In your second and final paper I’d like you to reflect on your reading for this class and respond to one of the following quotations:
“’I can’t think why anybody should learn Latin,’ said Tom. ‘It’s no good.’
‘It’s part of the education of a gentleman,’ said Philip. ‘All gentlemen learn the same things’” (Eliot 172).
“…as trade was conducted, there must always be a waxing and waning of commercial prosperity; and that in the waning a certain number of masters, as well as of men, must go down into ruin, and be seen no more among the ranks of the happy and prosperous. He spoke as if this consequence were so entirely logical, that neither employers nor employed had any right to complain if it became their fate…” (Gaskell 151; Thornton’s words are being reported).
“We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one” (Dickens 274).
“If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie?” (Eliot 496; Maggie is speaking).
Your general task is to address these two questions:
1) How do the three books we have read approach the issue raised in the quotation?
2) How, if at all, has your thinking about the issue changed as a result of your reading?
As with any paper, however, I’d like you to articulate a unifying thesis and support it with evidence—both from the text and from your experience. That is, do not simply ruminate on the topic in a stream-of-consciousness fashion (though that may, indeed, be the best way to approach your first draft). Rather, select passages from the texts for analysis and use that analysis to support a claim about your interpretation of the issue. Your paper should treat all three texts we’ve read for class, and should be about 6-8 pages long (double-spaced).
I’d like to meet with each of you to discuss your approach to the topic. In order to do so, I’ll have additional office hours during the last two weeks of class, and I’ll have a sign-up sheet for you to select a time to meet.
Before we meet, please:
1) choose a quotation
2) draft an opening paragraph or freewrite about the topic
3) select some quotations from each text related to the topic
We’ll review these materials together and chart a course for your final paper based on your initial work.