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Public Recommended List of Novels with
Open Question Essay Prompts and Links 
Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises    Essay Prompt:    This novel uses contratsting places (for example, two countries, two cities or towns, two houses, or the land and the sea) to represent opposed forces or ideas that arecentral to the meaning of the work.  Write an essay explaining how the places differ, what each place represents, and how their contrast contributes to the overall meaning of the work.   

Another Essay Prompt on a Literary Element:    This work highlights the values of a culture or a society by using characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of gender, race, class, or creed.  Write a well-organized essay that analyzes how the alienation of one character reveals the surrounding society's assumptions and moral values.  

Another Essay Prompt on a Literary Element:  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.

A Farewell to Arms    Another Essay Prompt on a Literary Element:    This novel uses contratsting places (for example, two countries, two cities or towns, two houses, or the land and the sea) to represent opposed forces or ideas that arecentral to the meaning of the work.  Write an essay explaining how the places differ, what each place represents, and how their contrast contributes to the overall meaning of the work.   

Another Essay Prompt on a Literary Element:    In this novel, a character--not necessarily the protagonist--is 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.


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