ENG 323 Midterm Essay
This is going to be an essay test (it’s a WI course!). Below are five questions. You should pick TWO of them (I’ve tried to set this up so that you at least have some choice). For each one that you’ve picked, write a short essay (500 to 1000 words, typed, double-spaced, in a standard 12 pt. font) in response. Try to anchor your answers to details whenever possible – adding examples (including quotes where/if useful). You can use any internet resource materials (other than other people!) you think would be useful, but do put in links to anything you actually use in the essays.
1. The 1931 film Frankenstein is (obviously!) an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The filmmaker chose to diverge from the plot of the book in a number of ways. Some of these might have been encouraged by the difference in medium (films don’t work the same as books); others might have been encouraged by the differences in the times when the works were created. Summarize what you view as the most important 2-5 ways the plot of the film and the book differ, and discuss what the effects of the differences are. You can also discuss the possible motivations the filmmaker may have had, if you like, keeping in mind that we can’t actually know the reality here.
2. [This one’s similar to #1, but you need to be familiar with a Shakespeare play or be willing to read a plot summary of it]. The 1956 film Forbidden Planet can be read as an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In what ways does the film cooperate or not cooperate with such a reading? Assuming a connection, what are a couple of major effects that retelling the plot as a science-fiction story have on your reading of it?
3. Ray Bradbury (one of the most prominent American science fiction writers of the late 40s through 60s) said that, “Science fiction is…a great way to pretend you’re writing about the future when in reality you’re attacking the recent past and the present.” Pick two or three of the works you’ve read/watched so far, and discuss how they can be read as “attack[ing] the recent past and present” (defined in terms of when the work was created, not October 2020).
4. [This one might be useful if you’re a creative writer]. The works you’ve read have used a variety of viewpoint types and narrative conventions to advance their plots: straightforward 3rd-person narrative, 1st-person, and layers of narrative-inside-of-narrative (either spoken, or in the form of letters). Pick a couple of works with different viewpoint types. What benefits and disadvantages do you find each approach to have, given the plot(s) it’s used with? For example, how different might Shelley’s Frankenstein might be if couched in something more like a regular 3rd-person narrative (from “Microcosmic God,” perhaps)?
5. Metropolis, Frankenstein (the book) and Guards! Guards! all have settings in which people from different social classes interact. What are the similarities and differences among them in how social class differences are portrayed? If you consider these works as making “statements” about social class, what would those statements be?
