Second Major Paper Prompt
Your task for the second essay will be the same as for the first. That it is to say, you will be choosing a work (or series of works by the same author) that you find compelling, and attempting to articulate what purpose that work performs. For the second essay, however, I want you to address the following question:
How does the text resonate with your own life experiences as a twenty-first century New Yorker? Have you been in a situation similar to the one described by the author? Have you faced the same kinds of challenges? Have you found yourself viewing the world in the same way as one of the characters or the narrator? How has reading the work affected your way of thinking about the problems that you have confronted in your own life? Has it offered you a new understanding or attitude, a new way of addressing particular obstacles? Has it influenced the way you feel about a particular situation? If so, how? Please try to come up with a specific concrete example from your life. You will need to offer a first-person account of your own experience so as to explore how the text is relevant to that experience. Your paper, in other words, should combine an analysis of the text with a personal narrative and explore the connections between the two.
You can choose any author assigned after Chekhov, from Tagore to Mahfouz.
4-6 Pages, double-spaced. Due November 14.