English Critical thinking

Possible Paper 2 Drama Questions English 1B

Write a 5-page paper on one of the following topics using the MLA format or use a topic of your own choosing. 

Play and topic decided Monday NOV 9

Writing Workshop Wednesday NOV 18

Final to me: Monday NOV 23   (leaves you free over Thanksgiving)

Choose one of the following topics or develop a topic of your own, you think will hold together for a paper.  You do not have to choose anything I suggest, rather I encourage you to use my ideas as a jumping off point.  Challenge yourself, try something new, and don’t forget, if it doesn’t work you can always rewrite, so your grade will not be hurt.  You may choose a whole play or focus on a portion of a play.

The best thing you can do is to think.  A thoughtful paper is better than any other kind of paper. As always, you must have a strong and developable thesis to hold an organized argument together.  Proof from the text is essential.  Re-telling the play, textual narration, or any form of fluff detracts from the strength of your essay and is directly related to your grade.

Six Degrees of Separation

1. Discuss Guare’s use of a duality motif in Six Degrees of Separation, whether it is in his use of farce, a type of outrageous comedy, and tragedy, and his two-sided Kandinsky painting or other elements of schizophrenia.
2. Discuss the play’s (Six Degrees of Separation) confrontation of the issues of race, class, and dignity.

3. According to Gene Plunka, “the effect of having the actors sit closely to the stage to appear and vanish at will, reinforc(es) the notion that the tale is being narrated as performance art” (Six Degrees). The play breaks fourth-wall conventions, thereby allowing the audience to become part of the spoof on the sort of soap-opera-like plot while simultaneously remaining at a critical distance from its action. Examine the nature of storytelling and drama in the play.

4. Plunka maintains that the play is a lens through which we might take a critical stance toward the concept of Radical Chic, a social phenomenon wherein members of the upper class gain access and pander to other groups they perceive as oppressed. Each of the “victims” in the play sees Paul as downtrodden; first, through his falsified mugging, but then through a twisted sort of sympathy for his need to join their ranks. According to Plunka, “the leitmotif of the play involves the fragmentation of the psyche and our efforts to connect with self and others in a society where we are constantly alienated” (Six Degrees). Ouisa and Flan, too, are empty and come to rely on duplicity in order to fill their lives with some sort of identity. Discuss.

5. Critics, such as Jennifer Gillan, take a socio-cultural approach, placing the play in the context of its historical time period. As a post-Vietnam, post-Reagan era play, the text, “dramatizes the shifting of blame for social and economic exploitation and general societal decay onto a ‘deviant’ individual” (Gillan). Discuss Guare’s comment on the 1990s society in Six Degrees of Separation.

6. Examine the plays comment on the American class structure, post-modern alienation, and splintered socio-cultural consciousness in a post-modern, post-WW II American drama.

7. Discuss the plays connection between Catcher in the Rye, the Imagination and Six Degrees of Separation.

8. Throughout the play, Paul is something of a sounding board for other people’s sense of self. He allows them to see themselves in a better, more idealistic light. Write an essay on Paul’s positive interaction with others in three parts:

Part 1) Dr. Fine reconnects with his family and his sense of social good in his meeting with Paul. How does Paul make this possible? How long does this idealism last in the doctor?

Part 2) What is Geoffrey’s set understanding of the way of the world at the beginning of the play? How does Paul’s visit reinforce Geoffrey’s better angels and challenge his sense of complacency? Part 3) Ouisa is perhaps the most profoundly changed by Paul. In what ways does her one night with him alter her sense of the world? How is she shaken and left discontent by their connection?

9. Many critics have remarked on the satiric elements in Six Degrees of Separation. Satire is the use of ridicule, humor, or wit to criticize human nature and institutions and provoke change. Do you think the play is satirical? Why or why not?
10. Paul talks about the death of the imagination in his Catcher in the Rye speech. How does his monologue show his imaginative powers?

A Raisin in The Sun

1. The American Dream means something different to each character in A Raisin in the Sun. Discuss these differences and how they conflict with one another.

2. Lorraine Hansberry is often viewed as a visionary because of her ability to predict many of the relevant issues to the African-American community today. Identify some of these issues and explain how they are the same or different from how Hansberry portrayed them.

3. Within the Younger household, there are three generations of women. Compare and contrast how the characters each form their unique identities.

4. Critical reception to A Raisin in the Sun was not all positive when the play first came out. One of the major points of contention was that the play was pro-integration. Some segments of the African-American community felt that integration actually was not the end-all answer to America’s race problem. Discuss the ways in which the idea of integration is presented throughout the play. Is Hansberry’s presentation one-sided, or does she raise issues relevant to both viewpoints?

5. Although Travis does not have many lines, his character is significant. Discuss Travis’ importance to some of the prominent themes throughout the play.

6. Discuss how the Youngers’ environment impacts their life.

7. How do you think Lorraine Hansberry’s own life influenced A Raisin in the Sun?

8. Many critics assert that the art of Hansberry’s play is that it is less about race than about humanity. Do you think the play would be equally compelling if the actors were white, or some other minority group? Explain why or why not.

American Beauty

1. Many of the characters in the film exhibit symptoms of severely low self-esteem. At the end of the film, many of these characters have begun to recover – to like themselves and their lives. Pick one such character and explain why his or her feelings undergo this dramatic transformation.

2. The film’s name references the type of rose seen many times throughout the film – American Beauty roses. What other ideas and images might this title be referring to? Pick an idea or image of “American beauty” that you consider relevant and explain how it relates to the film. Be sure to cite specific evidence from the text to support your claim.

3. Why might the writer and/or director have chosen roses as one of the film’s primary symbols? What ideas do roses convey that are important to the overall meaning of the film?

4. To what extent do you agree that films, and this film in particular offer an insight into society (past or present)?

5. Films are often more than what they appear to be. The film American Beauty not only invites the viewer to look closer at its symbolism, but also draws the viewer into its symbolism, whether the viewer chooses to look or not. In the film, motifs such as roses discover a new symbolic purpose, lighting opens a new realm of understanding, and photographs are no longer snapshots of times once lived, but windows into the inner workings of family dysfunction. American Beauty captures its viewer in a world of symbolism and representation, which enhance not only the understanding of the film, but of life itself. Discuss.