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Public Recommended List of Novels with
Open Question Essay Prompts and Links 
George Eliot
Mill on the Floss    Essay Prompt on a Literary Element:    This novel depicts a conflict between a parent or parental figure and a son or daughter.  Write a well-organized essay that analyzes the sources of the conflict and explain how the conflict contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.  Avoid plot summary. 

Another Essay Prompt on a Literary Element:    In this novel, a confidant (male) or a confidante (female) is used to be present when the hero or heroine needs a sympathetic listener to confide in.  Frequently, as Henry James puts it, this friend or relative of the protagonist can be as much "the reader's friend as the protagonist's."  Write an essay in which you discuss the various ways this character functions in the work.  

Adam Bede   Essay Prompt on Attitude:  In this excerpt, George Eliot presents a conception of leisure that has lost its place in the society of her own time--1859.  Write an essay in which you describe her views of "Old Leisure" and on leisure in the society of her time and discuss the stylistic devices she uses to convey those views.

Middlemarch Essay Prompt on Attitude:  Read carefully the excerpt from Middlemarch.  Then write an essay in which you characterize the narrator's attitude toward Dorthea Brooke and analyze the literary techniques used to convey this attitude.  Support your analysis with specific references to the text.  

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.

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.
The Lifted Veil
Silas Marner


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