JB
464 posts
Aug 07, 2003
9:04 PM
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Contemporary World Literature and Film with Julie the Bolt
Writing Assignment Based on Salman Rushdie’s East/West Stories
The goal of the paper is for you to creatively and critically explore some of the themes in the stories by Salman Rushdie. Push your self with your analysis and creativity.
Remember if you choose to write an essay, your next paper will be a story and vice-versa.
How long, Bolt? A minimum of four pages. Most importantly I want a genuine and probing effort, not a superficial treatment.
Title: Create an ORIGINAL AND MEANINGFUL TITLE for the essays as well as stories. Titles can help shape the meaning of a piece.
Staple? Type?: Heck yea! Due when? Week 6.
ESSAY OPTIONS:
1) In "East, West," Rushdie explores the ways in which East and West interact. Discuss specific ways the cultures clash in the stories, instances of imperialism, and resistance of imperialism.
2) Two of the characters in the “East” stories are working young people, Rehena from “Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies” and Ramani from “The Free Radio.” Although of similar ages and roughly similar backgrounds, both have very different reactions to their circumstances. Although both can be seen (arguably) as sabotaging an element of their future, one leaves and one stays. How are their desires and choices similar and different?
3) How does Rushdie play with Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, and how does he subvert it?
4) A major theme in the stories is the fetishizing of objects. Compare the dangers of greed, wealth, and religion as power in both the East and West as described in specific Rushdie stories. (Especially relevant: “The Prophet’s Hair,” “The Auction of the Ruby Slippers,” and “Free Radio.”)
5) Research the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Ghandi in India. With this background in mind, what can you learn about religious and political tensions in Indian through “Chekov and Zula”? By focusing on two friends of different backgrounds, who make different choices, what questions is he raising? What is the larger parallel made to Star Trek?
6) The final section focuses on hybridity – two cultures historically blending, often creating something new. Analyze either “Chekov and Zulu” or “The Courter” focusing on the themes of hybridity and post-colonialism.
7) Many of the stories subtlety explore the following themes: religious fundamentalism, the caste/class system, poverty, oppressive gender roles, domestic violence, the erosion of traditional culture, and the possibilities of hybridity. Choose one of these more subtle themes and find ways Rushdie weaves it in to several of the stories.
STORY OPTIONS:
The goal of the stories is to consciously and specifically draw on the themes and/or styles found in Rushdie. This should not preclude your own imagination and voice, but give you new themes and narrative strategies to experiment with. Stories can be fictional or based on truth.
1) Using “Christopher and Queen Isabella Consummate Their Relationship” as a model, fictionalize the encounter or emotional dynamics between two characters in history. Draw on “history” or “truth,” but also allow your story to take on metaphoric and ironic meanings. Through this process you can reveal an idea about history --- the untold history, or change history through a surprising, revolutionary, subversive, or catastrophic act.
2) Drawing either on your experience, or one you can perceive/imagine, depict a character in a specific situation or storyline in which they experience the pull of any two cultures. Allow your story to “show” the pull through action, dialog, and setting.
3) How does globalism or post-coloniality impact our daily lives? Pick a character, or yourself, and try to show the dynamics you perceive. This would be an ideal way to explore the style of magic-realism, like in “Auction of the Ruby Slippers.” Go for experimental writing styles.
OR
Create a magic-realist story like "The Auction of the Ruby Slippers" that, through symbolism, reveals something about the "character" of a culture or human nature.
4) What happens when you encounter someone who is “the Other,” who you see as contrary, fundamentally different than yourself? Bring to life a story in which “others” encounter each other. The story can explore any aspect of human nature, but try to dig into the complexities of characters, not objectify them.
5) As in "Good Advice" show an interaction between two people of different generations and cultures. How do these two misread each other? How does one subvert the preconceptions of the other?
6) Write a story about the fetishizing of an object or a person. What happens to the protagonist in the process? (Ambiguity is okay!) Complicate it by making place and culture vivid or relevant in the background.
7) Write a story about a character or characters that depicts post-colonialism in a specific region and some of its themes (erosion of traditions and languages, assimilation, resistance, hybridity, transformation and creativity). Read your classmates’ stories in “Who Am I in the Era of Post-colonialism” on-line for ideas and inspiration.
Last Edited JB on 7-Aug-2003 9:15 PM
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