2009, Form B. Many works of literature deal with political or social issues. Choose a novel or play that focuses on a political oe social issue. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the author uses literary elements to explore this issue and explazin how the issue contributes to the meaning of the as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

                One of the biggest issues in the American political arena is the issue of social responsibility.  In his novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck explores the question of how to deal with the country’s less fortunate through a focus on the Joad family and their struggle during the Great Depression.  Steinbeck uses imagery and diction to create theme.  Using this theme, Steinbeck makes the readers think about what they have that others might not.

                Steinbeck is incredibly skillful and concise in his writing, making it obvious that the book is about poverty in America.  His powerful diction makes it clear to the reader just how dire a situation Tom Joad and his family are in.  Strong word choice shows us that not just the Joads, but many of the people they meet as they travel and attempt to settle in California, are simply unable to survive.  As if it was not clear enough, Steinbeck then brings in imagery to further give the book an ominous feeling, a feeling that says all is not well.  Steinbeck describes the land of the Dust Bowl states with such vivid detail that one can picture the barren, dry land.  That land, fruitless and dead, relates directly to the Joads’ situation.  Imagery and diction combine to explain the situation and get the reader thinking about the poor.

                Once the reader has recognized that there is a poverty problem in America, Steinbeck must suggest how to fix it.  There are always two choices: do more or do less.  Steinbeck is very clear that we must vastly increase our support for the poverty stricken.  The Joads are repeatedly taken advantage of and exploited by giant, unregulated farms.  Workers are not protected in any way, and doing even less to regulate the exploiters logically would not help.  Therefore, Steinbeck is saying that we must do more.

                Theme, an important literary element, is created by technique.  In The Grapes of Wrath, imagery and diction cooperate to create a theme centering on poverty.  Steinbeck makes important use of that theme to call America to action.  He shows us what is wrong with the world, and begs us to do something about it.

1990. Choose a novel or play that depicts a conflict between a parent (or a parental figure) and a son or daughter. Write an essay in which you analyze the sources of the conflict and explain how the conflict contributes to the meaning of the work. Avoid plot summary.

                Every family has conflict.  However, in the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, the conflict between Willy and his son, Biff, is more extreme than most.  Although a Biff’s discover of his father’s infidelity triggers the downfall of the relationship, the two have problems that are much deeper and date back much further.  Miller uses literary techniques to describe and give reason to the father-son rift, and then uses the broken relationship to show his audience what is wrong with how we live our lives.

                Miller provides his audience with details and makes good use of a foil in order to show just how terrible of a father Willy is.  It is not that he doesn’t love his sons.  The problem, however, is that Willy is always giving his sons terrible advice, as made evident through use of a foil, Charley.  Willy tells Biff to blow off school, and to be well liked.  Charley tells his son, Bernard, to study hard.  Willy laughs at his son’s theft.  Charley teaches Bernard right from wrong.  Willy and Charley are quite obviously opposite.  These differences shown in the past culminate in the lives Biff and Bernard created for themselves.  Miller provides us with very impressive details about Bernard’s life.  He is clearly successful, and Miller tells us he is off to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court.  Clearly, Charley’s advice was good advice.  It follows naturally that Willy’s, being opposite, was not.  Biff resents his father for allowing him to feel so entitled.  He did not think he had to work, and now that he realizes he does, it is almost as if he can’t.  This is the root of the strain on Biff and Willy’s relationship. 

                Miller uses Willy’s incorrect parental guidance to show is what is wrong with society.  Willy believes that the key to success is being well liked.  The reader is forced to examine the world we live in to find the root of this belief.  Miller is telling us through Biff and Willy’s dysfunctional relationship that our society is superficial.  All we care about is popularity, and about things looking nice on the outside.  We don’t care what’s underneath.  That is why Willy’s appliances are always falling apart: quality.  Nobody in today’s world cares about quality.  Willy represents a far greater number of people than just himself.  American society as a whole believes that you don’t have to work hard, you can simply skate by if people like you.  Miller sees something inherently wrong in this fact, and highlights it through Wily and Biff’s dysfunctional relationship. 

2007. In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present activities, attitudes, or values of a character. Choose a novel or play in which a character must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in which you show how the character's relationship to the past contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

Soldiers come back to the United States every day from Afghanistan with scars, both mental and physical.  Jake Barnes in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises must deal with both the physical handicap his service has left him with in addition to exceeding feelings of hopelessness, each preventing him from being with the woman he loves, Brett.  Jake lives in the past, before his time in the army, and is unable to move forward.  Hemingway argues through use of detail, language and diction that war holds us back from progress.

