“Everyday Use” by Alice Walker and the play “Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
- Compare and contrast “Coy Mistress” to “The Flea.” In both poems, the speaker is trying to convince the woman to make love. How is the tone different in both poems? Which one is more argumentative, which sounds more like begging? How do they use argument as poetry? Discuss the poems’ tone, word choice, length and reasoning.
- In what ways can “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” be considered a modernist work? Describe Eliot’s concept of the “objective correlative.” Apply this concept to the poem, and describe how it fits into the modernist philosophy of writing.
- Discuss gender differences in the play Trifles. What methods does Glaspell use to highlight gender stereotypes? Consider the analysis terms covered on pages 1118-22. In your thesis, attempt to state Glaspell’s main purpose in her representation of gender differences. (What is she trying to show her readers?)
- Compare family dissension in Glass Menagerie and “Everyday Use.” What concept of family do the works represent? What good and bad effects do the families create? How realistic is the family dissension? Pay particular attention to comparing Dee/Tom, Mama/Amanda, and Maggie/Laura.
- Discuss the concept of dreams in Glass Menagerie. What is the effect of social class on the family’s dreams? What is the effect of dreams unfulfilled? Apply concepts from Hughes’ poem, “Harlem.” Pay special attention to Tom.
- Discuss the characters and familial relationships in Glass Menagerie. How does the time period affect these relationships? How do these things affect the outcomes of the play (especially in regards to the son’s life)? Consider the idea of an “absent father.”
Sample Solution
As for the Transcendental Unity of Apperception we are never aware of ourselves as the thinker but just the intuitions. All of our experiences must be subjective to this combination of things. I must actively pull them all together as them being a part of my experience. The only way that I can be aware of this “I” is if I am able to pull together all of these representations. In this we can see the idea of objective unification. There is a connection between transcendental unity of apperception and objective unification. When we speak of objective unification we believe that there is a right way to put things together. This concept basically comes from our categorical synthesis which involves a priori concepts. With the categorical synthesis it is our way of putting together intuitions in a category. We must be able to make a judgement. For example we must be able to say this is how things seem to me because of pass experiences. By saying this it would be a near judgement. Whereas a judgement would be us just saying this is how things are. To make a judgement is to say this is how things are out there; how they objectively are rather than how they appear subjectively. For a manifold to be complete the sensible intuitions have to be subject to the category. This is how we can have a categorical synthesis. We cannot have sense impression unless I can bring them together under a unified manifold by knowing they are objective rather than subjective. Any intuition that we have must be subject to the category. We could not have an awareness of one event coming before the other unless there is a manifold of “my”. Appearances are not objects in themselves. They are not just representations; they are separate intuitions therefore having no connection between them. Imagination is what connects the manifold of sensible intuitions. Nature is just appearance. Anything that appears to us must conform to law. We have to complete this synthesis in order to have experiences. It is presupposed that there is an objective to all of my experiences. Without it there would be no way to put them together and I would not be aware of them as experiences. Both the threefold synthesis and a transcendental unity of apperception are necessary to have ordered experience for any sort of theory of experience.>
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