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Required texts:

X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, 5th edition. Pearson/Longman, 2016.

English 102-02

Fall 2017 Calendar

8/21 syllabus; introduction to class; writing sample

8/23 writing about literature and the importance of literary reading (group exercise); Midterm Essay assigned

8/25 introduction to short fiction: “The Appointment in Samarra” (online, W.

Somerset Maugham translation); “Godfather Death” (12)

8/28 introduction to drama: Oedipus the King (686-711)

8/30 introduction to poetry: “In a Station of the Metro” (432); “Driving to Town Late

to Mail a Letter” (443)

9/1 archetype: from Dr. Faustus (Act 2, Scene 2) (657-662); “The Negro Speaks of

Rivers” (594)

9/4 LABOR DAY HOLIDAY

9/6 point of view: “The Tell-Tale Heart” (40)

9/8 “Cathedral” (85)

9/11 character: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (579)

9/13 dialogue: from The Importance of Being Earnest (665-669); “Girl” (56)

9/15 objective description (the objective correlative): “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”

(151)

9/18 irony: “The Gospel According to Mark” (123)

9/20 “Mending Wall” (583) and “Birches” (585)

9/22 metafiction/metatextuality: “Happy Endings” (256); “The Gift of the Magi” (271)

9/25 “Out, Out—” (371); “Loves Calls Us to the Things of This World” (427)

9/27 the Gothic: “Young Goodman Brown” (260)

9/29 setting: “The Storm” (104); “The Story of an Hour” (179)

10/2 symbol: “The Chrysanthemums” (206)

10/4 “A Rose for Emily” (32)

10/6 “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (229); “The Lottery” (235)

10/9 Midterm Essay due; review for Midterm Exam

10/11 Midterm Exam

10/13 FALL BREAK

10/16 “Araby” (296); “Dead Men’s Path” (187)

10/18 “Rite of Passage” (395); “Do not go gentle into that good night” (506)

10/20 Othello Act 1 (736-765)

10/23 Othello Act 2 (765-787)

10/25 Othello Act 3 (787-812)

10/27 HOMECOMING

10/30 Othello Act 4 (812-833) and Othello Act 5 (833-852)

(Note: Tuesday, 10/31/2017, is the last day to withdraw from a class without a grade

penalty.)

11/1 “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (260)

11/3 “Facing It” (530)

11/6 “We Wear the Mask” (507); “Medusa” (543)

11/8 El Santo Americano (1017-1022)

11/10 “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (336)

11/13 “Because I could not stop for Death” (577); “Annabel Lee” (609)

11/15 “Ozymandias” (614); “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” (615)

11/17 “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (307)

11/20 “London” (422); “Leda and the Swan” (472)

11/22 THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY

11/24 THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY

11/27 “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” (64)

11/29 Trifles (633-645)

12/1 peer review for Final Essay

12/4 last day of classes; Final Essay due; review for Final Exam

FINAL EXAM: TO BE ANNOUNCED (Final Essay also due!)

GRADING RUBRIC

for CLASS ESSAYS

Content: (points indicate DEDUCTIONS)

Adequate length (points are deducted fractionally, depending on how far the essay falls short of the length, before any other point deduction is even considered)

Unclear thesis statement (10 points)

Extensive plot summary (20 points)

Poor organization, focus, and/or paragraphing (10 points)

“Padding” (10 points)

Nonexistent conclusion (10 points)

Weak and/or repetitive conclusion (5 points)

Missing quotes WITH citations (10 points)

No Works Cited page (10 points)

Style: (points indicate DEDUCTIONS)

Grammar/mechanics (2 points per incident, or 10 points if consistent/rampant)

Repetition (2 points per incident, or 10 points if consistent/rampant)

Word choice (2 points per incident, or 10 points if consistent/rampant)

Spelling (2 points per incident, or 10 points if consistent/rampant)

