The Final Essay or Project

Assignment Sheet

Due: Essays are due by 5 pm on Friday, December 22, 2000 in my mailbox in the English department office (Fenton 277) or in the envelope outside my office door (Fenton 240). No late papers will be accepted. Web sites must also be up and running by 5 pm on Friday, December 22, 2000; you must send me an email with the URL (web address of your site) by this time. Whichever format you choose to present your argument in, missing this deadline earns you an automatic "I" (incomplete) for your final grade in the course. See below ("requirements") for other deadlines along the way.

Format: Essays must be 9-12 pages, double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins; title that indicates main argument of paper; heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; bibliography and citations in MLA style (see the links page for explanations of this style of citation); proper quotation format ("..." (12). for quotations within a paragraph; blockquote format for quotations five lines or longer). Web sites must be the equivalent of the essays in length, but must also show you have thought through the possibilities of web authoring and made use of the opportunities to experiment with structure, design, and modes of persuasion that are not available in print (see "grading criteria," below).

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is for you to follow up on your short essays (which focused on each author separately) and group project (which focused on one aspect of relating Melville and Silko's writings) with a sustained, research-derived and -supported argument in which you pursue the implications of some connection between Melville's and Silko's writings that you find interesting.

Requirements: The final essay or project is meant to involve a significant amount of planning, research, and analysis. Hence, you must email me as soon as you narrowed down some possibilities for your final essay/project and notify me of what you are considering as your focus for it--the better able you are to explain and justify your topic, the better able I will be to give you advice. The sooner you do this, the sooner I can give you advice on how to proceed. You must send me this email during the first week that we return for classes after Thanksgiving Break. We must meet face-to-face at least once after Thanksgiving Break to go over your focus for the essay and make plans for its completion.

Grading Criteria: Essays will be graded on the quality of the connection you're drawing between Melville's and Silko's writings, the quality of your pursuit of the significance and implications of this connection (as evidenced in your main argument, supporting arguments and evidence, and the research you have done that helps you do these things), and the quality of your writing (persuasiveness, organization, sentence-level prose, command of the conventions of college writing on literature).

Options: Here are your options for the final essay. In each of these options, your job is to come up with an argument that you are trying to prove by using textual and other evidence to persuade your readers of its validity. Whatever option you choose, you must be trying to convince your readers of some claim having to do with what's at stake in some aspect of the relationship between Melville's and Silko's writings that you are choosing to focus on.

