English 1C Essay Options: The Best American Short Stories
You will have an in-class reading exam on the following material on March 8.
Your second typed essay is due on March 10.
Please write the Essay Option Number on top of your essay.
General Principle for Your Writing Assignment Options:
Using the principles of literary analysis for writing paragraphs and thesis statements, develop an argumentative, cause and effect analysis, or extended definition thesis that addresses one or more of the assigned short stories.
When we write literary analysis, we choose on a theme and then we take that theme and convert it into a specific thesis statement.
Option #1 for "The Other Woman": Developing a thesis for the theme of Modernism using cause and effect analysis
The Modernism evident in "The Other Woman" explains our unhinged condition resulting from _______________, __________________, __________________, and ____________________.
Two things you need to know to write the above thesis:
One. What does it mean to be unhinged? (compulsive, beholden to Dionysian forces with no Apollonian counterbalance, no self-knowledge, beholden to a fictitious grandiose self that makes one blind to one's real self, no metacognition; the self is divided so that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and vice versa.)
Two. What are 4 major causes of the man's unhinged state in the story?
Essay Option #2 for "The Other Woman": The demands of marriage in the story using argumentation
Support or refute the notion that "The Other Woman" evidences that Universal Man's demands for a wife are impossible.
Thesis Template
In the powerful short story "The Other Woman," when we examine the man's needs for a woman, we see that those needs represent Universal Man, and that those needs are impossible, rendering most marriages doomed to misery, evidenced by __________________, __________________, ___________________, and ______________.
What You Need to Know
How are the man's needs in a woman both universal to most men, and how do those needs place impossible demands on women? Some of man's "needs" include trophy wife, Eros, Mom, upper class status and privilege, life coach, life manager, etc.
Essay Option #3 for "The Other Woman": How dualism makes us unhinged (dualism consists of the opposing forces that make the man a conflicted character) Using Extended Definition
In "The Other Woman," the dualism evident in the story reveals a man who has lost his sanity and is unhinged evidenced by ____________________, ____________________, _________________, and ___________________.
What You Need to Know
What is dualism? How does dualism manifest in the main character? In what 4 ways does the dualism show that the man is crazy?
Essay Option #4 for "You're Ugly ,Too" by Lorrie Moore using argumentation
In the context of the story, support, refute, or complicate the argument that for a single woman like Zoe there is a point in which the personality, adapting to being alone with its lack of demands for sacrifice, defies romance and intimacy. In other words, when it comes to relationships, a woman can adapt to her single state and this adaptation, or maladaptation, makes her reach The Point of No Return in which she becomes "undateable." Do you know any such women who compare to Zoe? What process have they gone through that makes it almost impossible for them to connect romantically?
Points to Consider
One. Zoe adapts to loneliness and the lifestyle of no compromise.
Two. Her standards for the type of man who can disrupt her lifestyle continue to elevate till she reaches The Point of No Return.
Three. Her adaptation to loneliness and male troglodytes hungry for the Heidi Myth causes her to develop a prickly facade of irony and cynicism that makes her off-putting and grotesque so that he repels not only the troglodytes but the qualified, good men as well.
Four. Educated men who would otherwise be part of her dating pool find themselves searching for the Heidi Archetype, the bovine, servile ignoramus, rather than an educated, autonomous woman.
Five. Lonely professional women such as Zoe find they are stagnant in a perpetual condition of intellectual pride alternated by bitter despair and this alternating cycle becomes a prison from which they can see no escape, thus defining their abject learned helplessness.
Essay Option #5 for Flannery O'Connor's "Greenleaf" using argumentation:
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that O'Connor's religious faith, which is so flagrant in the story, does not compromise but in fact strengthens her cautionary tale about the dangers of pride and how those of us mired in pride are a "damned lot" doomed to languish in our own private hell.
Essay Option #6 that compares "Where I'm Calling From" and "You're Ugly, Too" (using comparison and cause and effect analysis)
In a comparison-contrast essay, analyze the theme of maladaptive emotional wall-building, vulnerability, pride, and personal transformation in "Where I'm Calling From" and Lorrie Moore's "You're Ugly Too."
Essay Option #7 for "A Country Husband" using cause and effect analysis
Develop a thesis that shows how Cheever's "A Country Husband" is a scathing critique of the American Dream.
