List of Literary Works PROMPT 1. Interpre.docx

List of Literary Works
PROMPT 1.
“Interpreter of Maladies” (Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999)
“What You Pawn, I Will Redeem” (Sherman Alexie, 2003)
“We Came All the Way from Cuba so You Could Dress Like
This?” (Achy Obejas, 1994)
“The Things They Carried” (Tim O’Brien, 1990) - 5.4 in
Journey into Literature
PROMPT 2.
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (Gabriel García
Marquez, 1955)
“A Hunger Artist” (Franz Kafka, 1924) – 7.5 in Journey into
Literature
“Everyday Use” (Alice Walker, 1973)

PROMPT 3.
“The Man of the Crowd” (Edgar Allan Poe, 1845)
“The Things They Carried” (O’Brien, 1990) - 5.4 in Journey
into Literature
“A Worn Path” (Eudora Welty, 1941) – 5.3 in Journey into
Literature
“Sonny’s Blues” (James Baldwin, 1957)
http://central-lausd-
ca.schoolloop.com/file/1251955222331/1251955217263/227976
7265736662414.pdf
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/04/21/what-you-
pawn-i-will-redeem
https://latinosexualitygender.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/obeja
s-we-came-all-the-way-from-cuba.pdf
pawn-i-will-redeem
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WD0f_YhxqZO8avsfAmP
tA2ngivbyqwJxY17XdBk2iyY/mobilebasic?pli=1
https://www.deanza.edu/faculty/leonardamy/Everyday%20Use.p
df
http://poestories.com/read/manofthecrowd
http://swcta.net/moore/files/2012/02/sonnysblues.pdf
Primary and Secondary Sources
Primary Source

The term primary source refers to
• Original documents: Diaries, speeches, manuscripts, letters,
interviews, news film
footage, autobiographies, official records, etc.
• Creative works: Poetry, drama, novels, music, art, etc.
The primary source is the story, poems, or play you choose to
write about. Please see the List of
Literary Works to choose a primary source. The source must
come from this list.
Secondary Source
Secondary sources are publications like textbooks, magazine
articles, histories, criticisms,
commentaries, encyclopedias, etc. An appropriate secondary
source to use for your literary
analysis is a journal article that interprets and offers analysis of
a literary work.
The two sources you locate must be academic sources and come
from peer-reviewed journals or
other scholarly publications. For information on finding sources
within the Ashford Library,

please view the ENG125 - Literature Research tutorial.
List of Writing Prompts
For students:
There are three prompts below each with four texts. For your
literary analysis essay, choose
ONE prompt and text pairing that interests you. Then, take a
look at the guiding questions for
the text you choose. You don’t necessarily need to answer all
of these questions in your paper.
The questions are there to help get you thinking in a direction
that will be more likely to lead
you to a successful literary analysis.
PROMPT 1.
Write an analysis of a key character in a literary work. Focus on
two or three key actions of that
character. Discuss the character’s motivations and decisions in
terms you can support with clear
evidence from a critical reading of the text. Consider whether
this character’s actions fit
together or contradict each other. You may also want to
consider whether or not any other
characters in the story are aware of this conflict, and if so, how
they influence the character you
are writing about.

Literary Works (choose one):
“Interpreter of Maladies” (Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999)
Guiding Questions:
1. How does a new outsider community member like Mrs. Das
influence Mr. Kapasi, who
seems to have become bored with his life and his role in the
community?
2. How does Mr. Kapasi’s desire for Mrs. Das make him unable
to understand Mrs. Das’
desires, leading to his failure to fulfill his role as the Interpreter
of Maladies?
3. How do the Das family’s actions surrounding their children
show that their desires or
interests do not accord with their obligations?
Guiding Questions:
1. How does the grandmother’s property at the pawn shop help
to define the narrator’s
desires and feeling of obligation to recover it? Why is it so
important?
2. How does the character accomplish his objective, and how is
this surprising considering
all of the unfortunate events and bad decisions he makes along
the way?
3. How do the other characters--the Aleuts, the pawn shop
owner, the waitress, the police

