Essay Assignment

The Catcher in the Rye                                 

Essay Assignment

Directions:  Choose one of the following questions and respond in essay form. All essays must be 2 typed pages.  Use textual evidence/direct quotes from novel. You should follow the conventions of standard written English and write at a level appropriate for this class.

1.  What is Holden’s mental and emotional state?  How do you know? Write an essay that chronicles Holden’s mental state from Pencey Prep to Phoebe’s carrousel ride.

2.   Select the red hunting hat, the ducks in Central Park, or anything else symbolic.  Discuss how Salinger develops the symbol, discuss its meaning, and explain how the symbol is significant in the development of Holden.

3.   Is Holden himself guilty of being a phony? Find evidence that supports your thesis that Holden is or is not a phony.

4.  J.D. Salinger utilizes a unique writing style to create The Catcher in the Rye.  Choose three aspects of that style and an essay that fully examines the stylistic choices Salinger made in his construction of the novel.  

Alternate Ending to Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms

Go to this link to read about other endings Hemingway considered:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/books/a-farewell-to-arms-with-hemingways-alternate-endings.html?_r=0

Amusing Ourselves to Death

by Neil Postman

Read the following piece and respond in on a word document. Save the document in your WFC folder.

Which way do you think we are headed - towards Orwell's vision or toward's Huxley's?

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.






See this passage done artistically:

http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/cartoon-blog/amusing-ourselves-to-death/