Essay Guidelines: Modern Drama

Modern Drama Essay Guidelines Assignment This critical writing assignment asks you to discuss any one or two of the plays on the syllabus. The topic is up to you to choose, though it is important that you do more than rehash class discussion. Given the length of the essay, you should focus on a topic that doesn’t demand extensive background information, but instead allows you to make a clear, compelling thesis claim and support it with textual evidence efficiently. Incorporate one secondary source (book chapter or scholarly article) into your discussion and document it, as well as your primary source/s, using MLA style. Submit your essay as a pdf document via Blackboard on or before 11/23 at 11:59 PM. Format 3-5 pages, typed, double-spaced, using MLA style for documentation and formatting. Refer to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, or to the Purdue Univ. OWL (Online Writing Lab) at , for additional information. Topics Feel free to develop your own topic or to use of the prompts listed below. 1. Moving up: Discuss the representation of upward mobility. In what terms is mobility evaluated? Who succeeds, who fails, and why? Does the play critique upward mobility (as unachievable ideal, as unethical, as distraction from more meaningful experiences), or does it promote the importance of moving up? 2. Acting out: Discuss the representation of performance. What is the purpose of acting, assuming a new or different identity, of trying on a new or different mode of speech? Is the purpose of performance to entertain or pass the time, or is there some more practical objective in view? How do others react to such performances? 5. Ways with words: Discuss the representation of language. How is particular emphasis placed on the function, purpose, or style of particular words, phrases, or ways of speaking or writing? To what uses is language put? How do silences, pauses, and/or ellipses factor in to the operations of language? 6. Individuality and community: Discuss the representation of individuality and community. How does the play register a concern with solitude, loneliness, fellowship, and/or community? What sorts of relationship are available to characters – family, friends, associates, customers? Which characters make individuality a priority, and to what ends? 7. “Bad” girls: Discuss the representation of female characters who resist the Victorian “cult of true womanhood,” which defined the ideal woman as submissive, weak, domestic, and sexually pure. In what specific ways do women break out of this role? What are their motives? What are the consequences? How do race and class intersect with a woman’s ability to affirm or reject the traditional ideal? 8. Keeping up appearances: Discuss the representation of respectability. How important are appearances in modern life? How is the realm that lies behind or beneath appearances conceptualized – private, secret, real, true? Does concern with appearances vary with regard to gender or class? What obstacles are there to keeping up appearances – money, desire, luck – and what are the rewards? 9. Untimely death: Discuss the representation of untimely death. What does the modern response to death look like? How would you describe the mourning process – public or private? formal or informal? emotional or cold-hearted? What is at stake in the way different characters grieve (or fail to grieve)? 10. Modern love: Discuss the representation of love and marriage in any of the plays we’ve read. What are the costs and rewards of marriage? Is marriage being critiqued or idealized? What alternatives are there to getting married? In what ways does marriage reinforce gender inequalities?