Course Project Description

For your project, you should choose one of the following options.

• Select a character from the novel you have read. Explain what makes that character uniquely American. Please feel free to think outside the box. There are characters within these novels that may not be legally or technically American but are tremendous examples of the American spirit. This gives you a lot of opportunity to really explore a character that interests you.
• Compare and contrast the film version of The Great Gatsby with the written version of This Side of Paradise. The 1974 version is available in sections on YouTube, but there is also a 2000 made-for-television version, and of course the 2013 remake. The choice is yours, but keep in mind that you will need a strong debatable thesis to guide this essay. You may want to focus on specific elements, such as comparing two characters or the varying themes.

• Most of these works have strong regional ties. How does the author connect the work to the region in which it is set? What do these regional elements contribute to the overall meaning of the work?

• You may develop your own topic, but you will need to run it by me no later than the end of week 6.

You will need to incorporate many aspects of the novel to prove your case. Be sure to look at issues such as imagery, dialect, social and cultural influences, and point of view, among others.

Submission Instructions:

Your essays should be in MLA Style and approximately 500-750 words, not including the Work(s) Cited page. As with most academic writing, this essay should be written in third person. Please avoid both first person (I, we, our, etc.) and second person (you, your).

In the upper left-hand corner of the paper, place your name, the professor’s name, the course name, and the due date for the assignment on consecutive lines. Double space your information from your name onward, and don’t forget a title. All papers should be in Times New Roman font with 12-point type with one-inch margins all the way around your paper. All paragraph indentations should be indented five spaces (use the tab key) from the left margin. All work is to be left justified. When quoting lines in literature, please research the proper way to cite short stories, plays, or poems.

You should use the online APUS library to look for scholarly sources. Be careful that you don’t create a “cut and paste” paper of information from your various sources. Your ideas are to be new and freshly constructed. Also, take great care not to plagiarize.