officer, the other Indians at the bar--each play an important role
in showing how the
http://central-lausd-
ca.schoolloop.com/file/1251955222331/1251955217263/227976
7265736662414.pdf
pawn-i-will-redeem
narrator is committed to an important mission he is worthy of
completing?
“We Came All the Way from Cuba so You Could Dress Like
This?” (Achy Obejas, 1994)
Guiding questions:
1. To what conflicts does the title allude (social? Political?
Cultural? others?)?
2. The first-person narrator switches tenses (from present to
future). How does this create
tension in the story?
3. How is the narrator’s internal conflict (“man v. self”) merely
an internalization of
political, familial, and social conflict?
“The Things They Carried” (Tim O’Brien, 1990) - 5.4 in
Journey into Literature
Guiding Questions:
1. The second paragraph of the story begins, “The things they

carried were largely
determined by necessity” (O’Brien, 1990). Were the soldiers
truly able to carry
everything they needed? What needs were left unfulfilled by
these items, and what in
the story suggests this?
2. The narrator also lists specific items that each man carried.
How do these items
symbolize the emotions that they carried with them, and how
does this understanding
enrich our understanding of the characters?
3. Often a comparative analysis can help us to notice elements
of a story that we might not
otherwise notice. Choose two or three characters and compare
the things they carried.
How does this comparison help qualities of each come to the
surface?
PROMPT 2.
In some stories, characters come into conflict with the culture in
which they live. Often, a
character feels alienated in his/her community or society due to
race, gender, class or ethnic
background. The texts below all contain a character who is
‘outcast’ or otherwise disconnected
from society in some way, reflecting important ideas about both
the character and the
surrounding society’s assumptions, morality, and values.
Choose a text and consider the
questions below as you critically read the text. Then, craft a
working thesis that suggests how
this alienation is expressed in the text and why it is significant.

Literary Works (choose one):
Guiding Questions:
1. What beliefs and values from Native American culture does
the narrator consider
important, based on ideas and actions in the story?
2. What kinds of experience and values do characters share
across cultural differences like
Native Americans and whites, or even between different native
groups in the story?
https://latinosexualitygender.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/obeja
s-we-came-all-the-way-from-cuba.pdf
pawn-i-will-redeem
3. How do the bisexual character, the narrator, and the homeless
characters in the story all
demonstrate and resolve different “outsider” identities?
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (Gabriel García
Marquez, 1955)
Guiding Questions:
1. How is the supernatural made familiar and the familiar
defamiliarized in the story? Is
the angel made more human? Are humans made supernatural or
less humane?

2. How is the tension between supernatural and human resolved
(or not) in the story?
3. What doe the community’s treatment of this ‘outsider’ reveal
about its culture, values,
and beliefs?
“A Hunger Artist” (Franz Kafka, 1924) – 7.5 in Journey into
Literature
Guiding Questions:
1. What is the “hunger artist’s” art, and how does it challenge
the understanding of the
men who look after the artist as well as the audience that
ignores him?
2. Why does the artist have to explain so much about his “art”
throughout the story-- is he
explaining it for others to understand or as part of his own self-
definition?
3. How does the young panther capture the audience’s attention
so easily yet they ignore
the artist-- what does this say about “appreciating” what others
value?
“Everyday Use” (Alice Walker, 1973)
Guiding Questions:
1. How do we know that the protagonist is impoverished? Is she
content with her class?
Why or why not?
2. How do we know that she is African-American? How does
her alienation due to her race

also connect with her education?
3. The protagonist’s daughter, Dee, who has embraced her
African roots, accuses her
mother of not understanding her heritage. Why? What is the
situational irony at the
end of the story?
PROMPT 3.
Consider the role of setting, or context, in one of the works. For
example, a story that takes
place in a wild and natural setting might include characters
struggling against nature to survive.
A story set in a city might include themes of alienation and
anonymity because of the
impersonal crowds and busy city life. Cultural contexts can
combine with both urban and rural
elements to produce further meaning, as well. Consider the
following questions as you
critically read one of the texts below: Does the protagonist
conflict with the setting or have
particular interactions with it? Does the protagonist’s
relationship with the setting connect with
his/her development as a character? Does the setting reveal
other themes and conflicts?
Literary Works (choose one from any of the lists below):
“The Man of the Crowd” (Edgar Allan Poe, 1845)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WD0f_YhxqZO8avsfAmP
tA2ngivbyqwJxY17XdBk2iyY/mobilebasic?pli=1
https://www.deanza.edu/faculty/leonardamy/Everyday%20Use.p

