Essay 1: Of Man and Beast
Readings
Short story: Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”,
Essays: Loren Eiseley’s “Judgment of the Birds,”Charles Darwin’s “The Struggle for Existence” from The Origin of Species, and Frederick Nietzsche’s “Existentialism.”
Poetry: “Naming of the Parts” by Henry Reed, “Hedgehog” by Paul Muldoon, “A Work of Artifice” by Marge Piercy, “I dreaded that first Robin, so” and ‘” ‘Nature’ is what we see,” by Emily Dickinson, “Snake” by D.H. Lawrence, “The Universe” by May Swenson (823).
In-Class Writing about Readings
In-class writing on “The Metamorphosis”
Difficult as the story may seem, identify five or six details that struck you as interestingly related as you read the story. Describe these details (use short quotes as you do this) not as a list but as part of an essay. Then, write down what inferences you can make from these details. What hypothesis can you draw from putting these details together? Try to focus on Gregor’s condition; attempt to make sense of his transformation.
In-class writing on “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story is written in the style of magic realism, a form of writing that fuses commonplace details of everyday life with fantasy and blurs the line between the real and the imagined. As complex and confusing as the story might be, upon close examination, certain clear themes about human behavior emerge from this vividly written tale. What may these themes be? Consider the details of the story that struck you most (quote briefly from the text) and write about some of the issues that Marquez tries to emphasize.
In-class writing on Eiseley’s “The Judgement of the Birds”
1. Interpret this paragraph from “The Judgment of the Birds” and tell us how it relates to the rest of Eiseley’s essay. What IDEA is Eiseley talking about?
“To see from an inverted angle, however, is not a gift allotted merely to the human imagination. I have come to suspect that within their degree it is sensed by animals, though perhaps as rarely as among men. The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these two borders may shift or interpenetrate and one sees the miraculous.”
2. Eiseley claims that sometimes “the mundane world gives way to quite another dimension” for those “who have retained a true taste for the marvelous.” How does this idea apply to the situation in either “The Metamorphosis” or “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings?”
Writing Exercises (Sequence Leading up to First Draft of Essay)
Writing Exercise 1
Choose a short story as the primary text that you will analyze for the essay you are writing. Focus on character development, symbolism, and any other aspect you find worthy of analysis. Your writing should try to get to a interesting idea about the story by examining specific parts of the text that serve as evidence. Make sure you quote directly to support your points.
Limit yourself to two pages.
Writing Exercise 2
Now you must explore the connection or pattern of ideas that you believe brings two texts together: a short story and an essay. Look deeper into this connection by reflecting upon specific aspects of the pieces. The goal of your essay is to develop an IDEA about the relationship between humans and the natural world. What idea have these chosen texts led you to consider? Think of a new, perhaps different, idea that readings these texts have gotten you thinking about.
Here are some questions you may consider:
1. What does Gregor Samsa’s transformation symbolize? How does it represent a struggle for existence? At what levels does Samsa struggle to survive?
2. Who exactly is the very old man with enormous wings? Use specific details from the short story to support your argument. What is the man’s purpose in the story and what does his struggle represent?
3. What is miraculous about the the presence of the old man?
4. How does Marquez employ irony to convey his message? How does this message resonate with the essays you’ve read?
5. Eiseley claims that sometimes “the mundane world gives way to quite another dimension” for those “who have retained a true taste for the marvelous.” How does this idea apply to the situation in either “The Metamorphosis” or “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings?”
Limit yourself to two pages.
Writing Exercise 3
Select a poem whose ideas provide evidence for the essay you are writing. For this assignment choose a quote or two from the poem and write a page reflecting on the relevance of the quotes to the ideas you’re developing.
First Draft
In this essay I expect you to explore an interesting idea about our place in the natural world so that your readers can understand something new and different about how we interact with other creatures. In order to do this, you should provide evidence from the texts you have read an essay, a short story and a poem. These texts should enhance and deepen your own thoughts and help us understand what you have to say.
Remember that you need to properly quote and cite from the texts using the MLA format.
The essay should be between 4-5 pages and have an attractive title.
Sample Essay from This Sequence
Article that Narrates and Explains the Sequence
–Gita DasBender