Another Essay Option #8 for "A Country Husband" using extended definition
Using Francis Weed as a model, develop an extended definition of he Man-Child (or you can use the Turkish word Muganda).
Essay Option #9 for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" using cause and effect analysis
Develop a thesis that shows how the story is a critique of the Cult of Perpetual Adolescence. You can refer to Joseph Epstein’s “The Perpetual Adolescent” (available online) as a valuable resource to define your term.
Essay Option #10 for "Defender of the Faith" using cause and effect analysis
Develop a thesis that explains the following: Nathan Marx wants us to know that he is world-weary and life-hardened, a man who “has seen it all,” but in fact he has not: He is not prepared to face the insidious evil of the homunculus parasite, Sheldon Grossbart, that kills us gradually, slowly, incrementally, through a thousand cuts. How does this slow death occur?
Another Essay Option #11 for "Defender of the Faith" using cause and effect analysis
In the context of the story, develop a thesis that analyzes the connection between tribalism and entitlement and how this connection clashes with individual morality.
Common Thread That Runs Through Most of the Stories: When Coping Mechanisms Sour
The characters' coping mechanisms go askew and become maladapative to the point that they give birth to the Demon Homunculus, an alter ego that creates more problems than it solves.
We have adapted to potential starvation by overeating to build a fat reserve (back to our Paleo days), but now with abundance calories we are maladapted to the instinct to overeating.
Men have adapted to reproductive success by making themselves productive, strong, and powerful, traits that are proven to make men more successful in the realm of reproduction. However, the greedy man who's driven by blind ambition becomes an obnoxious narcissistic sociopath and as such he repels most women. His initial impulse to attract women has become maladaptive.
Many women feel compelled to conform to a beauty aesthetic promoted in television, the Internet, magazines, etc. However, when the compulsion to conform to this perceived beauty aesthetic leads to eating disorders, self-elected surgeries that make women look, in the words of Tina Fey, like hand puppets with smeared lipstick, their drive has become maladaptive.
One of my favorite themes is the coping mechanisms people develop to address a crisis, and how these coping mechanisms go out of control and become more of a poison that begins to consume their creators. For example, my wife knows of women who have been assaulted by men and their protection was to seclude themselves in their house with a ferocious dog and gain 100 pounds. Their method "worked," but eventually it became maladaptive because they became prisoners of their own methods for self-protection.
When we don't want to get emotionally hurt because we got "burned" from a past relationship, we throw banana peels in others' paths so they'll slip before they get too close to us. This banana peel throwing is an example of maladaptation.
We've adapted to Facebook, accepting compromised, easy friendships with low expectations. As a result of lowering our expectations in the realm of friendship, we have become maladapted to Facebook, writing half-baked thoughts, half-baked "shares," and half-baked commitments so that we have become half-baked people, zombies trolling on the Internet for false connection. Facebook and other social media have made us stupid and mindless.
Themes in the Stories
One. "The Other Woman" by Sherwood Anderson. Explore the theme of Modernism. One of the themes of modernism is that we are so self-centered (solipsistic) that we don't know ourselves (what makes us tick) or know others. Some modernist thought asserts we can know nothing. Such a belief is equivalent to nihilism.
Another important theme in "The Other Woman" is the conflict between the Dionysian and the Apollonian.
Two. "You're Ugly, Too" by Lorrie Moore: intellectual pride, cynicism, "the grotesque," misfit, belonging, professional women, consumerism, 3 Traps, settling.
Three. "Greenleaf" by Flannery O'Connor: intellectual pride, envy, scapegoating, "the grotesque," spiritual blindness, Point of No Return, grace, faith, having your __ handed to you on a stick as a prerequisite for personal transformation.
Four. "Where I'm Calling From" by Raymond Carver: The nature of Purgatory, recovery, addiction, habit, disease, having your _____ handed to you on a stick as a prerequisite for personal transformation, the battle between pride and humility.
Five. "The Country Husband" by John Cheever: The Man-Child, perpetual adolescence, private desire vs. public duty, obligation vs. pleasure, suburban conformity, keeping appearances, and ennui, death and consumerism.
Six. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates: popular culture, perpetual adolescence, Eros and Nihilism, freedom without boundaries, the Age of Aquarius, consumerism and the Chanel No.5 Moment as a form of derangement and moral dissolution.