df
http://poestories.com/read/manofthecrowd
Guiding Questions:
1. How does the city setting--busy streets, buildings with
specific purposes, dark
backstreets-- produce a disorienting and confining experience
for people in the story?
2. How do all of the different occupations and “types” of
workers in the city combine to
communicate that no one is an individual person and no one
really knows each other?
3. What sorts of problems do the narrator and some of the other
characters have as a
result of this alienating city life? (Think of the narrator’s
obsession with the man.)
“The Things They Carried” (O’Brien, 1990) - 5.4 in Journey
into Literature
Guiding Questions:
1. How does the story communicate the uncertain and
frightening setting these soldier-
characters experience? (Consider repeated phrases or other
devices.)
2. What sorts of emotions, such as stress or fear, does the
Vietnam context cause the
characters to experience? Give specific examples from the
story, and consider how

these emotions might be “told” to us in multiple ways.
3. How do the soldiers in the story cope with their
setting/context, whether through
imagined escapes or other means, and are they successful?
“A Worn Path” (Eudora Welty, 1941) – 5.3 in Journey into
Literature
Guiding Questions:
1. Clugston suggests that “[t]he setting in this story is in a
particular season -- the
Christmas season.” Why is this significant considering the plot?
2. Clugston (2011) further writes: “The physical setting changes
during Phoenix Jackson's
journey. How does each environment she encounters reflect her
character?”
3. Phoenix Jackson encounters many obstacles on her journey.
To what non-physical
challenges do they allude?
“Sonny’s Blues” (James Baldwin, 1957)
Guiding Questions:
1. How do the characters’ interactions with the multi-faceted
“local color” and
communities of Harlem articulate the differences between those
characters?
2. What does the story suggest about a neighborhood’s cultural
identity and the diverse

life experiences possible, even when people seem to come from
the same place?
3. What aspects of the setting (the neighborhood, the school,
etc.) could be characterized
as liberating or oppressive, and how is this reflected in the
characters?
http://swcta.net/moore/files/2012/02/sonnysblues.pdf
For this week’s written assignment, you’ll complete an
annotated bibliography. This
might be a new term for some of you, so I’ll explain. A
bibliography is a list of reference
works used in a research paper. An annotation is a note about
each work. Therefore your
annotated bibliography for this course will contain the list of
works you intend to use for
your literary analysis paper and a note about each.
This might sound simple, and it is! However, there are still
certain expectations placed
upon you for this assignment. First of all, you need to
understand the differences
between a primary and a secondary source. For your literary

analysis paper, your
primary source is the story, poem, or drama that you’ll write
about. Secondary sources
are the articles you find where another scholar writes about the
primary text. In the
sample essay, the primary source is Kafka’s The Metamorphosis
and the secondary
sources are the two articles that are used in the paper to support
the analysis.
For your annotated bibliography, you’ll include an entry for
your primary source AND
two secondary sources. Be sure that your sources are scholarly
– see the information in
the course material on how to use the Ashford Library for
research. More is not better, so
two sources should be plenty. Don’t forget to adhere to APA
formatting for the
assignment. We’ve included a template and a sample annotated
bibliography to help you
understand exactly what is expected of you in this assignment.
Good luck with your research.

ENG125: Introduction to Literature
Sample Annotated Bibliography
The Annotated Bibliography includes a citation of the source in
APA format. It also includes a brief summary of
the source. See the example below of the primary source:
Kafka, F. (1990). The metamorphosis. New York, NY: Scribner
Paperback Fiction.
The Metamorphosis begins when Gregor Samsa wakes up and
discovers he has been transformed into a large
insect. The story tells how he and his family deal with his
transformation, which a focus on the dehumanization
that Gregor faces in his job and his family role. Gregor attempts
to communicate, but cannot and, isolated and
misunderstood, he slowly deteriorates. Kafka uses Gregor’s
transformation into an insect as a metaphor for how
modern life squashes our ability to interrelate with others and
create meaning in our lives.
In your Annotated Bibliography you will find two sources that
will help you explore and discuss your primary
text.

