For this section, I have offered many questions per author.
• Answer ONE question per author.
• Thoroughly answer each question with an academic, strong paragraph full of
analysis, specific details, facts of the works, and insights into their meaning.
• Please TYPE OUT your question choices.
• No “you” and try to use important literary terms.
• Double-space.
Here are the different authors. Only ONE question per author has to be answered. Pick your favorite and disregard the rest. Please thoroghly answer each question or drag your answer out. There is only 4 questions needed to be answered in total. Thank you!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Choices:
1. How do society, religion, and political parties affect our self-reliance?
2. What disadvantages does society have for man?
3. What effect does reliance on property and government have?
4. What kind of isolation does Emerson recommend?
5. Why should we be child-like and youthful?
II. Henry David Thoreau
Choices:
1. What does Thoreau mean by “for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which
he can afford to let alone? (You may incorporate personal experience for this one.)
2. Why does Thoreau go to live in the woods? What does it mean to “live deliberately?”
3. What is the “morning” to Thoreau?
4. According to Thoreau, why should we simplify and what stops us from doing so? (You may
incorporate personal experience for this one.)
5. Explain Thoreau’s sleeper metaphor?
III. Frederick Douglass
Choices:
1. Describe Madison Washington. How is he a role model?
2. Describe Mr. Listwell. What role does he play in the work?
3. In your opinion, who is the intended audience of this work? Explain.
4. Based on The Heroic Slave, detail the possible paths to freedom for slaves. What path is
more difficult?
IV. Walt Whitman
Choices:
From “Song of Myself”
1. Why does Whitman use his catalog technique? Describe Whitman’s attitude toward the
American lives he wants to catalogue and represent.
2. How does Whitman relate to the earth and nature? What is the grass?
3. How do the physical and spiritual interact? Section 5 is a strong example.
4. Why does Whitman contradict himself? Relate this to democracy.
