First Response Paper: The Jungle
Remember that your first paper is due Thursday, April 16, at our seminar that morning. Because the book is so long and your paper is such a short one (only two to three pages) , don’t try to do too much. You should keep the following suggestions in mind:
Things to attempt:
1.Pick a small portion of the book (from a single sentence to a single chapter) and discuss its relevance to the overall structure of the novel. For example, you might discuss why Sinclair chose to open the book with a chapter on the wedding.
2.Think about the author’s ‘voice’ in the book. How would you describe it? Angry? Strident? Indifferent? Objective? Pick several sentences in the book which support your idea and show how they do so.
3.Look at a minor character or a minor incident in the book and show how he or she or it contributes something you feel is essential to the book.
Things to avoid:
1.Do NOT retell the story; that is, don’t feel any compulsion to tell the plot of the book. You can assume that I’ve read it and move on to something more substantive.
2.Do NOT write a critique of the book which does nothing more than say whether or not you liked the book. The book doesn’t care whether you liked it or not, and neither do I. Your job is to learn to analyze a text and relate it to something relevant to your own life, regardless of your personal feelings about it. If, however, there are things about the book which you feel are either heavy-handed or not done particularly well, cite where they are and speculate why Sinclair might have handled them the way he did.