ESSAY TWO:
Essay Two requires an analytical reading either Everything Is Illuminated and/or The Road. It must include at least four direct quotations from the text under study. The essay is to be at minimum, four pages in length, at maximum, six pages.
The draft (minimum of three pages) is due 30 April 2013 for an in-class workshop with your peers. This workshop is *mandatory* for all students. The essay itself is due at the start of class on 7 May 2013.
The draft (minimum of three pages) is due 30 April 2013 for an in-class workshop with your peers. This workshop is *mandatory* for all students. The essay itself is due at the start of class on 7 May 2013.
ESSAY TWO TOPICS
1. Analyze the significance of the narrative structure and the choice of narrators in either Everything Is Illuminated (IIE) or in The Road (TR). For instance, how do these narrative and structural choices contribute to or impact the novel’s overall themes, issues, and concerns? This could also be a comparative analysis between Foer and McCarthy's novels.
2. Discuss and/or compare/contrast the representation of trauma in McCarthy’s TR to the representation of trauma in Foer’s EII. How do the writers similarly represent the effects of trauma and war on a character? How do they differ in their representations of trauma, war, and its effects?
3. Discuss the role and the importance of the meta-fictional elements of Everything Is Illuminated. Further, you could discuss EII as a postmodern novel.
4. Discuss the role and significance of the idea of illumination, and of darkness/blindness, in Everything Is Illuminated. What is the significance of the title, Everything Is Illuminated? What, if anything, becomes illuminated, and what, if anything, remains in darkness?
5. Discuss the use of magical realism in Everything Is Illuminated.
6. Discuss the theme of redemption and forgiveness, or of love and illumination (or lack thereof), in Everything Is Illuminated and/or in The Road.
7. Examine the role and importance of paradoxes is Everything Is Illuminated.
8. Analyze the importance of the connection between Alexander and Jonathan, and how it is that they come to write “one story:” “We are talking now, Jonathan, together, and not apart,” writes Alex. “We are with each other, working on the same story” (214). What is the importance of the “novel within the novel”? What connections can be made between the storyline of the shtetl villagers, to that of the storyline of Jonathan, Alex, and Eli?
9. In EII, the character of Didl--“assuming the authority of a rabbi”--remarks that “We must go backward in order to go forward” (37). He then purports that, “The what […] is not so important, but that we should remember. It is the act of remembering, the process of remembrance, the recognition of our past…” (36) However, immediately following these statements, Didl goes on to forget what it is that he is trying to remember.
In light of this quotation from EII, discuss how EII deals with the complexity, the fragility, and oftentimes, the inaccuracy of human memory. Examine, for instance, how the novel’s characters, through a retracing of memory, traditions, ceremonies, rituals, maps, and histories, attempt to discover or solidify an identity for themselves, while arriving at an understanding of their lives, families, and worlds. Are they successful in their quests? Why or why not? Or, write on the role of memory in The Road with these same questions and ideas in mind.
10. Discuss the thematic importance and implications of Eli’s assertion, in EII, that “I am not a bad person. I am a good person who has lived in a bad time” (227). You might also want to consider if you see this same thematic idea occurring in McCarthy’s The Road.
11. Compare and contrast the journey motif in Everything Is Illuminated to the journey motif in The Road.
12. Analyze the grandfather-father-son relationships in The Road or in Everything Is Illuminated or in both novels.
13. Analyze the development of one of the main characters over the course of the novel: that is, do a close character analysis of Alexander Perchov, or his grandfather, Eli, or Jonathan from EII; or, of the boy or of the father in TR.
14. Examine the role of women in either of the novels, or in both.
15. Discuss the role and significance of the idea of “the road” in The Road.
16. Discuss the importance of the religious symbolism in The Road.
17. Discuss the role of oil and gas, and the representation of oil and gas, in The Road.
18. Discuss The Road as a re-writing of the Western novel or a dismantling or a critique of the Western novel. Is The Road “the new Western” for the twenty-first century? How so?
19. Discuss The Road in relation to Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis”.
20. Discuss The Road from the standpoint of eco-criticism and environmental theories and concerns.
21. Compare the film adaptation of Everything Is Illuminated to Foer's novel. Or, compare the film adaptation of The Road to McCarthy's novel.
21. A topic of your choice, which must first be approved by the instructor before beginning to write.