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Guidelines

Please choose ONE of the following critical lenses and apply it to THREE of the works we read/viewed and discussed listed above.
Follow all the guidelines for a proper critical lens essay. Be sure to

• Provide a valid interpretation of the critical lens that clearly establishes the criteria for analysis. Your thesis should indicate whether you agree or disagree with the statement as you have interpreted it without using “I.” It is possible to have some of the works agree and others disagree: this would be a compare & contrast.

• Choose three works we discussed that you believe best support your opinion.

• Use the criteria suggested by the critical lens to analyze the works you have chosen

• Avoid plot summary. Instead, use specific references to appropriate literary elements (for example: theme, characterization, setting, point of view, symbolism) to develop your analysis

• Organize your ideas in a unified and coherent manner

• Specify the titles and authors of the literature you choose

Speak comparatively in your writing. Your task is to analyze three of the works through one thesis and compare them to each other through a controlling idea.
While you are not required to quote directly from the text [although you certainly may!], you are expected to utilize specific details and literary analysis from the works to support your thesis.
Observe the rules of proper spelling and grammar.
You may bring a 3x5 index card (no bigger) to the final; however, only notes and/or an outline are permitted on the index card. You are NOT permitted to bring in a partially or completed essay on the index card. I will check and collect the index cards.

Topics

1. End of the World

“The purpose of the writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” – Bernard Malamud

"This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper." -- TS Eliot

"Every end is a new beginning." – Proverb

"It's never over ‘til it's over" – American Proverb

2. Man & Nature

“Generations come and go, but the earth abides.” – Book of Ecclesiastes, The Bible

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure. -The Matrix (1999)

3. Thoughts about Time

The ouroboros has several meanings interwoven into it. Foremost is the symbolism of the serpent biting, devouring, eating its own tail. This symbolizes the cyclic Nature of the Universe: creation out of destruction, Life out of Death. The ouroboros eats its own tail to sustain its life, in an eternal cycle of renewal. The ouroboros has several meanings interwoven into it. Foremost is the symbolism of the serpent biting, devouring, eating its own tail. This symbolizes the cyclic Nature of the Universe: creation out of destruction, Life out of Death. The ouroboros eats its own tail to sustain its life, in an eternal cycle of renewal.

“History repeats itself; that's one of the things that's wrong with history.”-- Clarence Darrow

“This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But, it is, perhaps the end of the beginning.” -- Winston Churchill

4. Civilization

“When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization.” --Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill." – Barbara Tuchman

“The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man." – Friedrich Nietzsche

5. Reality

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” –Philip K. Dick

“How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one’s senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.” –Norman Douglas

“Humankind cannot stand very much reality.” –TS Eliot

“’Reality’ is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes.” –Unknown

“Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.” –Jules de Gaultier

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” –Soren Kierkegaard

“The ultimate security is your understanding of reality.” –H. Stanly Judd

“The truly educated man is that rare individual who can separate reality from illusion.” –Unknown