vWalt Whitman

2. Discuss Whitman’s poetry as a culmination in the development of American identity. How does Whitman contribute to the ongoing evolution of self-reliance? Of human freedom? Of concepts

of democracy? Discuss two or three of Whitman’s poems and how they fit in with the image of Whitman as America’s poet and the vision he held for the changing America of his time.

Critical Response Essay #1 €“ Assignment Sheet
Assignment: Choose ONE of the prompts below and write an essay responding to it. Include a strong thesis statement in the introduction and body paragraphs that focus on the chosen topic. It

is important to use correct grammar and punctuation, so please proofread your work carefully. Give your essay an original title. You should use the complete title of any text you refer to (in

quotation marks) along with the author’s full name the first time it appears in your essay, then refer to the author by his or her last name throughout the rest of the essay. The responses must

follow MLA format requirements and must not contain plagiarism in any way.
The goal of the paper is to show that you have done close readings of one or more of these texts and its related documents and that you have formed your own analyses and interpretations of

them. You can assume your reader has read the text, so you should not write any summary information other than what is necessary to situate your claim. A paper that merely summarizes the

text will be given a zero. Instead of summary, you should discuss meanings in the text. Think about the literary elements (review the literary terms documents) and the kinds of ideas brought up

by the discussion questions related to the texts.
Length: The essay must be a minimum of 500 words, so it will be approximately 2 pages long (but not over 4). The work should be double-spaced and follow all of the MLA format guidelines

posted in the syllabus. End your paper with a works cited entry (or entries if you discuss more than one author); the works cited information does not count towards the length minimum.
Sources: Each response should contain direct quotes from the text(s) you are discussing, and those should be integrated and punctuated correctly. (Integrating direct quotes means using that

you never let quotes stand alone as sentences but instead you use framing words to make sure that every sentence has some of your own words in it; in other words, either introduce the quote

or insert your own words somewhere in the sentence.) Read the Source documentation Information documents posted for more details about citing your sources. One of those documents gives

you specific info about in-text citations and Works Cited entries for the texts you will use in this assignment. The other gives you an overview about the whole concept of in-text citations and

Works Cited entries.
Do NOT use any source material in these writings other than the texts themselves. All of your opinions and explanations should come directly from you! You can use any information from other

sources posted in the course, and you don’t have to cite them. We will just treat them as if they contain common knowledge. In other words, DO cite any short story or poem; do NOT use

sources that are not posted in the course. If you do use sources that are not posted in the course and you do not cite them, you will get a zero for plagiarizing; so be careful to form your own

opinions about the texts.

CRITICAL WRITING RESPONSE #1 PROMPTS

1.    It is possible to look at Whitman and Dickinson as opposites in several ways €“ the prosody and word choices that each poet prefers, and also the idea of who the poet is, whom he or

she is speaking to or for, and where a poem or a set or cycle of poems needs to go. What about similarities between Whitman and Dickinson? Can you find Dickinson poems that seem

Whitmanesque in mood or theme? In rhetorical daring? What do they have in common?

2.    Discuss Whitman’s poetry as a culmination in the development of American identity. How does Whitman contribute to the ongoing evolution of self-reliance? Of human freedom? Of

concepts of democracy? Discuss two or three of Whitman’s poems and how they fit in with the image of Whitman as America’s poet and the vision he held for the changing America of his time.

3.    In two of her poems about grief, Dickinson hints at the possibility of a greater truth coming from sadness. In There’s a certain slant of light, she writes that the Heavenly Hurt gives

us internal difference/ where the meanings are. In I felt a Funeral, in my Brain €“, she writes that it seems That Sense was breaking through €“ Read these two poems together. What kinds of

sense or meaning might she be suggesting?

4.    Much of the humor in Mark Twain’s The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County comes from Twain’s use of situational irony. Explain how his use of elements like exaggeration,

vernacular, humor, and/or irony serve to express a critique of society and the class system of Twain’s time.

5.    Explain how Kate Chopin uses symbolism and imagery to underscore the themes and meanings in Desiree’s Baby. For example, her use of lightness/darkness, color, and elements like

fire and water build character development and also add to descriptions of emotional intensity. Discuss some of the symbols or images Chopin uses and how they impact readers’

understandings of the text.

6.    Do a close reading of the female protagonists in Kate Chopin’s The Storm, The Story of an Hour, and Desiree’s Baby. Calixta, Louise, and Desiree €“ are these distinct women with

their own personalities, attributes, and characteristics, or are they basically versions of the same woman? Does Chopin write about unique individuals in each of her stories, or is her goal to

identify the common concerns of women of the author’s day? What constitutes a more effective social critique, a writer who values her characters as individuals, or a writer who uses her

characters to explore the structures of inequality at work in the world?

7.    Write an essay in which you argue for a particular symbolic interpretation of the wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-paper. As you develop your thesis, pay

attention to the narrator’s vivid descriptions of the paper’s pattern and to her changing ideas about and attitudes toward the paper.

8.    How would you describe the setting in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper? How and why is the setting significant? Compare internal (female) and external (male) spaces in the story.

What is Gilman saying about each as places for both women and men to live? Discuss the metaphor of the window in relationship to getting out.

9.    Discuss any of the authors we have read so far and their texts in light of what you know (and information you can get from the documents posted in our course) about realism,

naturalism, and/or regionalism. Do a close reading of two or more texts and discuss how they fit into one or more of those categories.  NOTE: Do NOT discuss Twain, Chopin, and Local Color for

this paper, since you cannot get credit for simply rehashing information that has already been discussed on the discussion board. The Critical Response Writings need to show your independent

thinking and original insights into the texts under discussion.