Punctuation (1 point per incident, or 5 points if consistent or rampant)

MLA format: (according to example provided in the syllabus) first-page header, last- name pagination (at the header, or half-inch, top margin), double-spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, one-inch margins, parenthetical page citation (5 points)

Your Last Name 1

Your Name

Instructor

Course

14 December 2008

Wright’s Uncanny North: The Great Migration as the New Frontier in Native Son

According to Leslie Fiedler, American literature, of all the fiction of the West, is

“bewilderingly and embarrassingly, a gothic fiction, nonrealistic and negative, sadist and

melodramatic—a literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation” (29).

He hits upon a nagging consistency—that there is a lot of shame in our literature, a repressed

guilt for past colonial sins, present even while those sins were being committed. This is

evidenced by Charles Brockden Brown, who is arguably credited for first defining the American

gothic, thus differentiating it from the European gothic, in the introduction to his 1799 novel

Edgar Huntly:

Puerile superstition and exploded manners; Gothic castles and chimeras, are the

materials usually employed for this end. The incidents of Indian hostility, and the

perils of the western wilderness, are far more suitable; and, for a native of

America to overlook these, would admit of no apology. (641)

Brown recognizes that this only recently established new nation has a lot on its psyche, with very

real terrors and uncertainties that are only minimally and temporarily soothed by myths of

exceptionalism and destiny—terrors and uncertainties that are, in fact, created, fed, and

perpetuated by such myths. The persistence of this awareness, however conscious or

unconscious, sees its way through American literature of the nineteenth century—with

Hawthorne’s inescapable Puritan legacy, Poe’s overtones of racist paranoia (especially in “Hop-

Frog” and “The Black Cat”), and Melville’s anti-slavery overtones, plus the brutal realism of

slave narratives—and into the twentieth century, with the profound disenchantments of

Your Last Name 2

modernism providing perhaps an even more shuddering retrospection.

It is in the twentieth century that we get Richard Wright, a late American modernist who

also happens to be an African-American writer. Like the writers of the slave narratives in the

nineteenth century, Wright’s migration narratives put him in a curious position within American

literature; he is both defined by and rebelling against his white canonical “colleagues.”

Unavoidably influenced by them, he pays begrudging homage while revising and reacting to

their ideas and tropes through various intertextual echoes and inversions. Likewise, Bigger

Thomas, the troubled protagonist of Wright’s Native Son, possesses a certain fated American-

ness. Wright himself acknowledges this in “How ‘Bigger’ Was Born” when he explains the

novel’s title; Bigger is “a native son” because he is “an American product” (446). There is

indeed in the progression of Bigger’s actions something uncanny, that term so virtually

synonymous with the gothic (especially American gothic), defined by Freud as “that class of the

frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar” (930), the recognized

resurfacing of something repressed that arouses dread and horror. Quintessentially, this

recognition comes in the form of the double, not only as an actual, mirroring being but as a

repetition of events, taking the transgenerational form of a curse. The repeated images of black

and white which virtually litter Native Son are both dueling and symbiotic, and they provide

doubling to an extent that is both ridiculous and fitting.

The novel is a post-Great Migration narrative of urban segregation on the South Side of

Chicago during the Great Depression. The myth of racial innocence in the North—one of the

many hopes for better prospects which inspired African-American migrations from the South—

has been long disproven; they were met with a new kind of slavery in urban segregation.

Furthermore, the sense of loss, confusion, and disenchantment felt by the ghettoized migrants

runs parallel—or rather, perpendicular—to that felt by white Americans upon the closing of the

frontier; the mythical North becomes a mere extension of the mythical West, a tragically farcical

Your Last Name 26

Works Cited

Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print.

Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 1966.

Print.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” 1919. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

Trans. Alix Strachey. Ed. William E. Cain, Laurie Finke, Barbara Johnson, Vincent B.

Leitch, John McGowan, and Jeffrey J. Williams. New York: Norton, 2001. 929-952.

