Below are some questions to get you started. Also, a few reminders: the second essay should deal with your response to a specific idea or point raised by one or two texts from our textbook. Over this coming weekend, I will ask you to complete a draft, legibly hand written, and bring it with you to class on Tuesday on 10/13. The typed final version is due on Thursday, 10/15. It should be 3 pages long and double spaced in a 12 point font. For next class, pick one of the following questions about a text and let your response to it be the initial guide (or provisional thesis) for writing the second essay.
(1)
Present your own view of how family members relate to one another during the holidays. To support your argument discuss elements of one or two of the following: “The First Thanksgiving” by Sarah Vowell, “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan or your own holiday experiences.
(2)
Agree or disagree with the position taken on photography in one or more of the following: Susan Sonntag’s “On Photography,” James Nachtwey’s“Ground Zero,” Babbette Hines’s “Picture Perfect,” N. Scott Momaday’s “The Photograph,” or Ethan Canin’s “Vivian, Fort Barnwell.”
(3)
Explain what makes childhood (or, if you wish, innocence) important for the way of seeing in one or two of the following texts: “The Little Store” by Eudora Welty, “Seeing” by Annie Dillard, “Once More to the Lake” by E.B. White, “Ode to an Orange” by Larry Woiwode, or “Vivian, Fort Barnwell” by Ethan Canin.
(4)
Develop an argument in which you agree or disagree with David Guterson’s criticism of suburbia in “No Place Like Home”.
(5)
Define and explain how memory adds or subtracts to the meaning of things that people see in one or more of the following selections: “Seeing” by Annie Dillard, “Once More to the Lake” by E.B. White, “Ode to an Orange” by Larry Woiwode, “The Little Store” by Eudora Welty, or “Vivian, Fort Barnwell” by Ethan Canin.
(6)
In paragraph nine of “Homeplace,” Scott Russell Sanders writes that “many of the worst abuses” in this hemisphere have come about through “the habit of our industry and commerce…to force identical schemes onto differing locales”. In paragraph nineteen, Sanders gives an example of this practice near where he lives. Think about why Sanders considers the practice to be a form of abuse. (Specifically, what or who does he imply is being abused?) Then, based on your own observations, think of an example in which a franchise or corporation has established the same store floor plan, or same product lines, advertising campaigns or… to do business in local communities that are rather different from one another. Do you agree or disagree with Sanders that this corporate practice is a problem? What difference does it make if businesses approach one community in the same way that they approach another? If there is a leveling effect, in which places lose their authentic character, why is this a bad thing and what are the benefits to communities of having a national chain, if any, that Sanders fails to mention? The point (your thesis) is to agree or disagree with Sanders that the proliferation of national chains is one of “the worst abuses” of industry or commerce.
(7)
Compare and contrast Guterson’s criticism of suburbia to Sanders’s criticism of the corporate practice of selling the same products in stores that look the same in different communities. Are the planning principles, the corporate motives, or the social consequences that each writer criticizes similar or different? What are some of the possible explanations for these similarities or differences? Discuss your own examples of the practices that these writers dislike and use the examples to identify what Guterson and Sanders agree on and what they disagree about. Explain where their points extend one another or are complementary.
(8)
Take a position on the argument about suburbia in David Guterson’s “No Place Like Home” by relating Guterson’s point to the attitude that Billy Collins’s expresses about the names of new residential subdivisions in the poem “The Golden Years”. (The poem is online if you want to search for it. I’ll bring copies to class Thursday).
(9)
Argue for the relative importance or unimportance of things that are invisible (including things that are seen indirectly or indistinctly) for our experience of the visible world. In your argument, be specific about what sort of invisible things you are discussing. To help you be specific about this, refer to and discuss the significance of relevant points and passages from one or two of the following texts: “The Little Store” by Eudora Welty, “Seeing” by Annie Dillard, or “A Matter of Scale” by K.C. Cole.
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