Seven. "Defender of the Faith" by Philip Roth: The main conflict is loyalty to the tribe (Tribalism) vs. loyalty to moral duty.
"The Other Woman" (full text of the short story)
“The Other Woman” by Sherwood Anderson
One. Explain the story’s opening, “I am in love with my wife.”
He blurts out this statement. It appears to have been produced from some kind of fear or guilt or both. He makes the announcement like a compulsion.
We see a man so terrified by his state of not knowing who he is and what his desires are that he must constantly remind himself that he loves his wife when the story’s evidence points to feelings toward his wife that are, at best, confused, ambiguous, and conflicted.
His conflicted feelings are further reinforced by the affair he has with the allegedly plain looking woman.
In one opening sentence, Sherwood Anderson introduces us to the themes of Modernism:
- We can’t know or understand ourselves or others. We are strangers to ourselves. We our impostors incapable of understanding our “real agenda.”
- We suffer from dualism or Left Hand-Right Hand Syndrome (the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand does and vice versa).
- There is no free will. Rather, we are ruled by unconscious psychological forces we cannot control. We are compulsive and as such we are slaves to our compulsions.
- Every plot point is an ironic reversal so that we feel we live in an “upside down world.”
- We suffer unresolved conflict between private desires and public duty.
“I am in love with my wife,” therefore, is a statement wrought with deception and desperation.
He WISHES he loved his wife, just like later in the story when we read, “He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be his wife . . .”
He wants to feel all the feelings he is SUPPOSED to feel for his wife, but he does not.
Perhaps he does not love his wife.
Or perhaps he loves her but not in a conventional way that would appease his conscience.
Or perhaps he feels repelled by her and everything she represents: domesticity, being a slave to conformity and image, sentimental notions of love are beyond his reach.
Or perhaps he loves her desperately as an antidote to the sin of adultery and chaos that stirs in his hedonistic self.
Or perhaps he obsesses over all the above possibilities but cannot pinpoint his emotions, as he remains a miserable slave to ambiguity and confusion.
Welcome to Modernism.
Two. What kinds of changes are taking place with the unnamed man?
He is overcome with a creative flurry of writing resulting in an award that results in minor celebrity.
His elevated esteem in the eyes of others has a drug-like effect on him. Intoxicated, disoriented, he becomes unhinged. He reminds me of the character who becomes "drugged" after getting a new overcoat in the Gogol short story, "The Overcoat."
He is engaged to be married to a judge’s daughter. The the father is a judge points to a possible metaphor about the kind of world the man is entering: a world of judgment, right and wrong, black and white, moral and immoral. This crisply defined world appears to be incompatible with the gray, murky, morally ambiguous world of the storyteller.
He has also received a job promotion that affords him elevated status.
All three events point to a man who is in the public eye, a cause of much ego gratification, even intoxication, which he seems to enjoy.
But the downside of this public adulation is perhaps a sense of anxiety and pressure (added responsibilities) that causes him to have a sort of breakdown manifest in obsessive-compulsive behavior.
This period is described as an “abnormal time” in which he was “floating on air.” Could he perhaps be disoriented, even delirious?
For many, the spotlight feels claustrophobia and performance anxiety, causing those people to feel like caged animals who need an outlet.
His sense of anxiety is further reinforced by the knowledge that he begins to suffer insomnia. Sleep deprivation could push him toward insanity of some kind.
He appears to be a man unhinged, severed from any core self that would make him feel whole and calm. He is a contrast of his fiancé who evidences singularity of purpose and seems to know herself.
For many, the spotlight feels claustrophobia and performance anxiety, causing those people to feel like caged animals who need an outlet.
Perhaps the man seeks an outlet where he can “be himself,” whatever that may be.
Three. Speak to the man’s attraction to the shopkeeper’s wife.
We read about this compulsive obsession the storyteller has with an older woman with “bright gray eyes.”
The narrator tells us the storyteller assured him “at least twenty times” that she was a “very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her.” But her presence “stirred him profoundly.”
Again, we are faced with ambiguity. We don’t know if the woman is truly plain looking or a stunning beauty since the storyteller has proven that he appears to say one thing when in fact he means the opposite.
But another interpretation is that she is indeed plain looking; however, the storyteller’s desperate state inexplicably draws him to her. We don’t know.