                Hemingway begins by creating an air of uselessness surrounding everything in his work.  He is particularly famous for his language in conveying a sense of hopelessness.  The dialogue between Hemingway’s characters, especially in this novel, is very basic, and very ambiguous.  It sometimes appears as if Jake and Brett are talking about nothing at all.  They go around in circles, talking about what appear to be the most mundane and ordinary topics.  This creates a feeling for the reader that nothing matters.  Details or, more specifically, lack of details contribute to this established feeling.  Though we know Jake cannot be with the woman he loves, we are never actually told exactly what his injury is.  This is because Hemingway never tells us.  This deliberate vagueness is essential in adding to the illusion of uselessness.  It once again makes the reader think nothing matters.  Lacking details and specific language confuse and upset the reader.   

                Once the reader is convinced nothing has meaning, Hemingway swoops in to create some, using the specific event that ruined his characters’ lives: war.  All of Jake’s problems trace back to the battles he was a part of.  After drawing a connection between the hopeless feelings and war, Hemingway can easily claim war is bad.  The reader already feels incredible pity of Jake and his friends.  Once a cause is given to the terrible situations the characters live in, the reader has no problem despising it.  Hemingway convincingly makes the reader believe that war is wrong.

 2006. Many writers use a country setting to establish values within a work of literature. For example, the country may be a place of virtue and peace or one of primitivism and ignorance. Choose a novel or play in which such a setting plays a significant role. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the country setting functions in the work as a whole.

The world relies on farmers to provide nutrition for our people and materials for anything from clothes to cigarettes.  In the novel O Pioneers!, Alexandra Bergson, the protagonist, feels a connection to the frontier land she calls her home.  Willa Cather, the author, uses this connection to comment on Alexandra and, eventually, on marriage.

Willa Cather uses literary technique to establish a strong link between her main character and the country setting.  This is done partly through skillful use of diction.  Though the same exact words are not used to describe the woman and her land, Cather chooses words with similar connotations.  These words give the reader a sense of stability and strength, while remaining quiet and calm, all with a positive tone. Imagery is used in a similar fashion.  Cather paints a picture in her readers’ minds of rolling hills and trees waving gracefully in the breeze.  However, imagery further serves to make sure the reader knows the land is not weak.  It can be threatening when mistreated.  Cather shows through vivid description that the land, if it chooses, can wipe out an entire population by refusing to yield crops or giving a particularly harsh winter.  Alexandra is painted in the same way.  She is tall and serene, but will not stand for being crossed. 

The undeniable connection between Alexandra and the land serves as a commentary on all people.  Since the land and Alexandra have been connected in the reader’s mind, any way Cather describes the land or makes it act is automatically translated to Alexandra.  Since Cather thinks of the land and Alexandra well, naturally choices that this character makes are portrayed well. Alexandra chooses self-sufficiency.  She never marries, instead continuing to farm the land and expand her holdings.  Since we as readers like Alexandra, we see this as the right decision.

As Alexandra progresses through life, we see her encountering success, furthering our confirmation that the single, isolated life, living off the land, is the correct choice.  Around Alexandra, husbands and wives struggle, even resulting in the death of Emil, Alexandra’s beloved little brother.  Yet Alexandra, and her beloved country, stand strong.    Cather uses the country setting to show that marriage is not the fairy tale we are told as children.  Self-sufficiency through cultivation of the elegant and sturdy land or some more modern alternative is a much safer, and better, choice.

 1970 Also. Choose a work of recognized literary merit in which a specific inanimate object (e.g., a seashell, a handkerchief, a painting) is important, and write an essay in which you show how two or three of the purposes the object serves are related to one another.

Today, living in a world of screenshots and photographs, people often lack appreciation for the significance of a simple portrait.  In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, a portrait is central to the story, arguably as important as any of the characters. Though inanimate, the title object serves to remind Dorian Gray of his moral decay as well as ultimately destroy him, two separate but interconnected purposes.  These purposes combine to convey Wilde’s message about the dangers of beauty.

                Throughout the novel, the painting acts almost as a portal to another world, a portal of truth.  In the world in which Dorian and his acquaintances live, everything appears fine.  Dorian is a young, handsome man, living life and making the most of it.  He attends fancy parties, falls in love, and has good friends.  However, through Wilde’s use of imagery, the painting allows us to peel back the shiny exterior of Dorian’s life and see what lies beneath.  Really, Dorian’s “soul grows sick”.  Though he stays beautiful, his moral wrongs manifest themselves in the painting.  It grows old and hideous.  Wilde uses vivid description to make even the most sturdy of readers shudder just thinking about the twisted lips and fiery eyes of Dorian’s portrait. 

