Winter's Night Blog

Today we discussed possible topics for our next essays.  Here's what we came up with:

1st Hour Dracula—after exploring various symbols in Stoker's novel (vampires, the stake, blood, the transfusions, lightness and darkness, etc), we came up with several topics from the book, which are listed below:

• Fear of the unknown
• Fear of death
• Good versus evil
• Holy versus unholy
• Purity versus corruption

We also explored the vampire metaphor (life/health/soul/purity/blood-sucking) in modern culture and society.  For the essay, each student will be writing a short fictional piece implementing the vampire metaphor and one or more of the topics listed above.  We will be workshopping these in class tomorrow, and they are due Monday the 14th.  The papers should be at least two typed pages, double-spaced, 12 pt font, header, etc.

3rd Hour War of the Worlds—as with Dracula, we explored various symbols in the novel (aliens, the alien technology, the curate, the hero), then pulled several topics from the work:

• Foreign versus domestic
• Adversity
• Humanity/inhumanity
• War
• Interaction between opposing cultures

Students will write a short analysis of "Book I" from Wells's novel, discussing one of the topics above and supplementing their argument with quotations from the text.

4th Hour War of the Worlds—Using an "invasion" metaphor, students will write a short fiction piece using one or more of the topics above from War of the Worlds.  The perimeters of the paper are the same as those for the Dracula piece above.

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