Pointed Essay 1

POINTED ESSAY 1: Realism and Naturalism

Respond to at least 3 prompts below. Feel free to mix and match and/or even suggest your own analysis or interpretation to critically pursue. Final Pointed Essay drafts should to be at least 2+ pages in length.

Remember to LABEL the prompts that you respond to as well (i.e. 1A, 1B, etc.)

1. Maggie: Girl of the Streets

Analysis

1. How does Stephen Crane use irony and realism to critique traditional Romantic metaphors? How does Crane use words like knight, champion, and gladiator in a way that changes the way we typically perceive these metaphors? Use at least one quote from the text to support your analysis.
2. A major symbol in Maggie is the firetruck and Jimmies complete obsession with it. Explain how the author uses the fire truck to show us into Jimmies psyche. What does the firetruck mean to him? Why does he worship it so much? What does he see in the firetruck and how does that relate to what he sees in himself and the man he wants to be? Use at least one quote from the text explain how it connects to Jimmies perception of the firetruck. Use at least one quote from the text to support your analysis.
3. Power and dominance was a central theme to more characters than just Jimmy provide a similar analysis of Pete, Nell, Mary (Maggies mother), or other characters and explain how the character represents power and dominance. Remember that not all power is physical. Use at least one quote from the text to support your analysis.

Creative

1. Consider a modern symbol to replace this fire truck. What might the contemporary working-class street brawler worship in its place? What would make a man (or woman) worship this symbol? As the firetruck is described rampaging down the street in the novella, write a scene in which a man or woman witnesses this symbol in all its glory.

2. White Fang

1. Throughout the first three chapters of White Fang, Jack London presents us with several Naturalist symbols which are interrelated (or even at odds with one another).

Choose from the following pairs of symbols (however many you want), explain their significance or meaning, and how they interrelate to one another. Are these symbols in opposition (against each other)? Or are they working in tandem (do they reinforce one another)? Or maybe both? Use a quote from the text to support your analysis of how the symbols relate (make sure to explain how the quote relates to your analysis). You can also mix and match these symbols, or address each individually. Use at least one quote from the text to support your analysis.

The Wild (remember, capital W) and man

The Wild and the Wolves

Man and dog

Dog and wolf

Man and fire

Wolf and fire

The Wild and wolves

1. In what ways does the prologue (first three chapters) to White Fang represent Man vs. Nature? Who or what is ultimately the strongest and why? In what ways do humans defy nature in this story? What is it that separates man from beast? Or is there really a separation at all? Why is it that the Wild wants to destroy man so badly? Use at least one quote from the text to support your analysis. How has this relationship changed with technology? How do you think Jack London would respond to smart phones, GPS, social media, etc. Have we finally defeated the Wild? Can we defeat it or are we just delaying the inevitable? Why or why not?

3. The Yellow Wall-Paper

1. One of the central gothic concepts in this story is the ab-human or the person between states of human and inhuman (monster or beast). As in this story, the ab-human is often a metaphor for deeper and darker psychological struggles. Explain how the narrators various states of humanity (or lack thereof) reflect her inner, psychological struggles. Use at least one quote from the text to support your analysis.
2. Compare and contrast the narrators transformation with other ab-human creatures (werewolf, vampire, zombie, Jekyll and Hyde, etc.). How do the psychological struggles of these other ab-humans parallel and/or differ with that of the narrators (i.e. if the narrators transformation is a metaphor for women in society, how might it compare to the metaphor of a werewolf)?
3. Using one or all of the central themes of American Gothicism: isolated environment, secrecy, monsters, and the inability of the rational to triumph over irrational (or how madness/insanity overshadows sanity), explain how this story meets the criteria of a gothic narrative. In what ways does madness overcome sanity in the story? How does the narrators condition defy or challenge Johns perception of illness? Who are the monsters here, and what do they represent? Use at least one quote from the text to support your analysis.

Research

1. Just like the rest cure was super unhelpful in addressing the narrators mental illness, we as a society dont have the best track record with diagnosing and treating psychological disorders throughout history. From conversion therapy to institutionalizing women who disobeyed their husbands, there are a plethora of examples that illustrate how a lack of understanding and empathy has led to harm in the field of psychotherapy.

Research a mental illness (or what was considered a mental illness) in the past (or present) and compare the diagnosis and treatment with that of the author. Use at least one quote from the text and the source you locate to support your analysis.

