The final assignment challenges you to craft a comparative essay that establishes a
point of contact between two (or three) literary texts listed on the syllabus. Your
comparative essay should engage the course’s major theme of bad romance in some
way, and it must make a specific argumentative claim about how the literary texts
differ in their approach to or treatment of a particular plotline, theme, or dynamic.
While your essay may examine one of the texts your examined in your first essay for
the course, the second text must be new. Please note that you are not permitted to
compare Othello and Get Out because Byron and Perrello already accomplished that
in the article entitled “From Tragedy to Horror: Othello and Get Out.
”
You must devise a nuanced argument based on your close readings of quotations
from each of the texts your essay considers. While you will no doubt begin your pre-
writing process by considering and interpreting each text individually, your paper
should have a single thesis that makes a claim about how the two texts engage the
topic in relation to each other. Your paper will therefore comprise not merely a list of
comparisons or contrasts between the two texts, but a sustained and contestable
argument about why these similarities and differences matter. From your paper, a
reader should learn what the juxtaposition or comparison of these two texts reveals
about each of them–as well as about the topic itself.
I’ll be evaluating your essay based on the persuasiveness of your argument, the
smoothness of your transitions, and the strength of your textual evidence. You must
have a FOCUSED ARGUMENT (THAT IS, A NARROW THESIS STATEMENT), and you MUST
SUPPORT THAT THESIS STATEMENT WITH QUOTATIONS FROM THE TEXT. Remember,
however, that quotations do not constitute evidence in and of themselves.
Quotations always need to be analyzed, and I’ll be looking carefully at the ways you
incorporate and analyze the text’s imaginative use of language and form. Remember
that grammatical and spelling errors, weak transitions, poor phrasing, and incorrect
citation all detract from the persuasiveness of your essay.
USE THE FOLLOWING TOPICS TO HELP YOU BRAINSTORM YOUR ESSAY’S FOCUS:
1) “Ingrid, we were never friends,” Taylor declares in the penultimate scene in
Ingrid Goes West, “You’re just some weird freak that found me on Instagram,
and that’s basically all this has been.” In a similar way, both Emilia and Sa’ran
call out Desdemona for her misrecognition of–or lack of recognition for–the true
nature of their bonds to one another. Craft an essay that deploys evidence from
Spicer’s Ingrid Goes West and Morrison’s Desdemona to make a contestable
argument about how the texts explore the complexities of female relationships to
similar and different ends. Support your argument with close readings of
quotations from the play and film & be sure to account for matters of racialidentity, socioeconomic status, and gender (among other potential axes of
difference). Since film constitutes such a visual genre, feel free to support your
analysis of Ingrid Goes West with attention to visual cues–like facial expressions,
bodily gestures, color saturations, costuming, set designs, et cetera.
2) Several of the texts that we’ve examined this quarter thematize triangulating
relationships (between, for example, Clare-Brian-Irene, Elio-Oliver-females,
Othello-Desdemona-Cassio, and the throuple featured in the Modern Love
essay). Craft an essay that establishes a point of contact between at least two–but
no more than three–of these triangulations. Make a constable argument about
how the texts explore the complexities of desire & jealousy to similar and
different ends. Support your argument with close readings of quotations from the
texts & be sure to account for matters of racial identity, socioeconomic status,
sexual preference, and gender (among other potential axes of difference).
3) Several of the texts that we’ve examined this quarter explore the obstacles lovers
encounter when external forces mark their unions as ‘illicit’ or ‘transgressive.’
Consider, for example, Mosquita & Mari, Beauty & Beast, Othello & Desdemona,
Oliver & Elio, and–to an internalized extent–Clare & Irene. Craft an essay that
establishes a point of contact between at least two–but no more than three–of
these couplings. Make a constable argument about how the texts explore the
complexities of romantic obstacles (internal or external to the pair) to similar and
different ends. Support your argument with close readings of quotations from the
texts & be sure to account for matters of racial identity, socioeconomic status,
sexual preference, and gender (among other potential axes of difference). While it
would push your analysis and argumentation in a different direction, you might
want to include Jordan Peele’s sardonic representation of Chris and Rose’s
romance–which the Armitage family appears to embrace–before they reveal
their true, monstrous intentions.
4) While several of the texts that we’ve explored this quarter explore
transformations imposed on characters (such as Daphne, Echo, Hermaphroditus,
and Syrinx), other characters transform their own identities (Ingrid, Taylor,
Clare, and Eve in “She Unnames Them”). Craft an essay that establishes a point
of contact between one text from the first category and one text from the second
category. (You may also add a third text to your analysis if it proves helpful.)
Make a constable argument about how the texts explore the complexities of
transformation to similar and different ends.
5) Refamiliarize yourself with the following discussion board prompt: critic Chloe
Benson has argued that “Ingrid Goes West examines and mocks social media use,
but it also provides a complex exploration of desire in its myriad forms.” Why do
you think I opted to pair Spicer’s Ingrid Goes West with Larsen’s Passing? What
common threads do the texts share? What differences make the two texts
distinct? In class, we discussed how Clare Kendry Bellew demonstrated an
intense interest in Irene’s life: showing up at her home unannounced, inserting
herself into Irene’s social milieu in Harlem, and (as suspected by Irene) starting
an inappropriate relationship with Irene’s husband. How does Ingrid Goes West
take themes embedded in Passing and modernize them to better reflect our socialmedia era? Clare often ‘passed’ as white during her lifetime: in what ways does
Ingrid self-fashion as well? Taylor? Support your argument with details from the
novella and film and be sure to account for matters of racial identity,
socioeconomic status, sexual preference, and gender (among other potential axes
of difference). Craft an essay that extends your discussion board post to the
required 7 pages. Your essay must advance a very narrow and specific thesis
statement, and you must support your thesis statement with close-readings of
quotations from both the film and novella. Be sure to only tackle this topic if you
are confident that you can expand your initial post to a full-fledged, 7-8page
essay.
MECHANICS (GRAMMAR & SUCH):
• use MLA style for in-text quotations and please list bibliographic
references in MLA format.
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting
_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html
• Make sure that you number your pages and give your essay a proper title.
• You cannot be persuasive if your prose is hampered by grammatical errors or
poor sentence construction. Read your sentences aloud: if you stumble, you need
to rewrite them.
• Make sure that all of your subjects and verbs agree.
• Make sure that all of your clauses fit grammatically into the sentence.
• Make sure that your diction is appropriate to an academic essay: not too informal
but also very clear. Your word choice should illuminate rather than obscure your
ideas.