                Even Dorian is unnerved by his painting, allowing it to lead to his downfall.  At first, the young Mr. Gray hides his painting away.  However, as time passes and Dorian grows more and more evil, he begins to delight in the painting.  The physical manifestation of his evil is something only a truly corrupt person can enjoy, signaling to the readers that the innocent Dorian Gray they once knew is gone.  Finally, remembering the horror it had once caused him, Dorian decides not to let a silly painting control his life any longer.  Why had he not destroyed it years ago?    Wilde here uses diction, selecting words that give the final scene a truly ominous feeling.  As Gray plunges a knife through the painting, the evil flows back into him.  The Dorian Gray everyone knew is gone, replaced by an old, mangled man, dead on the floor. 

                The portrait of Dorian Gray serves the two main purposes listed above, to document evil and to kill it.  However, these two meanings are not independent of each other.  Dorian’s life is ended by the painting because it so accurately portrayed his immorality.  In it he saw his evil, and trying to eliminate any evidence of it, Dorian destroyed it.  However, the painting was that evil.  In destroying it, he destroyed himself. Dorian Gray, though beautiful on the outside, was far from it beneath the surface.  Wilde, through these purposes created by diction and imagery, is saying that beauty really is only skin deep.     

9/16/11

2002. Morally ambiguous characters -- characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good -- are at the heart of many works of literature. Choose a novel or play in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivotal role. Then write an essay in which you explain how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and why his or her moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

As a viewer watches a television show such as Dexter or House, he struggles with the decision to root for or to oppose the morally ambiguous main character.  In Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the reader falls into a love-hate relationship with the protagonist, Raskolnikov, on one hand, a murderer, but on the other, a desperately poor brother and son who wants to change the world.  Dostoyevsky first draws the reader into the complex mind of his main character, and then uses this conflicted individual to make the reader question the validity of a black and white world.

The reader finds Raskolnikov in two of the most opposite situations, solidifying his status as morally ambiguous.  Within the first few chapters, Raskolnikov murders an old woman and her sister, two women he hardly knew. Dostoyevsky vividly describes the murder, choosing words that make the reader cringe, almost able to feel Raskolnikov’s axe crashing down on the heads of his victims.  The reader is sure this man must be pure evil.  How could anyone who commits such a horrible crime be anything short of a monster?  Then, however, Raskolnikov is shown in a new light.  After receiving a letter from his mother and sister, the softer the protagonist comes out.   Though just pages before, the reader was sure Raskolnikov was not even human, now he seems capable not only of emotion, but love.  Suddenly, the reader does not know whether to love or to hate Dostoyevsky’s complicated little creation.

Raskolnikov’s moral ambiguity makes the reader question definitions.   Raskolnikov cannot be pigeon-holed into the category of “hero” nor “villain”, casting a shadow of doubt on other labels.  How does one know what is right and what is wrong?  Yes, murder is labeled “wrong”, but who decides on these labels? Maybe the murder of Alyona Ivanovna, the old pawnbroker, was not a crime, but in fact a good deed.  After all, this old woman was very wealthy, yet still bitter and useless.  Raskolnikov states at the beginning of the novel that he intends to use her money for good.  He could give it to the poor, or use it to finance his education.   Further, Rakolnikov justifies his action by asserting that all “great men” must remove obstacles in order to become great, often equating himself with Napoleon.  Christopher Columbus slaughtered large numbers of Native Americans, and modern American society deemed him so great there is a day named after him.  How is this different than Raskolnikov’s so-called “crime”? 

The fact that it is impossible to discern whether Raskolnikov is a good or bad is central to Crime and Punishment.   This situation allows the reader to transition from the smaller question “Is Raskolnikov good?” to the much larger “What is good?” very easily.  Without this morally ambiguous central character, the reader would feel uncomfortable asking if indeed, murder was okay.  Raskolnikov provides a smooth transition, guiding the reader to the ultimate question.  He provides the reader with basis, so when asking these questions, the poor reader, probably a bit morally confused himself at this point, does not seem like a raving lunatic.  Raskolnikov’s moral ambiguity is a gateway, elevating the novel from mere story to philosophical text.