Mid-Term Essay Assignment

The mid-term essay, due June 20th in lecture, is two thousand words on either a topic of your own choosing (and my approval) or one of the following:

1. With your choice of material from the course lectures and blog, and any supplementary material of your own discovery, respond to Margaret Atwood's assertion that men's bodies are the most dangerous things on Earth by using Rudyard Kipling's fictional portrait of Stalky and Co.
2. Graham Greene uses characterisation in his novel Brighton Rock to represent two opposing metaphysical views in the contrast between Ida Arnold and Pinkie. Analyse Greene's superlative command of characterisation in this regard, with Ida and Pinkie personifying authority and thug respectively for your organising schema.
3. Using the multi-layered representative system that Mordecai Richler encodes into the text of his masterpiece, give an account of Duddy Kravitz's apprenticeship in terms of Charles Darwin's natural selection model of performative masculinity.