1) What does William Blake think of the English society of his time? Your essay may include commentary on his attitude to religion, government, racism, the burgeoning industrial age, and/or anything else you consider relevant.
2) Discuss the political implications of Shelley’s “Ozymandias.”
3) In “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Hawthorne reveals what he thinks about the role of science in the emerging modern world by using symbols to illustrate the potential dangers of scientific practices. What specifically does he think about science, and what are some of the symbols he uses to express his attitude?
4) Discuss how “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is relevant (or irrelevant) to the science of our age.
5) At the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited,” Charlie Wales has lost his battle to regain custody of his child, at least temporarily, but he says that he will keep trying to get Honoria back into his life. What does the ambiguous ending suggest about man’s need for hope?
6) In “Babylon Revisited” Charlie Wales embodies or has embodied the successful achievement of the American dream of wealth. Discuss the role that money plays in the story. What does Charlie’s unhappiness tell the reader about making wealth an ideal? Are there alternative ideals that you can find in the story?
7) Do you consider “Babylon Revisited” a tragedy? Why or why not?
8) The primary subject of Modernist works is not the outer world but consciousness. Show how this is illustrated in Stevens’s “Anecdote of the Jar.”
9) Robert Frost is the most popular twentieth-century poet in America probably because he seems optimistic to many people. But he is at the same time a pessimist in many of his poems, and not only in obviously pessimistic poems like “Out, Out–,” but also in poems that strike people as optimistic. Looking at one or more of his poems, consider how he can be both optimistic and pessimistic. Or you may, if you prefer, consider a few specific poems and argue that his poems are either optimistic or pessimistic.
10) Gabriel García Márquez’s “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” is an example of metafiction, writing that makes storytelling the subject of a story. Discuss how this story is about the way stories are written.
11) What does “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” tell us about the way myths are formed?