Choose one of the following questions to answer about the poems we read in this module. Answer the question in a full essay being careful to edit your final paper to avoid sentence, spelling, word choice, agreement, and verb tense problems. Be sure to include specific examples with author and page number using MLA .
Several of the short stories and poems we read concern death. Discuss one of those stories and compare the way the short story treats death with the way a poem reveals death.
Choose a short story and a poem and compare the use of images in the two. You will need a thesis stating whether the use of images is the same or different and what difference that use makes in the way the themes are developed.
Choose two or three poems and compare the use of symbols. What are the symbols and what do they reveal in each poem? This will be easier to do if they have the same topics.
Several of the poems we read use nature as a setting in which they can make a statement about an important idea. Choose at least two poems. Explain the importance of nature as a setting in the poems: what does it reveal?
Several of the poems we have read are concerned with decision making as are most of the short stories. Compare the way decisions were made in one of the short stories with that in one of the poems. What do these two genres tell us about decision making and how do they tell us? Be sure to include specific examples.
Compare the language (denotation, connotation, images, rhyme, etc.) of a poem with that in one of the short stories. Why did each author choose the language? What does the language help us to understand about the themes of the poem and story?
Some of the short stories feature women as primary characters. Discuss the role the women fill in at least one of the stories and use two of the poems to assist in explaining that role.
Some of the short stories feature parents and the way the authors feel about their parents. Discuss the role parents fill in at least one of the stories and two poems to assist in explaining that role.
Some of the poems cover current themes happening in our society. Find some poems with similar themes (politics, race…) and discuss how they are relevant and relate to what is happening currently.
**All papers must include in-text citations and a works cited page at the end.
What we Read: Ballad of Birmingham,
Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son”
Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken”,