What’s clear is that as the man’s marriage looms near, with its implications of a conventional life of conformity and slave morality to society’s script, the man hungers for Another World, Los Otros, so that the shopkeeper’s wife becomes his most compelling reality.
We read, “During that week in the midst of his distraction she was the only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind. When he wanted to think noble thoughts, he could think only of her. Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold of the notion of having a love affair with the woman.”
By “noble thoughts,” we can assume living a life of convention and purity when in fact the man is having doubts about enlisting or conscribing himself into such an imprisoned state.
There is an adage that marriage for a woman is the beginning of her life, but that marriage for a man is the death of his.
Perhaps the man is feeling an impending death and panic has set in.
His obsession with the shopkeeper’s woman reinforces the Modernist theme that we cannot understand others or ourselves. We read, “I could not understand myself,” as the storyteller vents his vexation about obsession with a plain looking older woman as he is presumably about to marry a young beauty.
As the man’s obsession with the other woman grows so does his torment, and we see a man being pulled apart into two opposing worlds, one of illicit passion and the other of domestic convention.
We read, “There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with me and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my position in the world, but for the moment, you see, I wanted this other woman to be in my arms. She had worked her way into my being. On all sides people were saying I was a big man who would do big things, and there I was.”
To be a “big man” and enjoy the high esteem and veneration of others, he feels compelled to live a life of marital convention in accordance with society’s script of what it means to be a big man.
The above speaks to man’s conflict with public duty, and his craving for public approval, and his private desires, which run contrary to society’s blueprint for success.
This conflict and the man’s attempt to suppress his private urges result in self-hatred. He grows more “furious” at himself. He tries to read pious literature to cleanse his naughty soul.
But attempts at finding morality through reading fail him. We read, “The voices in the books were like the voices of the dead. I did not hear them. The words printed on the lines would not penetrate into my consciousness. I tried to think of the woman I loved, but her figure had also become something far away, something with which I for the moment seemed to have nothing to do.”
Four. Is there evidence that the shopkeeper’s wife is a maternal figure?
We read that “She must have been ten years older than myself.” And that when he tried to put pennies on the glass counter, “the pennies made a rattling noise.”
Juxtaposing an older woman with a “rattling noise” could suggest a baby rattler in the presence of an All Comforting Mommy.
The anxiety and panic preceding a marriage, which to the man may feel like a prison sentence, may cause him to regress and seek a Mother Figure.
These feelings would be unconscious and would speak to Modernism’s worldview that we are creatures not of free agency or free will but creatures beholden to unconscious impulses.
Five. Describe the secret meeting with the shopkeeper’s wife.
He experiences Dionysian ecstasy and rapture, holding her, and connecting with her on this higher level than anything he has experienced before. We read, “I had forgotten everything in the world but just her.”
We are now introduced to a powerful conflict in the story, the struggle between Dionysian and Apollonian forces.
Dionysian refers to the overpowering force of ecstasy that, short lived, destroys everything in its wake. It is the Angelina Jolie of the Life Force.
Apollonian refers to nest building, domesticity, and monogamy. It is the Jennifer Aniston of the Life Force.
Our storyteller is caught between Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston.
Six. What does the fiancé’s letter reveal about her?
She is pure of heart. She has a singularity of purpose, to marry, unlike her fiancé who is torn between Dionysian and Apollonian forces.
Her purity of heart makes her fiancé feel guilty, but he want to feed off his future wife’s purity in the hopes that she will in turn purify him and cure him of his madness. But is he ever cured?
Remember, the story begins with him talking about her after their marriage and he compulsively blurts, “I am in love with my wife,” like a mantra that only a man who doesn’t love his wife would repeat in a vain attempt to cure his heart of his madness.
He reads the letter to gain strength from it, to find “resolve” to resist temptation, and his resolve fails him completely. We read, “The woman came at seven o’clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let her in and forgot the resolution I had made.”
Like a drug, the woman feeds his Dionysian appetites: “I felt very happy and strong.”
Seven. What does the man say about his feelings for the shopkeeper’s wife after she leaves his apartment?
He claims she left his mind, but we see evidence to the contrary.
In a series of bizarre statements full of contradictions, he says, “I am trying very hard to tell what happened to me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the woman who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case, that is not true.”
He then claims that his ecstatic experience with the shopkeeper’s wife gave him the strength to go through with his marriage. Further, his illicit affair gave him a “new faith in the outcome of our life together.”
