Essay 2

The novel #2 assignment requires criticism. Professional critics write about novels and poems in professional journals.
You will need to find two pieces of criticism using the Gale Database on our library website or Google Scholar.
THE NOVEL YOU’LL BE USING IS “THE AWAKENING BY KATE CHOPING
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/160/160-h/160-h.htm

Use one or two of these links below to find the criticism you will need. If you read The Awakening, then you would type “The Awakening” into the search bar in Gale or GoogleScholar– regular Google will NOT work for this.

LINKS:

Gale Literature—sign in the same way you do to email or enter pc student id number

https://ezproxy.portervillecollege.edu:2192/ps/start.do?p=GLS&u=port19443

GOOGLE SCHOLAR—no sign in necessary

https://scholar.google.com/

YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A SINGLE PARAGRAPH OR POINT TO RESPOND TO,
JUST AS WE DID WITH THE POEM EXAMPLE.

The Novel #2 Assignment is due

April 16 BY 11:59 p.m.

Novel Criticism Essay (100 points each; min. 2 pages total)

• Find two different articles of criticism for the novel or play you read and read these carefully. Criticism is available on Gale and Proquest. Other criticism is ok as long as it is college level.

• Evaluate the ideas each of these critics express about the novel.

• Choose one of the following options (see examples on successive pages):

Writing Option One: Write a comparative response where you compare the critical essays. Which one has the best critical analysis? Does one of them have an inaccurate or problematic analysis? Respond to the criticism as a reader and literary critic. (one combined response)

Writing Option Two: Respond to each critical article separately, evaluating the accuracy and positions in each. How reasonable, interesting, or valid are the major points in each article? (two separate responses)

EXAMPLES FOR NOVEL #2 ASSIGNMENT

EXAMPLE #1

Response to James Miller’s Discussion of
the American Dream in Cather

According to James Miller in his critical essay “My Ántonia and the American Dream,” Cather’s book “does not portray, in any meaningful sense, the fulfillment of the American dream. By and large, the dreams of the pioneers lie shattered, their lives broken by the hardness of wilderness life. Even those who achieve, after long struggle, some kind of secure life are diminished in the genuine stuff of life.”

Miller believes, like Jim, that immigrants searching for the American dream lead broken, sad lives. Miller’s portrayal, though, ignores Antonia’s character and events that demonstrate exactly the opposite of his interpretation.

Antonia kept stopping to tell me about one tree and another. ‘I love them as if they were people,’ she said, rubbing her hand over the bark. ‘There wasn’t a tree here when we first came. We planted every one, and used to carry water for them, too—after we’d been working in the fields all day. Anton, he was a city man, and he used to get discouraged. But I couldn’t feel so tired that I wouldn’t fret about these trees when there was a dry time. They were on my mind like children. (Cather 156)

This quote from the book expresses how much love and appreciation Antonia has for her trees. Her appreciation for life is obvious. She finds the “fulfillment” Miller discusses in an orchard of trees planted by her own hands, in her children, in having her own place to live and a family that loves her. Antonia may not have the money and prestige that Jim does, but she has a better sense of self. She has made her own goals and accomplished those goals. She may not have the respect of the world, but she has the love and respect of her family—and this clearly more important to her. Jim, on the other hand, is the character with the broken, sad life. While he has his teeth—Antonia no longer does—and he has money and an important wife, he is clearly not “happy” at the end of the book and still yearns to have just a piece of the life Antonia has.

Works Cited

Cather, Willa. My Antonia. The Norton Anthology of American Literature vol. D. Edited by Robert S. Levine, Norton, 2017.
Miller, James E., Jr. “My Ántonia and the American Dream.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Dedria Bryfonski, vol. 1, Gale, 1978. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GLS&sw=w&u=port19443&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CH1420005905&asid=f3b7caac1b3614ea6fc68faa81a19083. Accessed 17 Oct. 2017.

EXAMPLE #2

Choosing Family

In Magali Cornier Michael’s essay

“Choosing Hope and Remaking Kinship: Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club,” the author explores the significance of family and tradition and the impact of immigration on the beliefs, traditions, expectations, and realities as they are passed to a new generation.
Bringing together the mothers’ imported traditional Chinese beliefs and values, especially with respect to family and filial responsibility; the American dream upon which the United States’ status as an immigrant nation depends; the realities of contemporary American existence for its racially marked immigrants; and the specific forms of sexism structured into the Chinese, American, and Chinese American cultural contexts allows for the construction of a new notion of agency that revises all these elements in terms of their interactions with each other.” (Michael)

Michael makes clear that the “mother’s imported traditional . . . beliefs” are understood by the daughters through “cultural contexts” that may distort and change the value daughters place on these beliefs. This type of change, of course, happens even in non-immigrant families, but Michael points out that the mothers in The Joy Luck Club feel they are literally unable to communicate their culture adequately to their daughters and likewise, the daughters underestimate the value of their Chinese experience in an American setting.

Michael also highlights the ways that the fragmented structure of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club mirrors the ways that these beliefs and customs develop, distort, and change from one generation to the next by using sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, examples of miscommunication. The daughter who believes her mother is from Taiwan when her mother is actually from Tiyuan has quite literally lost something in translation. The daughter who sees her mother’s fear but is actually unable to speak up for herself also feels the frustration her mother does, but the daughter is also unable to see the relationship of past to present. These fragments inspire the careful reader to have insights that allow for discovery and reflection in the book and beyond.

Work Cited

Michael, Magali Cornier. “Choosing Hope and Remaking Kinship: Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.” Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jeffrey W. Hunter, vol. 257, Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1100083909/GLS?u=port19443&sid=GLS&xid=72fea25f. Accessed 22 Jan. 2019.