Print.

Smethurst, James. “Invented by Horror: The Gothic and African American Literary Ideology in

Native Son.” African American Review 35.1 (2001): 29-40. Academic Search Premier.

EBSCOhost. Auburn University Library. 1 Nov 2008 . Digital.

A QUICK COMPOSITION REFRESHER: THE THOU-SHALT-NOTS

· Thou shalt not write an introduction without a clear thesis statement that explains exactly what you’re addressing in the essay. It should appear clearly in the first paragraph, but should you wish to open with an anecdote of some sort, putting it in the second paragraph is fine provided you get to the point pretty quickly.

· Thou shalt not have a vague thesis statement. The more particular your thesis, the easier it is for the reader to understand what you’re talking about.

· Avoid bold, grand, sweeping statements in your introductions. Again, it’s vague—but more importantly, presumptuous and annoying.

· Thou shalt not write a conclusion that merely repeats the introduction. The conclusion should provide the take-away points of the essay—what you learned and/or what you want the reader to take away from it. Think of it this way: What did you learn by moving your thesis through the “exploration” that is the body?

· Thou shalt not repeat thyself. No matter how good your ideas are, repetition of any kind is distracting and defeats the focus of the essay. This includes your thesis statement (after a while, doing so just insults the reader’s intelligence) and proper names (use a pronoun once in a while!).

· Thou shalt not begin thy conclusions with “In conclusion,”.

· Thou shalt not use the adjective “interesting.” It’s a cop-out word, when you have absolutely nothing to say and demonstrates a clear lack of imagination, depth, and critical thinking on your part. Want to know how ambiguous “interesting” is? Go up to a complete stranger on campus and tell them they have an “interesting” face.

· Thou shalt not “pad” your essay with excess words—repetition, block quotes, excessively long quotes. It’s very transparent and reveals to the instructor and reader a desperate attempt to make the length requirement due to a lack of the proper substance.

· Thou shalt not use vocabulary beyond what you’re comfortable with. Again, it’s very transparent. Your thoughtfulness, not your “big” words, will demonstrate your competency. But if they are words you use and of which you understand the subtlety, by all means go for it.

· Thou shalt not give a plot summary. Always assume that the reader and instructor are familiar with the basic plot of the text. The purpose of an essay is not to retell the story. All citations and references to the plot should be used sparingly and only so far as they will support your ideas concerning the plot.

· Thou shalt not manipulate the margins and spacing to compensate for length. That’s about as transparently desperate as it gets.

· Focus and organize! Don’t turn in an unedited brainstorm, always irrefutable evidence of a done-at-the-last-minute essay, which never serves you well in the instructor’s eyes.

· Thou shalt not narrate thine own essay: “And now I shall discuss…” Just do it!

· Thou shalt not stray from MLA format—and Wikipedia, Sparknotes, etc. are forbidden.

· Thou shalt not plagiarize. The academic hammer of the gods will be your future.

· Thou shalt not use quoted dictionary definitions. Unless you’re specifically discussing etymology, it’s the epitome of unnecessary.

HOW TO BEST USE CITED QUOTES WITHIN AN ESSAY (MLA FORMAT)

from Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit”: “Yellow Woman is my favorite because she dares to cross traditional boundaries of ordinary behavior during times of crisis in order to save the Pueblo; her power lies in her courage and in her uninhibited sexuality, which the old-time Pueblo stories celebrate again and again because fertility was so highly valued […] One day she travels far [to find fresh water], far to the east, to the plains, and she finally locates a freshwater spring. But when she reaches the pool, the water is churning violently as if something large had just gotten out of the pool. Kochininako [Yellow Woman’s name] does not want to see what huge creature had been at the pool, but just as she fills her water jar and turns to hurry away, a strong, sex man in buffalo skin leggings appears by the pool […] Able to transform himself from human to buffalo in the wink of an eye, Buffalo Man gallops away with her on his back. Kochininako falls in love with Buffalo Man, and because of this liaison, the Buffalo People agree to give their bodies to the hunters to feed the starving Pueblo. Thus Kochininako’s fearless sensuality results in the salvation of the people of her village, who are saved by the meat the Buffalo people ‘give’ to them” (540).