• The first, and most recommended option, is for you to invent your own comparative topic. Only you know what's most interested you in the course! Feel free to modify any of the remaining options, so long as you send me over email a proposal in which you explain and justify your choice of topic.
• Characters: You might choose a pair of characters from the two authors (for example, Babo from "Benito Cereno" and Clinton from Almanac of the Dead) that relate in an interesting way, and draw some conclusions based on your observations about similarities and differences between the characters. You need to be careful with this option, as it's very easy to fall into plot summary when doing it--be sure to put your conclusions in the foreground and organize the discussion of what's at stake in the similarities and differences between the characters to support your conclusions. Another way of approaching this option is to link certain "character types" that appear in both authors' fiction (say, "con men/destroyers" or "prophets") and craft an argument about what's at stake in the similarities and differences in their uses of these kinds of characters.
• Symbols/Allegories: You might choose a symbol or allegory that the two writers both deploy in their fiction, and analyze what's at stake in the similarities and differences in how and to what ends they use it.
• Themes/Issues: You might choose a theme or issue that the two writers both seem to be interested in and focus on in their fiction, and analyze what's at stake in the similarities and differences in their treatment of that theme or issue. There are many ways to do this, among them:
  • The Problem of Evil: Both Melville and Silko seem interested in the classic philosophical and theological problem of evil--its origins, its effects, and how to recognize and respond to it. What do they identify as evil in their fiction? What or who is responsible for evil in their fiction? What kinds of guides do their fictions provide in responding to evil? What are the key similarities and differences in their treatment of the problem of evil?
  • Oppression, Exploitation, and/or Revolution: How do Melville's and Silko's ways of representing oppression, exploitation, and/or revolution in their fiction relate to each other? What's at stake in similarities and differences in their approaches to these issues?
  • "America" and/or "Western Civilization": Analyze what's at stake in similarities and differences in Melville's and Silko's apparent attitudes toward or representations of "America" and/or "Western Civilization," as evidenced in their fiction and non-fiction. You would do well to focus on one part of this very large question, which might include attention to a specific aspect of one of the following: a classic American value like "freedom," "individualism," "democracy," and so on; Western philosophies (including metaphysical or epistemological assumptions), Western theologies (including those of various Jewish and Christian sects), Western polities (including empires, monarchies or democracies), Western economies (including versions of mercantilism or capitalism), or Western cultures. If you see these two writers as critical of some aspect of "Western civilization," what's at stake in the differences in their approach to criticism or the implied alternatives they seem to offer?
  • Manifest Destiny and/or Colonialism: Analyze what's at stake in Silko's and Melville's positions on this concept through an analysis of texts such as Moby-Dick, The Confidence-Man, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, and Almanac of the Dead. There are several ways of performing this analysis: you might choose two texts to focus on in depth; you might focus on first figuring out, from relevant passages read in context of their major works (including letters, journals, interviews), each writer's take on manifest destiny (remember Melville lived through the era of Indian removals/Indian wars and of the Mexican War), and then getting at what's at stake in the similarities and differences between their takes. A related option would be to analyze a Melville work we didn't read in class (like Typee, Omoo, or "The Encantadas") for what it reveals about Melville's take on colonialism and European-indigenous relations, and craft an argument in which you assess what's at stake in Melville's and Silko's perspectives on these issues.
  • Race/Ethnicity and/or Whiteness: How do Melville and Silko theorize race and/or whiteness (as a concept, as a racial formation) in their essays and fiction? What's at stake in similarities and differences between their treatment of one of the following topics: "race relations," social constructions of racial and/or ethnic identity, intersections between race or ethnicity and other relevant identity categories, such as gender, religion, or class?
  • Gender and/or Sexuality: How do Melville's and Silko's ways of dealing with gender and/or sexuality relate to each other? What's at stake in similarities and differences between their treatment of one of the following topics: gender relations, social constructions of masculinity and femininity, social constructions of heterosexuality and homosexuality, intersections between gender or sexuality and other relevant identity categories, such as ethnicity, "race," religion, or class?
• Storytelling: Analyze what's at stake in Melville's and Silko's conceptions of the function of stories and storytelling (say, "prophecy" or "comment on the present" or "represent the past" or "relate past and present" or "change the present" or "influence the future"), or the writer's role in society. There are several ways of performing this analysis, among them drawing on relevant examples from a range of texts or focusing on two in particular.
• Literary "Re-Visions": Analyze what's at stake in Melville's and Silko's strategies of crafting literary "re-visions" of prior texts (sacred and/or secular) in their fiction. There are several ways of performing this analysis, among them drawing on the most interesting examples from a range of texts or focusing on two texts in particular. For example, one might choose to compare and contrast Melville's "re-visions" of the Bible in Moby-Dick with Silko's "re-visions" of the Popol Vuh (or other sources of tribal prophecies) in Almanac of the Dead or of Laguna stories and rituals in Storyteller and Ceremony (with a suitably focused goal for the essay and thesis, of course).
• Canon Formation: Analyze what's at stake in the roles each writer plays within multiple literary traditions. You might choose from such literary traditions as: Melville and antebellum American literature, New England literature, travel literature, Puritan literature, world literature; Silko and contemporary American literature, American Indian literature, literature of the West, literatures of the Americas, indigenous literatures. For instance, you might analyze how critics have cast Melville in a particular role in the "American Renaissance" of the 1850s and relate that to Silko's apparent role in the post-1965 "American Indian Renaissance."