English IV and AP
Final paper 2012
Reading List: Society and its Critics
Some works of literature seem to advocate changes in social or political attitudes or in traditions. For your final paper assignment, read one additional work from the list below, noting which attitudes or traditions the author apparently wishes to modify and the techniques the author uses to influence the reader's views. Then write a paper of approximately 1500 words comparing some aspect of your chosen work to one of the works studied in class this semester. Show how both works suggest a social, cultural, or political problem (not necessarily the same for both works) and determine what you take to be the authors’ implied attitudes toward these issues. You may refer to additional sources if you wish, but be certain both to cite these sources correctly, to distinguish carefully between their ideas and your own, and, above all, to draw your own conclusions. Drafts are due in class for editing Thursday, April 26 and must be turned in, both hard copy and electronically, Monday April 30 or Tuesday, May 1. (Turnitin title: April 2012 paper)
Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1984)
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (1847)
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (1847)
The Awakening, Kate Chopin (1899)
Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad (1900)
Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe (1721)
Hard Times, Charles Dickens (1854)
Hard Times, Charles Dickens (1854)
Middlemarch, George Eliot (1874)
A Passage to India or Howard's End, E.M. Forster (1924, 1910)
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy (1895)
Catch-22, Joseph Heller (1961)
Obasan, Joy Kogawa (1981)
Obasan, Joy Kogawa (1981)
Cry the Beloved Country, Alan Paton (1948)
Native Son, Richard Wright (1940)
Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991)
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)
Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856)
Nadine Gordimer, July’s People (1981)
Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989)
Yann Martel, Life of Pi (2002)
Ian McEwan, Atonement (2001)
George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger (1992)
Edith Wharton, Age of Innocence (1920)