· As you may have noticed, I have put certain things in bold type for purposes of emphasis and discussion—so don’t use bold type in the papers you turn in!

· The bold-typed examples using brackets with ellipses ([…]) are examples of TRUNCATING, or utilizing a quoted passage in such a way that it is not necessary to literally quote all of it. In employing truncation, it is up to you to decide what parts of the essay are redundant or unnecessary for supporting your points and thesis.

· Also, a typical consequence of truncation is how certain important or clarifying information might get lost. That’s where the bold-typed examples using actual words inside of brackets come in.

· I’m also pointing out the single- or half-quote marks around the word give (‘give’). Obviously, in the original source, it looks like this: “give,” with full quote marks. However, when quoting the passage, you have to use full quote marks to identify the entire quote, so full quotes within full quotes will look strange and confusing. So turn the full quote marks around the single word, phrase, or piece of dialogue into half-quote marks.

· And remember that, when citing the page number or numbers for your quote, you simply put the number or numbers within parentheses, like this: (540). Not (page 540) or (pg. 540), but (540). And remember to put it AFTER the closing quote mark and BEFORE the period or comma.

There is also something obviously wrong with how I’ve just presented the above quote; even when truncated, it is quite long, and should therefore be BLOCK QUOTED, like this:

Yellow Woman is my favorite because she dares to cross traditional boundaries of ordinary behavior during times of crisis in order to save the Pueblo; her power lies in her courage and in her uninhibited sexuality, which the old-time Pueblo stories celebrate again and again because fertility was so highly valued […] One day she travels far [to find fresh water], far to the east, to the plains, and she finally locates a freshwater spring. But when she reaches the pool, the water is churning violently as if something large had just gotten out of the pool. Kochininako [Yellow Woman’s name] does not want to see what huge creature had been at the pool, but just as she fills her water jar and turns to hurry away, a strong, sex man in buffalo skin leggings appears by the pool […] Able to transform himself from human to buffalo in the wink of an eye, Buffalo Man gallops away with her on his back. Kochininako falls in love with Buffalo Man, and because of this liaison, the Buffalo People agree to give their bodies to the hunters to feed the starving Pueblo. Thus Kochininako’s fearless sensuality results in the salvation of the people of her village, who are saved by the meat the Buffalo people “give” to them. (540)

NOTICE:

· To block quote, you tab over twice the amount you do for simply indenting the first line of a paragraph.

· The indentation eliminates the need for the enclosing full quote marks, so the ‘give’ can become “give” again, with full quote marks surrounding it.

· The parenthetical page citation comes AFTER the period, with 2 SPACES separating them.

· The general rule for block-quoting is that the passage must result in AT LEAST 4 LINES when blocked.

· Another general rule is that the essay writer should be conservative with block quote usage, limiting him/herself to one block quote per 3 pages.

· Obviously, it is not wise to use a block quote as long as my instructive example in your own essay assignments.

To close, here are some examples of how to properly utilize a cited quote/passage, using the Silko passage from above:

· In Silko’s presentation of traditional Laguna culture, one can see a clear difference between their attitude towards female sexuality versus the attitude of the so-called more “modern" white American culture. Whereas woman’s sexuality is typically demonized in western, European culture, the “fearless sensuality” of Kochininako’s “uninhibited sexuality” (540) is celebrated and revered; it is, after all, often ultimately responsible for the salvation of the tribe and the community.

· As Silko explains: “[B]ecause of [Kochininako’s] liaison, the Buffalo people agree to give their bodies to the hunters to feed the starving Pueblo” (540).