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Welcome to the School House Books Online Services Public Recommended List of Plays with The Open Question Essay Prompts and Links |
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Critic Roland Barthes has said, "Literature is the question minus the answer." Choose a novel or play and, and considering Barthes' observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers any answers. Explain how the author's treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary. The Piano Lesson (1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama) This work offers a happy ending through moral development. Write a well-organized essay that identifies the moral reconciliation evident on the ending and analyze its significance in the work as a whole. In this play, a characterónot necessarily the protagonistóis pulled in conflicting directions by two compelling desires, ambitions, obligations, or influences. Write a well-organized essay that identifies each conflicting force and explain how this plaguing conflict within one character illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. Fences 2002 Open Question: Morally ambiguous characters--characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good--are at the heart of many works of literature. Choose a novel or play in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivitol role. Then write an essay in which you explain how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and why his or her moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary. |