ENGL 200B Winter 2024
Dr. Rita Dirks
Essay 2
Length: 4-6 pages, 2 + scholarly sources
Due: April 12, 2024
General Format
MLA style
Title: signal your paper’s intent or thesis early–with your title.
Do not simply entitle you paper by assigning the title of an
original work to your paper. For example, you may not entitle
your paper “There’s a certain slant of light,” but you may use
quotation marks to include a portion of another author’s title or
words within your title.
Always double-space assignments. Do not leave extra spaces
between paragraphs; rather, indent new paragraphs with the
tab key (five spaces).
Page numbers, preceded by the author’s surname and a space,
belong in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Page
numbers are most easily managed with a header. Begin
numbering on the first full page of text; do not number the title
page. Note: Page numbers, whether in the essay itself or in a
parenthetical citation, should not be preceded by any sort of
abbreviation (p., pg., or pp.)—the numbers stand alone.
Select a 12-point serif font for essays, preferably Times New
Roman or Garamond.
All punctuation, except for the colon and semicolon, goes inside
quotation marks. Question marks and exclamation points go
inside quotation marks unless they belong to the sentence as a
whole.
Refrain from persistently using bold, italics, underline, all caps,
or quotation marks to provide emphasis. Foreign words and
special terms may be italicized.
Write out words completely rather than using contractions such
as don’t, can’t, and it’s. Similarly, do not use the abbreviations
i.e., etc., or e.g.; use the phrase and so on at the end of a list.
Choose one topic.
ESSAY TOPICS
1. Discuss the imagery of the sea in Arnold’s “The Dover Beach.”
2. What or whom is Wilde satirizing in his The Importance of Being Earnest?
3. Wilde’s Earnest is apparently a light-hearted comedy, but strong elements of serious elements
do persist. Focus on some of the earnest/serious moments of the play.
4. Eating is a chief activity of the dandy: explain Wilde’s preoccupation with food, especially as it
pertains to Algernon.
5. Richard Fusco, in discussing Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” writes that the short story is about
self-division: an uncensored account of “public mourning and private revelry.” Do you agree?
6. What is Prufrock afraid of?
7. What is the significance of other literary/biblical works present in “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock”?
8. Who is the “I” in Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and why is he/she different from
the rest?
9. Compare Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” to Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” in terms of
tone and mood.
10. How does Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” use sparse detail to suggest knowledge
and ignorance?
11. Discuss the discrepancy between art and Mennonite culture in Toews’s Irma Voth.
12. Examine the generational conflicts between Mennonite parents and their children in Irma Voth.
13. Discuss the effect of Mennonite shunning in Irma Voth.
14. Is lrma Voth a typical teenager who rebels against her religious upbringing?
15. A topic of your own choice. Please discuss with me first.
