside sources to help you formulate your ideas about the stories; however, this is not required.  In either case, I am ultimately interested in the quality of your own thinking, especially your ability to formulate a strong and insightful conclusion and to develop and support it effectively.

            If you do use outside sources, please remember that plagiarism is a serious academic offense that can result in failure of this class. Always document the words and thoughts of others, if you incorporate them into your discussion.  If you use someone else’s exact words, be sure to place them in quotation marks; or, for longer quotes, indent the quote as per the MLA Style Sheet.  Whether you indent or use quotation marks, follow the quote by citing the author and page number in parenthesis, and provide a full bibliographic citation at the end of the paper in a Works Cited page.  (If the only authors you quote are the authors of the stories under discussion, provide the author and page #s in parenthesis, but you can help save a tree by omitting the Works Cited page.)  Even if you don’t use the person’s exact words, you must similarly document his or her original ideas or data.  Failure to attribute someone else’s words, ideas, or data typically constitutes plagiarism.

1.  The unnamed narrator/protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man quotes one of his college professors, who tells his students at an all-black college, “Stephen’s problem, like ours, was not actually one of creating the uncreated conscience of his race, but of creating the uncreated features of his face. Our task is that of making ourselves individuals.  The conscience of a race is the gift of its individuals who see, evaluate, record. . . .We create the race by creating ourselves and then to our great astonishment we will have created something far more important: We will have created a culture.” (Invisible Man, 354.  The reference to Stephen alludes to Stephen Daedalus in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, who vows to employ silence, cunning, and exile in order to forge the conscience of his long oppressed and suppressed Irish race.)

            Discuss how this quote describes Ellison’s primary artistic goal in Invisible Man.  In particular, explain how the novel concerns itself with both the creation of an individual who learns to see, evaluate, and record and with that individual’s role in the creation of an African-American culture.  To do this, describe the process by which the protagonist learns to see, evaluate, and record, and suggest how his capacity to do so at least potentially enables him, to create a viable African-American culture.

2. Discuss the personal evolution the protagonist of Invisible Man undergoes.  To do so, characterize how he was at the beginning of his adventures, using specific examples from the text.  Then identify what he learns about himself and his world from each important episode and how he changes as a result.  Conclude by characterizing him at the end of the story. 

3. Discuss how the theme of invisibility functions in Invisible Man.  Cite at least three instances where other characters treat the protagonist as though he were invisible and discuss the effects of that treatment on the protagonist, on the other character(s) and, if applicable, on society at large, or some portion of society.

4. Discuss how the protagonist in Invisible Man, Francis Weed in John Cheever’s “The Country Husband,” and Ozzie in Philip Roth’s “Conversion of the Jews” are all treated as though, in some respects, they are invisible.  Describe particular moments in each story where the characters are treated primarily as a member of some group or category, instead of as an individual, and discuss the impact on them and others of this treatment.

5. Describe Joy/Hulga’s effort in Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” to create a philosophy of life from Nothingness, and discuss the implications for this philosophy of her losing her leg to the Bible salesman.

6. The narrator in “Good Country People” states that Joy/Hulga “took care of it [her artificial leg] as some else would his soul. . . .” (“Good Country People,” 259) Discuss at length how her artificial leg might serve as a metaphor for her soul in this story, and speculate about the implications for her soul at the end, after her leg has been stolen by Manly Pointer.

7. Discuss how Joy/Hulga, the rabbi in “Conversion of the Jews,” and Pi Ying in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “All the King’s Horses” all suffer from their own intellectual pride and innate sense of superiority, and consider how they, themselves, are adversely affected by it, and harm others because of it.

8. Both Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy were practicing Catholics.  Discuss how “Good Country People” and Percy’s The Moviegoer attempt to communicate to a skeptical, largely secular audience the power and mystery of religious faith.

9. Analyze Binx’s romantic relationships in The Moviegoer.  What positive things does he offer the women in his life, and what are his drawbacks as a romantic partner.  How does his relationship with his cousin differ from his other relationships, and why do you think the author has him marry her at the end?

10.  The Moviegoer has been compared to works by Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and other existentialist writers because it seeks to find meaning in an apparently meaningless universe.  Discuss how the novel attempts to do this.

11. Discuss how, in “Dunyzadiad” and “Perseid,” John Barth attempts to tell a heartfelt love story, while nonetheless acknowledging many of the points about male dominance and unequal treatment raised by contemporary feminists, and while acknowledging a “tragic view” of life that maintains that nothing, not even love, lasts indefinitely.

12. Discuss how, and for what purpose, Barth establishes connections among romantic relationships, sexual relationships, and the narrative relationships between storytellers and their audience. 

13. Discuss how “Dunyzadiad” and “Perseid” represent Barth’s effort to overcome “the exhaustion” or “used-upness” of existing literary forms in order still to tell powerful stories that address the “felt ultimacies of our time.”