Law & Humanities- Short Essay

ENG 3360 Short Essay Instructions

Here are the official instructions for the short essay that is due at the end of Week 6.

The topic for this paper can be any of the materials we have read up through week 5 this

includes the following: “The Lottery,” “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” The Code of Hammurabi, The Book of Deuteronomy, Antigone, Dante’s Inferno, or “The Trial of Susanna Martin” from Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World.

What I would like you to do is to choose one of the works above and write a short paper that

contains two parts. The first part will be a discussion of the work in its historical context: based

on the selections I gave you, what constitutes effective law and order in the society that

created the document. What constitutes criminal behavior? How do its legal codes differ from

those in twenty-first-century America? The second portion of the essay will be an expansion of

what we have been talking about on the discussion board. I would like you to talk about a

contemporary issue that mirrors or is reminiscent of the issues described in the literature—how are they the same and how are they different. For example: the death penalty is a crucial part

of both Deuteronomy and The Code of Hammurabi; what sorts of controversies surround the

death penalty today? Another example: We see Creon’s inflexibility as a lethal character flaw. Has inflexibility in our legal system caused any controversial problems? (The three-strikes laws

come to mind here.)

This paper should be between 4-5 pages in length, though longer is almost always better. It

should be written in proper MLA format with a works cited page.

A couple of notes: In most cases, I have given you only a small portion of an entire work. If you

think that reading a larger portion would help you write the paper, by all means do so (for

example, the complete Code of Hammurabi can be found online.) For all of the readings I gave

you, I will provide the works cited information. For any other sources you use you will have to

find the information yourself.

If you have any questions or concerns about this essay, please send me an email.