Man-made monsters Literature & Language Essay Paper

SECOND FORMAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT
For the second formal paper you have considerable latitude in terms of the topic to be explored, which, again, should pertain to your Pictorial Problems project and to the theme of this course, Man-Made Monsters.

Using any of the books or shorter works we’ve read this semester as a starting point for this paper, try to develop an argument around your Pictorial Problems project that relates to the idea of “man-made monsters,” monstrosities, atrocities, or just plain criminalities in the context of a larger societal or historical problem (obvious “atrocity” lends itself to this conceptual widening of the lens). You can certainly develop your thesis around any particular “case” of an individual monster, but I would like you to think about it also in terms of its broader social manifestations. As we are dealing today with our own global pandemic, perhaps you can find a way to link some of the works or characters we’ve been discussing to the idea of social irresponsibility in times of epidemic (possible secondary sources might include Michel Foucault’s histories of the clinic and the prison or Antonin Artaud’s essay “Theater and the Plague”). How do people exacerbate such situations through irrational reactions—whether of fear, defiance or defeatism. In short, try to think of man-made monsters or even naturally occurring disasters as a trigger to some institutional, political, or natural crisis.

Your essay must be four to five pages in length (approximately 250 words per page) and will constitute 25% of your grade. You should make use of any episodes or quotations from any of the books, short stories, or essays we have read in class that support your argument. You are also REQUIRED to use at least ONE secondary scholarly source, which should be cited accurately in a Works Cited list at the end of your paper. Please follow MLA style (we will discuss this in class).

The paper is due in class on Thursday, Apr 16th, and it must sent to my SVA email address above. It must also be double-spaced with 1-inch margins and in Times New Roman font.
Using Sweeney Todd (the play) as the thesis of Man-Made Monsters and choosing one of the text below and compare.
READINGS AND REQUIRED TEXTS: Please see the schedule of your syllabus for details because many of the readings will be posted on Canvas. That said, you are REQUIRED to purchase all texts marked with an asterisk (*). They are available at the Baruch Bookstore, 55 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10010 (near E. 25th Street; Tel.: 646-312-4854) Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, Part One (Canvas file)*William Shakespeare, Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library, Simon &Schuster, ISBN 978-0743477109) *Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 978-0618001903—note: ebook versions available through Amazon) *Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions, ISBN 978-0486264646) Kevin MacDonald, Last King of Scotland (film)Derek Walcott, “A Far Cry From Africa” (poem—handout)*Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem; or, The Banality of EvilMahmoud Darwish, selected poemsSigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” (on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman”)(Canvas files)Edgar Allan Poe, “The Man That Was Used Up” (Canvas files)Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People”(Canvas files)Charles Laughton, The Night of the Hunter (film)*Jean Genet, The Maids (Les Bonnes)Claude Chabrol, La Cérémonie (film)*Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge (pending)