ENGL 432 Realist

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Phillips. ENGL 432 Fall 2022: Short Essay Topics for First Assignment. Due: Hard copy in class on Tuesday October 11th. Send questions about the assignment to: wphillips@towson.edu. Choose two (2) of the following topics and write a short paper of at least two and a half (2 ½) pages, double-spaced and with one-inch margins. Use Courier or Times New Roman 12point font. Be sure to quote at least one or two relevant passages from the text you are discussing in support of your points; be sure to cite the page numbers of the passages you quote; be sure to discuss and analyze passages in sufficient detail once you have quoted them—by commenting on the way in which they address a central theme, tell the reader something about a character, express the author’s point of view and philosophy, or what have you; finally, be sure to give each of your short papers a title that clearly indicates its subject. Please realize that these topics are intended as prompts and suggestions. They are not “essay questions” of the sort for which there is a single “correct” answer. You must analyze and interpret. 1. In “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” Bret Harte writes about the frontier for an urban audience unlikely to be familiar with actual frontier life. Is his use of such things as frontier dialect and a frontier setting, and of such things as off-color language, gambling, prostitution, and violence, “realistic”? Or does it tend toward something else—the comically absurd, for example? Can a humorist also be a realist? If so, what are the limitations of such a blended approach? What does the term “realistic” imply? How does Harte handle the lowly, subliterary status of the material he writes about? How direct is he about them? 2. Local color writers tended to focus on regions of the U.S. that were likely to seem quaint or exotic to their readers, either because of the remoteness, the backwardness, or the perceived “exoticism” of these regions in comparison to the rest of the country. Pick one of the following topics: • Briefly discuss the treatment of New England life as “quaint”—as backward, old-fashioned, out-of-the-way, odd, etc.—by Freeman or Cooke. Be sure to focus on concrete details about characters, their speech, their dwelling places, and the New England environment that illustrate the “quaintness” of local color writing. • Briefly discuss the treatment of Louisiana and specifically New Orleans as “exotic” (Southern, French Creole, Catholic, multilingual, multiracial, sensual, semi-tropical, etc.) by George Washington Cable or Kate Chopin. Be sure to offer some specific examples of the “exoticism” in the story you choose to write about. • Briefly discuss the portrayal of the cruel ironies of slavery and the culture it created in the South Joel Chandler Harris’s “Free Joe and the Rest of the World,” or in Charles Chesnutt’s “The Sheriff’s Children.” Both writers present “the color line” as the chief factor that determines the fate of their characters; yet both also present “the color line” as something blurred by history and by personal experience. Why? 3. Several of the “local color” writers we have read were women, whose protagonists were also female. Discuss the extent to which fiction like Freeman’s, Cooke’s, or Chopin’s lends itself to a feminist interpretation. Be sure to identify which aspects of the story you choose to write about can be read in this way: the characterization; the narration; the symbolism; or what have you. 4. “Local color” fiction is often short on plot; it tends toward the character sketch and a descriptive treatment of its subject matter. For the sake of readability, then, this fiction often borrows from other genres. For instance, Cable’s “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” owes something to the Gothic horror story, just as “How Celia Changed Her Mind” plays on themes first treated by Hawthorne (the centrality of the meeting-house, ministers, and deacons to New England village life). Pick one of these stories and discuss the ways in which its plot borrows devices from other types of narrative fiction. How does this habit of borrowing effect the “realism” of these stories? Are “realism” and a genre like the Gothic (as deployed by a writer like Edgar Allan Poe, for instance) necessarily at odds with one another, and contradictory?
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1
Humor and Realism in “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
I.

Bert Harte’s short story “The Luck of Roaring Camp” is set in a frontier area called
Roaring Camp (Harte 1).

II.

A lot of what Harte describes as frontier life is realistic.

III.

Harte also describes Roaring Camp as a place where gambling is commonplace.

IV.

Harte also uses comical absurdity to illustrate some aspects of life in frontier areas.

V.

In conclusion, combined realism and humor to pin a picture of life in frontier areas.

The Cruel Ironies of Slavery and the Culture It Created
I.

In “Free Joe and the Rest of the World,” Joel Chandler Harris portrays the cruel ironies of
slavery and the culture it created.

II.

One reason Free Joe lived a much more difficult life than enslaved black people is that
Whites were suspicious of him.

III.

Secondly, Joe lived a much more difficult life than enslaved black people because some
slave owners hated him.

IV.

Thirdly, Joe lived a much more difficult life than enslaved black people because enslaved
Black people did not like him.

V.

In conclusion, slavery resulted in cruel ironies and cultures that were detrimental to
slaves and free Black people.


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Humor and Realism in “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
Bert Harte’s short story “The Luck of Roaring Camp” is set in a frontier area called
Roaring Camp (Harte 1). The camp is known as Roaring Camp because of the noise that had
long been associated with the place. Miners largely inhabit Roaring Camp. At the story's
beginning, all of the camp’s inhabitants are male except Cherokee Sal, a woman feared to be
quite sinful (Harte 1). Prior to her death during child labor, Sal worked as a prostitute. Sal gives
birth to a baby boy who transforms the camp and its inhabitants' lives while still in his infancy.
Harte uses frontier dialect and things like gambling, off-color language, violence, and
prostitution to inform readers who have never been to a frontier area about life in such areas.
However, on some occasions, Harte's description of frontier life borders on absurdity. Some of
the things that the writer describes the camp's inhabitants are comically absurd. Nonetheless,...


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