English Task

Robert (“the blind man”)

Mama Johnson

Dee Johnson (Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo)

Maggie Johnson

The nameless narrator in “Greasy Lake”

For this assignment, you will write an analysis of this round character as if you both know the character and witnessed the events described in the story where the character is found. However, your analysis will be written in the format of a 1000-word business letter to a Hollywood agent who needs an actor for a specific role that your chosen character would fill perfectly. Therefore, you will be summing up the character by 1) defining the Hollywood role in a fictitious film, and 2) explaining why that character is perfect for the role by incorporating specific quotations from the story to help make your letter to this agent persuasive.

This assignment is NOT a research assignment, so any clear correlation between what you have written and what is on the internet will result in a grade of 0!

CAVEAT: What follows on the back is an example of how such a letter might be written, but please note that you are NOT writing a summary of the plot. Yes, the following example summarizes the plot, but clearly the writer did so simply to organize his letter in chronological order. Notice how the evidence quoted backs up his interpretation of Homer, which is the purpose of this assignment. How you organize your letter is up to you. As long as a reader can clearly understand the logic of how you arranged your assessment of the character, your grade will not be affected.

123 Hilltopper Way

Bowling Green, KY 42101

September 15, 2016

Mr. Cliff Hanger, President

Forever Young Talent Agency

1224 Sunset Boulevard

Hollywood, CA 90069

Dear Mr. Hanger:

I am writing in regards to your film Wild Horses and, in particular, its role for the selfish, moronic, and somewhat loving father because I think I know the person you would love to have in your film. His name is Homer Simpson, a rather lazy employee at the power plant here in Springfield, and I have a lot of information he told me firsthand that make him the perfect match for this role.

Although Homer has many flaws, he loves his family, at least to some degree, but his foolishness often gets in the way of that love. For instance, he once told me that his daughter Lisa was panic-stricken and telephoned him while he was sleeping at his desk at work (when he actually should have been monitoring the core of this very dangerous nuclear power plant). She asked him to pick up a saxophone reed after work and deliver it before her talent show, which had already begun. Instead of reassuring his daughter and telling her she could count on him, he replied, “Awww, isn’t that something your mother’s better at?” His selfish response clearly shows him trying to avoid his parental duties, and this same egocentric avoidance is seen soon after when he stopped at King Toot’s Music Store, looked at his watch to see he had five minutes before the store closed, and rushed into Moe’s Tavern for a quick beer, where I was at on this particular day.

He quickly told me what his situation was, and after his last guzzling swallow, he pounded the empty beer mug on the bar and proudly announced he had “fifteen seconds to spare” before the shop closed. But when he reached the shop’s storefront, he saw it, sure enough, had already closed. By the time Homer talked the store’s owner into reopening for him and his “little girl,” he arrived late for the talent show. He said it was horrible. In fact, he said as he approached the entrance to the auditorium, he heard the cacophonous sound of a saxophone playing off key and stated, “Woo, I’d hate to be that kid’s father.” Oh, the irony! Homer then opened the door to find his daughter Lisa on stage under a glaring spotlight, crying from embarrassment. As this example shows, Homer perfectly portrays the selfish, dimwitted American father.

But there’s more to the story. I saw Homer a few weeks later at Moe’s, and he told me that things only got worse, especially for him. Because he did not come through for his daughter, Lisa felt awful for days, so thus began a series of rather shortsighted attempts to make her feel better and admonish himself from his own guilt. First, he tried to “make it up” to her by buying her a sundae that, according to him, “cost 88 dollars!” Of course, this attempt to buy her forgiveness didn’t work, so he tried to spend time with her because he felt Lisa “stopped loving” him, but he quickly stopped doing that out of fear he would “go fruity” because he was doing too many things he saw as feminine, which is rather asinine and, needless to say, homophobic. Anyway, Homer said his wife Marge told him to stop looking for quick fixes, but—you guessed it—he didn’t; a quick fix is what most shortsighted dimwits want, especially those not bright enough to see that they are the cause of the problem.

So Homer tries the mother of all quick fixes: to buy Lisa “that pony she’s always bugging [him] about.” Of course, he had no idea how much a pony cost, so he was shocked to find the price of the cheapest pony at the stable was $5000. He couldn’t afford that, so he went to his boss, Mr. Burns, who gave him a very costly loan that circumvented the “state’s stringent usury laws.” But get this; when he returned to the stable with the money, he paid for the cheapest pony and stupidly hauled it home in the back of his car! And that’s not all; he thought he could simply let the pony “run free around the neighborhood” during the day and let it sleep standing up “nestled between the two cars in the garage” at night! In short, he stupidly got his family in serious debt, because even though Lisa was incredibly happy at receiving the pony, there were more expenses that Homer did not foresee.

So this forced him to come up with more money that he didn’t have, simply to pay for stable fees (which, upon seeing, he said, “This is what love costs a month.”). Of course, being selfish, he wouldn’t give up small luxuries like beer at home, and his wife wouldn’t pawn her jewelry, so in desperation he went to the Kwik-E-Mart and bought a scratch-off lottery ticket, wishfully thinking he could win enough money to pay for the ownership and care of a horse. Eventually, Apu offered him a job working midnights in the Kwik-E-Mart.

Of course, Homer kept his other job, so after a short while, working practically anytime he wasn’t sleeping led this already lazy man to be “exhausted” to the point he slept more deeply at his rather important power plant job, not to mention the convenience store position, a job he could get shot at in the middle of the night. In fact, he was okay if a robber shot at him because he said he would “take it in the shoulder.” What an idiot!

Luckily for him and his family, however, his daughter Lisa decided to give the pony up when she learned about the predicament he was in, so everything is back to normal for the Simpsons, which means that Homer is still the self-centered, idiotic father he has always been. So clearly you can see why I think he would be perfect for your film.

Sincerely,

Thaddeus Q. Watermelon