english2 final paper

Final Essay

English 1302

Spring, 2019

Write an original essay of at least 600 words on any one of the following. No works-cited page is needed, but you should support your thesis with direct quotes from the literature.

1. Discuss the concept of archetypes and illustrate by pointing out archetypal motifs in “Young Goodman Brown,” “The Bear,” “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”

2. Discuss the concept of tragedy and, using Oedipus the King and Death of a Salesman to illustrate, speculate on changes in this concept from the ancient world to the modern.

3. Discuss a group of poems by a favorite poet or a group of poems by different poets on a common theme.

4. Throughout the semester we have been discussing the ideas of a number of important figures in the history of Western thought as seen in excerpts from their writings. Do fiction writers also express ideas about such issues as the meaning of life, the search for truth, the just society, or the relationship between mankind and nature? Show how some of the writers we have studied (or the author of the book you read for the library paper) take a position (implied or explicit) on any of these issues.