According to Joyce Carol Oates, in “Why is Your Writing So Violent?”, “[t]he serious writer…bears witness. The serious writer restructures ‘reality’ in the service of his or her art, and surely hopes for a unique esthetic vision and some felicity of language; but reality is always the foundation” (1829). This approach is in stark contrast to Edgar Allan Poe’s beliefs regarding the purpose of writing, which Richard Wilbur, in “The House of Poe,” describes as: “Poe conceived of art…not as a means of giving imaginative order to earthly experience, but as a stimulus to unearthly visions. The work of literary art does not…present the reader with a provisional arrangement of reality; instead, it seeks to disengage the reader’s mind from reality and propel it toward the ideal” (1785).
Choose ONE of the following short stories from our course-assigned material:
1.) “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury
2.) “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner
3.) “Angler Fish” by Jonathan Sims (The Magnus Archives)
4.) “In the Hills, the Cities” by Clive Barker
5.) “The River Styx Runs Upstream” by Dan Simmons
6.) “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
7.) “Convalescing” by Joyce Carol Oates
8.) “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin
9.) “A Short History of Indians in Canada” by Thomas King
10.) “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker
Sample Solution
