Portraits of Marriage

1.Compare and contrast the portraits of marriage in at least two of the following stories: “The Story of an Hour, ” “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and “A Jury of Her Peers.” Your focus should be on the women’s experiences of and perspectives on their marriages, and the marriages’ impact on them. In discussing the stories, you may draw on any of the contextual excerpts found in Chapter 8 (Chapter 9 in the 13th).

2.Write an essay examining how at least two of the Flannery O’Connor stories we’ve read bear out O’Connor’s insight that “violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace” and that violence “is the extreme situation that best reveals what we are essentially” (NIL [13th] 553; NIL [12th Ed.] 508). How does violence wake up her main characters, shake them out of their illusions and self-delusions, and provide them with a new perspective and insights, and a clearer vision of themselves and/or others? Feel free to draw on her letters and essays and/or the critical excerpts in Chapter 7 (Chapter 8 in the 13th Ed.) to help support your thesis.

3.Soldiers (including Tim O’Brien as author and character) handle death differently throughout “The Things They Carried” and “The Lives of the Dead.” Some carry ghosts, while others seem not to be impacted at all by the deaths of their fellow soldiers. Analyze how two or more characters deal with death in these two stories, and discuss the specific ways in which death does or does not explicitly impact them. In this regard, you might include a discussion of the roles played by memories of Martha and/or Linda. In developing your argument, you may draw on any of the critical excerpts in Chapter 9 (Chapter 10 in the 13th).

Other requirements: Try to avoid using outside sources, but if you do use them (including sites like Shmoop and Wikipedia), be sure to include a Works Cited page (otherwise, no need to include a Works Cited page).

Be sure to use at least two quotes from the stories to support your argument.

Typed, double-spaced, 12-point font, MLA style.