Instructions on How Paper Need To Look:
• All papers must be double spaced and typed in a standard 12p font (Times New Roman).
• Margins should not be larger than one-inch on the top, bottom, and sides of the page.
• Type in the upper left (or right) hand corner of your paper: your name, your instructor’s name, the class and section number (ENGL 1150-51), the name of the assignment, and the draft (first draft, second draft, third and final draft, etc.).
• The center heading of your paper must be a title other than the name of the assignment (for example, something like “A Narrator’s Blindness in Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’” not “First Reading Response Paper”).
• Italicize the titles of books, research journals, magazines, newspapers, and plays. Use “Quotation marks” around titles of articles, blogs, short stories, published essays, and poems.
• Your writing must utilize MLA style citation when referencing outside resources. If you use words that are not your own, be sure to put quotes around them and to credit the original author. This is an essential step in avoiding penalties for plagiarism. Every draft must follow MLA formatting standards.
•
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth Mark” (211-225 =15pgs)
1. What difference would it make if the mark on Georgiana’s cheek were shaped like a fish, a heart, or an irregular oval? Why (and when) does the mark appear redder or more visible or faint? If the birthmark is explicitly a “symbol of imperfection” (par. 9), what kinds of imperfection does it represent?
2. Aylmer says to his wife, ” Even Pygmalion, when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be” (par. 19). How does this literary allusion to the myth of Pygmalion enhance the meaning of “The Birth Mark”? Is this allusion ironic, given what happens to Alymer’s project to make his wife perfect?
3. While others before Alymar have said it was a “fairy’s kiss” on Georgiana why is Alymar so against this little imperfection that he drives his wife to hate this part of herself so much that she would rather die than have it left on her?
Edwidge Danticat’s “A Wall of Fire Rising” (226-239 = 14 pgs)
1. What do you think the hot-air ballon symbolizes to Assad, its owner? to Guy? to the implied author?
2. The title of the story alludes to a speech that Little Guy must memorize for a school play about Haiti’s history. The lines of speech are rich in figurative language, including metaphors: “A wall of fire is rising and in the ashes, I see the bones of my people” (par. 34). How do the title’s allusion and other aspects of the story confirm that the speech’s image of “a wall of fire” is symbolic?