Build your own prompt! Have an idea for a cool analysis or paper you dont see up top? Run it by me and see if it could work! Make sure you email or speak to me first (if we havent already spoken in class) Id love to hear your ideas of how you can find Truth in the texts.

Some recap!

Literary realism

Realism is a literary movement that developed in the middle of the 19th century in France and then spread like wildfire throughout the rest of Europe, all the way to Russia, and then overseas to the US.

Realism, as you might guess by its title, is all about portraying real life. Realist writers write about regular folksbored housewives, petty government officials, poor spinsters, poor teenagersliving ordinary lives. Let’s face it: most of us don’t live crazy exciting lives, after all. What Realist writers are really good at doing is showing us how even ordinary lives are meaningful, andhelloalways full of drama.

Some of these writers were reacting against the movement, which often stressed nature over culture, the solitary individual against society. Realist writers, unlike the Romantics, like to focus on groups of people. They give us the big picture: a panorama of a village, a city, or a society. And because Realism is about giving us the big picture, it tends to be associated with the novel genre, which is huge and flexible. Most of the famous Realistslike Tolstoy and Dickenswere novelists, who wrote pretty gigantic works.

Realism as a movement with a capital “R” ended sometime around the turn of the century, but the techniques of Realism have lived on. Lots of novels written today are written in straightforward language about contemporary issues, for example. Hey, who can resist the soap operas of daily life, all packaged up as a 500-page slice-of-life novel?

Ever get curious about the lives of people you don’t know? Like, what’s up with those neighbors of yours who scream at each other all the time? And what about that cute boy in biology class, who never says a word to anyone? Does he have friends? And what about that woman you see laughing to herself every day on the subway platform? Is she crazy? Or just crazy happy?

Strangers are fascinating. We know that they’re like us, but we also know that they’re different from us. They’ve got their own little dramas, dilemmas, crises, hang-ups. We’re always interested in hearing about why that woman left her husband, or why that guy ended up an alcoholic, or why that kid ran away from home.

This is why Realist literature is so great. Reading it is like peeping through a keyhole into the lives of others: these may be ordinary lives, but like ours they’re full of drama. After all, who doesn’t have family drama, or boyfriend or girlfriend drama, or frenemy drama? When you read Realist literature, you don’t just learn about other people, you also learn a whole lot about yourself.

Naturalism

It refers instead to the harshest nature you can think of. Death Valley. Pompeii. Antarctica, minus the penguins. Greenland, in January. The middle of the Pacific Ocean, on a raft, with no water.

Get ready for a hailstorm/firestorm/Superstorm/snowstorm/worst-kind-of-weather-storm-you-can-imagine of bleakness. Get ready for a polar vortex of sorrow. This hurricane’s name is Naturalism and it’s going to blow your home to smithereens and make you an orphan and you’re going to have to become a beggar.

Short version: Naturalism is depressing.

Ugh. Who even thought up Naturalism?

The literary movement Naturalismwhich first spread in France beginning in the 1860sdeveloped partly in response to some big scientific discoveries that were being made about the natural world at the time.

We’ve all heard of a guy called . He was the scientist who pointed out that not only are we descended from apes (cue thousands of Victorians saying “Yikes!”) but also that all species develop as a result of a natural process called evolution.

Well, Darwin’s ideas not only made a big splash in the scientific world, they also made a big splash in the literary world. The earliest Naturalist writersamong them the French writer mile Zola, who is considered to be the “father” of Naturalismwere very interested in Darwin’s discoveries. You know, because they’re freakin’ fascinating.

These writers sought to apply Darwin’s ideas to the study of society and human nature. In the Naturalist fiction of this school of writers, characters are depicted as products of their social environment, in the same way that animal species, in Darwin’s theories, are a product of their natural environment. In addition, these writers liked to explore “Darwinist” themes such survival and heredity… but within the context of human society.

Naturalist writers studied and wrote about society as if it were a big, bad jungle. Who survives in this jungle? Who dies? Why? Why do tigers have stripes, anyway? In what ways does environment determine human nature? Should we fear all the frogs that have pretty markings, or are only some of them poisonous? And do we have any power to fight the pressures of our environment?

These are just some of the big questions that the Naturalists tacklenot including the tiger and frog questions unfortunatelyand they tackle them brilliantly, eloquently and, oh yeah, super depressingly.

Reading for assignment:

Maggie a girl of the streets: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/447/447-h/447-h.htm

White Fang ch 1-3: https://americanliterature.com/author/jack-london/book/white-fang/chapter-1