Choose one of the following prompts and write an 8 to10 page research paper discussing the issues it raises.
Fall 2018
Choose one of the following prompts and write an 8 to10 page research paper discussing the issues it raises. Your essay will foreground your readings of the primary texts, close literary analysis and specific examples supporting your argument. Consult secondary, scholarly sources to inform your readings. Your paper must demonstrate a thorough understanding of the question, the texts, and the larger implications of your argument.
1. Love takes on various shapes in Beloved, oftentimes expressing the most powerful and fundamental of human instincts. The novel seems to argue that it is for this reason that slavery is so brutal; curbing, preventing, and stripping people of love is dehumanization. In Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, love too plays an unexpected role. It unfolds not so much in relationships but rather as a mystical kind of religious passion. Explore love in both novels, paying attention to the differences in each and the implications of those differences. Then, explore the possibility of the sacred status of love, how in both novels, this sacredness of love is paramount to survival.
2. Paul D says the following to Sethe early on in Beloved, raising the problem of how his sense of masculinity is tied to being alive, to having a beating heart:
“‘Mister, he looked so… free. Better than me. Stronger. Tougher… couldn’t get out of the shell by hisself but he was still king and I was…’ And it would hurt her to know that there is no red heart bright as Mister’s comb beating in him” (86).
In Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, masculinity takes on a different iteration. Characters such a Luqman, Juma, and Chrïf, for instance, feel their masculinity hinges upon women and how “their” women act (or do not). Explore masculinity in the two novels, how it explicates the destructive effects of slavery on one’s sense of being in the former, and how it hinges upon women in the latter. You may explore masculinity from a variety of angles such as gender performance, hegemonic masculinity, and so on.
3. According to one literary critic writing about world literature, “If being is a territory, we all are aliens, but with the strict understanding that all alienation begins at home, at one’s national home” (Radhakrishnan 1402). Consider Beloved and Girl in the Tangerine Scarf as “windows on the world,” following Damrosch’s characterization. How does each novel effect the sense of alienation, and discuss why this alienation is critical?
Works Cited
Damrosch, David. “What is world literature?” World Literature Today, vol. 77, issue 1 (2003): 9-14.
Kahf, Mohja. Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. Public Affairs, 2006.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved: A Novel. First Vintage International ed., Vintage International, 2004.
Radhakrishnan, Rajagopalan. “World Literature, by any other name?” PMLA, vol. 131, issue 5 (2016): 1396- 1404.
