EN12i: Texts & Contexts II

Second Essay Assignment

The second essay, on Romeo and Juliet and/or Othello, is due at the beginning of class on Monday, March 14. The paper should be about 5-6 pages long. Here are some suggested topics for the essay:

• Is love a benevolent force in Romeo and Juliet? Does it work to oppose or ameliorate hatred and violence? Or is it a chaotic and dangerous force that ignites violent passion and that society is at least partly justified in trying to contain and regulate? Stake out a position on how love is presented and operates in the play and defend it with evidence from the text.
• Are Romeo and Juliet truly in love? Do they act properly, or should we disapprove of their behavior? Should we root for the young lovers, or for those who try to control their impulsive actions? Define a clear argument and justify it with specific evidence from the text.
• Write about gender in Romeo and Juliet. Does Juliet approach love and passion differently than Romeo does, and if so, how and why? Or, does gender—the social construction of acceptable behavior for men and women—explain the way the men and boys in the play act, including the violence?
• Do Romeo and Juliet use language differently? If so, how and why, and what might it suggest about the language of love, and of poetry?
• Compare a character in Romeo and Juliet to a character in Othello. For instance, you could compare Juliet to Desdemona: which is the more strong or positive depiction of a woman, as daughter, lover, or wife? Or compare Romeo and Othello as romantic idealists. Or compare Juliet’s nurse to Emilia.
• Othello is remarkable among Shakespeare's plays for the continuity of its action and for its persistent attention to a relatively small number of major characters. In such a play, we are constantly made aware of the contrasts between specific characters, as well as they ways that they echo each other in their thoughts and actions. In your essay, compare and contrast any two characters from the play. The possible combinations are nearly limitless, but many are particularly inviting: Desdemona and Emilia; Roderigo and Cassio; Cassio and Iago; Othello and Brabantio.
• Emilia says of men and women, “They are all but stomachs, and we all but food./ They eat us hungerly, and when they are full/ They belch us” (3.4.106-108). Write on the depiction of gender in Othello. Consider how women are seen by both male and female characters, how the various male characters understand and treat women, and how ideas of gender shape the characters’ actions. On the other hand, “male” is a gender, too. You might choose to write about how the actions of male characters are influenced by certain ideas of masculinity.
• Write about race in Othello. Pay particular attention to the character of Othello: how he is depicted as more or less different and foreign by different characters in different portions of the play; how he sees his own place in Venetian society; how his own understanding of race and of himself changes over the course of the play.
• In his final speech (Act 5, Scene 2, lines 348-366), Othello tells the gathered Venetians (and the audience) how he thinks he should be remembered; it is as if he is writing his own epitaph. How accurate is this epitaph? How well does Othello understand himself in the end? Compare this speech to we see of Othello in the rest of the play, and write an essay on Othello’s character and the degree to which he has or attains self-knowledge.

For class on Thursday, March 10, bring a thesis for your essay. This thesis should be typed and should be stated as a single, complete sentence. The thesis of the essay is the one, central idea that you want to convince the reader of. A good thesis is one that can be proven (that is, there is objective evidence in the texts to support it) and that needs to be proven (that is, it is not obvious or self-evident). A thesis does not have to be a single sentence, but it is a good exercise to write it as a complete sentence since it forces you to articulate the single, coherent idea that drives the essay as a whole.