CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TOPICS AND WRITE A 400-600 WORD RESPONSE ESSAY:
Essay 1. How do Langston Hughes’ poems “I, Too” (c. 1925) and “Theme for English B” (c. 1949) show how positive progress is mixed with continued obstacles and challenges in the Twentieth Century African American struggle for equality? Use quotations from both poems in your answer.
Essay 2: How does the encounter with the raven deepen the narrator’s depression in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and is this the raven’s fault? Use quotations from the poem in your essay.
Essay 3. What makes Edna St. Vincent Millay’s description of her love affairs so provocative for her time? Use quotations from two or three of her poems in your essay.
Essay 4. How does close reading change the meaning of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”? Use quotations from this story in your essay.
Essay 5. How does an understanding of literary irony help a reader expand their understanding of Kate Chopin’s “A Story of an Hour”? Use quotations from this story in your essay.
Essay 6. How is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” similar to Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll”? Use quotations from both the story and the poem in your essay.