Ryan, S. (2007). Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung:
Transformation, metaphor, and the
perils of assimilation. Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies,
43(1), 1-18.
This source by Simon Ryan explores how Kafka’s Jewishness
created anxiety about his body, particularly since
anti-semitism pervaded his Czech culture. The stereotypes of
Jewishness did not allow Jewish people to easily
assimilate into the dominant culture, though many Jews
attempted to do so. Gregor Samsa’s transformation into
an insect is a metaphor of the power and pervasiveness of anti-
semitism and the inability of a Jewish man to fully
assimilate. The insect body symbolizes how Jewish people were
viewed and Gregor’s quiet extinction
foreshadows the Holocaust. This source helps to define how
body image, coupled with Jewishness, can alienate a
person from the culture around him.
ENG125: Introduction to Literature
Sokel, W. H. (1983). From Marx to myth: The structure and
function of self-alienation in

Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Literary Review, 26(4), 485-496.
Walter Sokel discusses the concept of self-alienation and how
Kafka’s story represents it in a literal way. Using a
Marxist analysis, Sokel shows how labor, as it is defined in the
story, is structured within a capitalist system
where the worker -- Gregor -- is alienated from the product of
his labor. Therefore, his work has no meaning to
him. However, describing this as a “mythical setting,” Sokel
shows how Gregor assumes guilt for his inability to
provide labor and, as a result, dies without ever recovering his
humanity. This source will help define why Gregor
turned into an insect and how the economic system alienated
him from himself and his family.
Sample Annotated Bibliography
Prompt #2: “In some stories, characters come into
conflict with the culture in which they live.”
Working thesis:
Gregor Samsa’s physical transformation into a vermin is a

physical manifestation of his already
alienated state and demonstrates how his family viewed him as a
thing instead of a son or brother
that they loved.
Kafka, F. (1990). The metamorphosis. New York, NY: Scribner
Paperback Fiction.
The Metamorphosis begins when Gregor Samsa wakes up and
discovers he has been transformed
into a large insect. The story tells how he and his family deal
with his transformation, which a
focus on the dehumanization that Gregor faces in his job and his
family role. Gregor attempts to
communicate, but cannot and, isolated and misunderstood, he
slowly deteriorates. Kafka uses
Gregor’s transformation into an insect as a metaphor for how
modern life squashes our ability to
interrelate with others and create meaning in our lives.
Ryan, S. (2007). Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung:
Transformation, metaphor, and the perils of
assimilation. Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 43(1), 1-
18.

This source by Simon Ryan explores how Kafka’s Jewishness
created anxiety about his body,
particularly since anti-Semitism pervaded his Czech culture.
The stereotypes of Jewishness did
not allow Jewish people to easily assimilate into the dominant
culture, though many Jews
attempted to do so. Gregor Samsa’s transformation into an
insect is a metaphor of the power and
pervasiveness of anti-Semitism and the inability of a Jewish
man to fully assimilate. The insect
2
body symbolizes how Jewish people were viewed and Gregor’s
quiet extinction foreshadows the
Holocaust. This source helps to define how body image, coupled
with Jewishness, can alienate a
person from the culture around him.
Sokel, W. H. (1983). From Marx to myth: The structure and
function of self-alienation in
Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Literary Review, 26(4), 485-496.
Walter Sokel discusses the concept of self-alienation and how

Kafka’s story represents it in a
literal way. Using a Marxist analysis, Sokel shows how labor, as
it is defined in the story, is
structured within a capitalist system where the worker -- Gregor
-- is alienated from the product
of his labor. Therefore, his work has no meaning to him.
However, describing this as a “mythical
setting,” Sokel shows how Gregor assumes guilt for his inability
to provide labor and, as a result,
dies without ever recovering his humanity. This source will help
define why Gregor turned into
an insect and how the economic system alienated him from
himself and his family.

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