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PapersInstructions Choose a topic and develop a 3-5 page paper (double space) that uses 1 or 2 of the texts you have read so far. Your paper must include a thesis, some argument you wish to make, with supporting explication, analysis, and justification. Try not to just repeat arguments you have already heard in class but aim for fresh ideas and evidence. Be sure to cite the texts you are quoting, as well as any evidence drawn from other sources, whether Library or Internet (use MLA format). The paper should be analytical; that is, it should deal with some significant aspect of the writing, perhaps some question or problem the writer raises or some assumption he/she seems to make, and should identify evidence that supports your argument or illustrates your point (and that argument should be stated in the form of a thesis). There are some topics listed below. You are free to choose from one of them or come up with your own. Think of the audience for the paper as someone who has read around in this genre (so wouldn’t need much summary), but hasn’t read as closely or insightfully as you. You can give them a new perspective and enhance their understanding by explaining your reading. Enage this audience. General Themes (note: you don’t have to write on one of these, but these themes and questions might help guide you or spark an idea.)
Possibilities 1. When moving to a place, most people might want to move to one that is full, but Ehrlich moves to one that is empty. Therein begins a series of oppositions that she carries through the book. Examine Ehrlich’s balance and synthesis of opposites in The Solace of Open Spaces. 2. Nature writers seem to oscillate between understanding and wonder, between wanting to feel at home in nature and wanting it to remain wilderness, inhospitable--a desert place. Show how writing about place gains its complexity and vitality through paradox. Can we/they ever get to a point of knowing nature (and writing about it) and feeling completely at home in it. Is it a problem with language . . . ? 3. Barry Lopez has asked: "How do people imagine the landscapes they find themselves in? How does the land shape the imaginations of the people who dwell in it? How does desire itself, the desire to comprehend, shape knowledge?" Can you answer any one of these questions with one or more of our writers? What about the question of desire, especially sexual desire, which is imagined in The Solace of Open Spaces, certainly "touched" on in Desert Solitaire, but absent in other texts? 4. Discuss the "philosophical anarchism" of Edward Abbey as it appears in Desert Solitaire. How does it match with his environmental aesthetics? What is the justification for such a position? What are some of the ethical implications? Does it explain the rabbit episode? You could also write about the times in Desert Solitaire where Abbey seems to want to leave, fade away, lose himself, but he keeps coming back ("They need us")? Why? How do the examples help explain the ending? 5. Joyce Carol Oates says that nature inspires a "painfully limited set of responses" in those who write about it: "REVERENCE, AWE, PIETY, MYSTICAL ONENESS." Demonstrate, perhaps using Staying Put, that there are many layers of awareness to a sense of place and that this response is not narrow or limited. Or, agree with her and show that nature writers "invest [nature] with great gobs of resonance and meaning," as a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review recently stated. He writes, "it seems as if writers colonize nature with their ideas and rhetoric, building structures of meaning as relentlessly as developers build ski resorts and condominiums." For additional help, see the Guidelines for Writing Papers |
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