Assignment for the Second Paper
A paper (typed, not hand-written) of at least 700 words (exclusive of quotations)
is due on Friday, October 21. Choose one of these topics:
1. Go to cnn.com and find the section called “Political Ticker.” (Usually the list of
items on the home page has an item that begins “Ticker: . . . “’; you can click on
that, but there are other ways to get to “Political Ticker” as well.) Then write an
essay addressing one of these questions: A. On the basis of the
Autobiography, what would Benjamin Franklin be likely to say about one or more
of the items on the “Political Ticker”? B. On the basis of the two letters by
Thomas Jefferson that are on our reading list, what would Jefferson be likely to
say about one or more of the items on the “Political Ticker”?
2. On the basis of either the Autobiography or the selections by Paine in your
anthology, what might Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Paine say about Bradford’s
Of Plymouth Plantation, Winthrop’s Journal, or Sewall’s Diary (choose one)?
How do you know?
3. Discuss to what extent and in what way or ways Washington Irving’s “Rip Van
Winkle” dramatizes concepts found in Emerson’s Nature. Make this discussion
lead logically to discussion of at least one substantive difference. (By
“substantive,” I’m referring to perspective, to ideology, etc.––not to genre. Don’t
simply tell me that one piece is fiction and the other’s an essay.)
4. On the basis of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” what do you think that Emerson
might have to say about Franklin’s project of arriving at moral perfection
(including Franklin’s introductory account of his religious history), pp. 412-419 of
your anthology)?
5. Think about Emerson’s Nature and William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis.”
Identify something (or some things) that they have in common, and identify some
way in which their viewpoints diverge.
6. If Thomas Paine were to comment on the selection from Chapter VII of The
Deerslayer in your anthology, what might he be likely to say? (Your source for
Paine’s ideas will be the selections from The Age of Reason in your anthology.)
7. Ralph Waldo Emerson has just attended his first professional (or college)
football game. On the basis of Nature or “Self-Reliance” (or both), what would he
be likely to say on the subject?
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