Assignment: Choose one of the following prompts and write a four-page essay that includes a work cited page.
1. Choose one from the two short essays that you wrote for your midterm exam and develop it into a 4-5 page essay. Your essay must include some historical context. The following are options you may consider for writing your essay:
1) Use one more poem from the same set (work, the holocaust, or Langston Hughes) to more fully develop your essay's thesis.
2) Apply a feminist, Marxist, or postcolonial criticism to your analysis.
3) Provide an analysis of the literary tools used by author (such as simile, metaphor, personification, symbol) and connotative meaning of words used by the author.
You may use the following thesis as a model to work from: In his poem "Anthem for Doomed Youth", Wilfred Owens uses the literary devices of simile, metaphor imagery, iron and tone to communicate the message that war is not be celebrated with anthems, but acknowledged as a horrible an perhaps senseless human tragedy.
2. Consider the definition of feminist criticism in your text book as well as the one listed below and write a 4-5 page essay in which you provide a feminist analysis of one or two of the Kate Chopin short stories that we discussed in class. You may use the following thesis as a model to work from: The oppression of Chopin's characters Mrs. Mallard and Desiree is condoned by the patriarchal society that they live. Thus keeping them from any form of equality.
Feminist criticism looks at how women are portrayed as less valuable than men in literature and studies how in early writings the oppression of women was condoned because men dominated society, It also explores how women writers were taken less seriously than male authors from a historical perspective.
According to feminist criticism women have historically been shown as imperfect when compared to men, thus female stereotypes abound in early literary works. Feminist criticism scholars contend that these views have kept women from reaching equality socially, politically, and economically. In some instances, women were simply viewed as being different from men but not recognized for any contributions to society.