【英史assignment #2】Heart of Darkness & The Hours (deadline: 5/4)

Write an essay (250-300 words) based on ONE of the following questions:

1. In Heart of Darkness, what does Kurtz represent to Marlow? Why does Marlow want to meet Kurtz? What does Marlow learn from his meeting with Kurtz?

2. Discuss Heart of Darkness as a quest narrative. In what way is this a journey into the self? What does it mean to enouncter the "heart of darkness?" How do the African people and landscape reflect Marlow's state of mind?

3. In the movie The Hours (adapted from Michael Cunningham's 1999 Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name), the lives of three women of different generations are interwoven with one another. Inspired by Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Cunningham creates characters whose characteristics and traits are drawn from the major characters in Mrs. Dalloway. Discuss the major characters in The Hours. How are they different from or similar with the characters in Mrs. Dalloway?

4. If one of the themes of Mrs. Dalloway is about guarding the privacy of one's soul against the violation of institutional violence (be it love in the form of normative marriage, religion, medical-psychiatric institutions, militarism, etc.), how is this theme explored in The Hours?

【文讀assignment #1】Family: An Album (deadline: 4/24)

Write an essay (250-300 words) based on ONE of the following questions:

1.  Compare the portrayal of the parent-child relationship in any two poems in our week 8’s readings, focusing especially on the poems’ tones and themes.
2. What words in Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” suggest the son’s feelings toward his father and his home? What words indicate that his attitudes have changed since the time depicted in the poem? Write an essay in which you compare the speaker’s feelings, as a youth and then later as a man, about his father and his home.
3. Kelly Cherry’s “Alzheimer’s” uses contrasts—especially before and after—to characterize the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. What evidence does the poem provide about what the man used to be like? What specific changes have come about? How does the setting of the poem suggest some of those changes?
4. Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “Green Chile” uses different chiles to symbolize different generations’ attitudes toward Mexican culture. What different qualities do the red and green chiles have? Which words in the poem help personify the chiles? How fully do these words reflect the differences between the speaker and the grandmother?