Please choose one from the list below to use for your critical paper/presentation (due April 19-21). I will have a sign-up sheet starting next week and will allow a maximum of five (5) students per reading. You are responsible for obtaining your own copy of the work.

*The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899) -- Edna Pontellier is forced into a world of mother-women in a male-dominated society. This tale is about how trapped a woman can be in society and how Edna tries to deal with that isolation and how she tries to establish an identity of her own by freeing herself from society's shackles.#

*The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) -- Jay Gatsby tries to run away from his past and tries to be somebody he's not. He tries to shun his lower class background by making something of himself, by trying to fit into upper class society. In doing so, he falls in love with Daisy, but Gatsby finds that no one can really outrun his or her past. In the end, that past catches up to him, and he never does truly belong.

*The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926) -- This story is a classic Lost Generation tale. A small group of expatriates have had their lives torn apart by the devastation of World War I, and they travel across France and into Spain to witness bullfights at Pamplona, trying to find some hope in a disjointed world. The main character, Jake, tries to make sense of everything.

*Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller (1949) -- This play is the story of a salesman, Willy Loman, merely trying to be a well-liked good guy and trying to be a good provider for his family. He ends up becoming delusional and isolating himself from his wife and sons thus creating an early version of a dysfunctional family. #

*On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957) -- This novel is a classic of the Beat Generation. The main character wanders throughout America, searching for something, always constantly moving, always on the go, in this jazz/drug-induced vision of life.

*To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960) -- This story is a tale of a young Southern girl, Scout Finch, coming of age in a racially divided Southern small-town. Her father defends a "Negro" against a poor, trashy white family, and ends up suffering for standing up for what he feels is the right thing to do.

*Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1969) -- Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time, moving to and from the fire-bombing in Dresden during World War II, to a "normal" Midwestern life in Ilium, New York, and to a zoo as a "human" exhibit on the planet Tralfamadore. The novel really deals with coming to terms with the atrocities witnessed in World War II.

*Deliverance by James Dickey 1970) -- Four men decide to shoot the rapids of a river that will soon become a part of the flooded Tennessee Valley Authority system in what seems like a harmless, enjoyable canoe trip but they find themselves dealing with backwoods mountain men and must depend on each other to survive. They are really struggling with reversion to the primitive and having to depend on manly courage and nature which leads to a self discovery in the narrator.

#--In your textbook