Short Writing Assignments

Short Writing (Optional)
Stanley Kunitz in "Father and Son" and Theodore Roethke in "The Lost Son" use the father/son relationship in their poems. What does that relationship evoke? What does it represent? In comparing the image of the father and the image of the son in these two poems, describe what these two poems suggest about post-war America.

Short Writing 1
Reconstruct the past of Willy Loman. Make a list, with dates, of the events of Willy's life. Then, identify the pivotal event in the list and explain why you think it is pivotal. Use examples from the play to support your argument.

Short Writing 2
One conventional way to "test" a text as regionalist writing is to imagine the narrative in a different setting. How is O'Connor's work "southern"? What elements add to its southern flavor? How would the stories be different if they were set in New York City? Paris? Kuala Lumpur?

Short Writing 3
In "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law," Adrienne Rich uses a number of domestic images. What do they symbolize? (Use specific examples.) How do those images contribute to the "snapshots" that she is creating of these two women?

Short Writing 4
Who is the hero of Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest? Provide your own definition of a hero (NOT from a dictionary) and evidence from the novel to support your choice.

Short Writing 5
In your class notes or in a literary reference book (see General Reference for a list), look up the term "elegy." After providing a brief definition (NOT from a dictionary) in your own words, explain how it may be applied to a reading of Plath's "Lady Lazarus" and "Daddy."

Short Writing 6
Choose one of Bishop's questions in "Questions of Travel" and answer it as you think Bishop would have answered it. Use examples from the poem to support your answer.

Short Writing 7
Design a fifty-minute lesson plan for teaching M. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain to a tenth-grade English class. Include your goals (what you think they should learn) and your objectives (what students should be able to do after the lesson) asd well as the information and activities that you would use. You can describe the lesson plan in prose, or you can create a lesson plan in your chosen format. You may also describe, create, or procure visual aids.

Short Writing 8
What does the quilt in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" represent? (Instead of writing your usual coherent, well-developed, one-page analyses, make a list, with brief explanations, of the multiple significances of the quilt.)

Short Writing 9
What role does music play in Toni Cade Bambara's "Medley" and why is it significant?

Short Writing 10
How is David Mamet's misogyny related to the primary theme(s) of the play?

Short Writing 11
What is Song's poem "Chinatown" about?

Short Writing 12
What is Silko telling us about motherhood? How is what she's telling us related to culture/ethnicity?

Short Writing 13
After having read Anzaldúa's "How to Tame a Wild Tongue," you have given some thought to language and Chicano/a literature. How would you describe Cisneros's style in "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn"? Why do you think Cisneros makes some of the linguistic and stylistic choices that she makes in that story?

Short Writing 14 (LAST ONE!)
Suzan-Lori Parks is "signifyin'," as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has written (as we have discussed in class). Who or what is Parks talking back to? What is the effect of the BEV/AAVE in the play?