Clearly, he is an unreliable narrator. The unreliable narrator is another striking feature of the Modernist Literature Movement.
Eight. How does the man fit in the people at his fiancé’s party?
He feels disconnected, guilty, and alienated from their laughter. He is not a real member of their tribe. He’s just faking it.
He has a secret life. He reminds me of Dexter from the Showtime series, a man who can’t live in conventional society but who must exercise an alter ego to preserve his sanity, which at the same time threatens his sanity.
This double life creates a tension. We read, “What they would have thought had they known the truth (about the illicit affair) about me God only knows!”
Nine. What mantra of lies and self-deceit do we see in the aftermath of the marriage?
The man claims, “If you were to say that my marriage is not a happy one I could call you a liar and be speaking the absolute truth.”
In Modernism there is no absolute truth, only gray and moral ambiguity.
We read other mantras of self-delusion: “And now you see I am married and everything is all right. My marriage is to me a very beautiful fact.”
We see here that self-delusion has no limits. We should be afraid of ourselves, very, very afraid.
This pessimistic view of humans incapable of knowing the truth and being full of self-deception is part of Modernism, which rejected the idea that religion could bring us to the light and truth. That, too, is a form of self-deceit in the Modernistic worldview.
Essay Two: The Best American Short Stories
Using the principles of literary analysis for writing paragraphs and thesis statements, develop an argumentative, cause and effect analysis, or extended definition thesis that addresses one or more of the assigned short stories.
When we write literary analysis, we choose on a theme and then we take that theme and convert it into a specific thesis statement.
Sample Approach for "The Other Woman": Developing a thesis for the theme of Modernism
The Modernism evident in "The Other Woman" explains our unhinged condition resulting from _______________, __________________, __________________, and ____________________.
Two things you need to know to write the above thesis:
One. What does it mean to be unhinged? (compulsive, beholden to Dionysian forces with no Apollonian counterbalance, no self-knowledge, beholden to a fictitious grandiose self that makes one blind to one's real self, no metacognition; the self is divided so that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and vice versa.)
Two. What are 4 major causes of the man's unhinged state in the story?
Sample Approach for Studying Demands of Marriage in the Story
In the powerful short story "The Other Woman," when we examine the man's needs for a woman we see that those needs represent Universal Man and that those needs are impossible, rendering most marriages doomed to misery, evidenced by __________________, __________________, ___________________, and ______________.
What You Need to Know
How is the man's needs in a woman both universal to most men, and how do those needs place impossible demands on women? Some of man's "needs" include trophy wife, Eros, Mom, upper class status and privilege, life coach, life manager, etc.
Another Thesis Approach: How Dualism Makes Us Crazy (Dualism consists of the opposing forces that make the man a conflicted character)
In "The Other Woman," the dualism evident in the story reveals a man who has lost his sanity evidenced by ____________________, ____________________, _________________, and ___________________.
What You Need to Know
What is dualism? How does dualism manifest in the main character? In what 4 ways does the dualism show that the man is crazy?
Developing PEEL Paragraphs (PEEL equals Point, Evidence or Example, Elaboration or Explanation, and Links)
When writing a research paper, it’s very important in the evidence or example section to use a quote from the text.
Paragraph Example (I've underlined the links or transitions)
The essay "Green Guilt" makes a powerful argument that we must accept the afflictions of guilt and sin, whether that guilt be caused by religious or secular forces, in order that we survive and thrive in a cooperative society. As we read in Asma’s essay, “All this internalized self-loathing is the cost we pay for being civilized. In a very well organized society that protects the interests of many, we have to refrain from our natural instincts.” Indeed, our natural instincts, if left unchecked, would create a barbaric world where no kind of viable or even pleasing society could flourish. A second curse of selfish desires unbridled by a sense of guilt and sin would be the moral dissolution that would ensue as hordes of people would become numb to pleasures resulting in frustration and increased violence. We see evidence of such mayhem and grand displays of nihilism in hedonistic societies right before they crumble such as the Fall of Rome. Finally, let us not neglect to point out that a sense of sin can prompt us to be more disciplined so that we maximize the success of our personal goals rather than squandering our life on the foolish errands prompted by our unharnessed desires. To conclude, Asma convincingly shows us that it is in our best interests to repress our base passions by swallowing the Sin Pill in order to fulfill our potential as individuals and as a society.
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