Catcher in the Rye

Independent Novel Prompts

Catcher in the Rye

1. Analyze Holden’s emotional inconsistencies. How has death complicated emotional experiences for Holden?

2. Analyze the relationship between maturity and reality according to Holden.

The Color Purple

1. What does Alice Walker suggest regarding female loyalty and the relationships between females? 2. Is this book more heavily commenting on intraracial issues or interracial issues?

The Great Gatsby

1. How do the key geographic locations not only symbolize but also shape the text?

2. What social commentary is Fitzgerald providing regarding social class in the 1920’s?

3. Consider: “Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn open her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen to the heart beat beneath” (Fitzgerald 137). Is Fitzgerald providing commentary on Myrtle’s gender, her social class, or both?

Fight Club 1. The novel features all sorts of morally-questionable shenanigans. Taking into account the entire story, is the novel condoning, condemning or celebrating “hitting bottom”? Is the novel as immoral/amoral as it seems on the surface? 2. How is Fight Club/Project Mayhem a kind of religion? How is Tyler a kind of religious figure? How do we make sense of all the parallels between Tyler and Jesus Christ? This will require very careful selection of textual evidence. 3. What does it mean to “be a man” according to the novel? What role do women play in this “man’s world”?

The Things they Carried

1. Analyze the symbolic role of one of the objects a soldier carries in the book's title story. Describe what the object represents to that character and why he chooses to carry it. Support your analysis with passages the text. 2. Throughout the book, O'Brien casts doubt on the veracity of his stories. Why does he do so? Does it make you more or less interested in the book? Does it increase or decrease your understanding? What is the difference between facts and truth? Is it fair to readers that the author uses elements of his own life and blurs the lines between fact and fiction in these stories?

Slaughterhouse Five 1. How are we supposed to feel about Billy Pilgrim by the end of the novel? Do we admire him? Pity him? Resent him? Something else entirely? Pull out quotes that characterize Billy in a certain way to defend whatever response you give. Consider how he contrasts with the other characters in the novel.

2. In the first chapter of the novel, the narrator commits to calling his story The Children’s Crusade in response to Mary’s criticism that war stories glamorize the act of war, perpetuating a world in which wars are fought by “babies”. How does the novel serve to de-glamorize the act of war? In what ways is Billy Pilgrim’s story a “children’s crusade”?

The Dark Knight Returns

1. The novel stresses over and over again that Bruce Wayne is a deeply flawed protagonist. Yet, at the end of the novel, he triumphs even over Superman, ultimately emerging as the more admirable hero. What makes Bruce Wayne/Batman a satisfying protagonist, despite the fact that he is, in many ways, as psychologically deranged as the villains he puts away? Use Superman as a point of comparison.

2. Dr. Bartholomew Wolper represents the psychological/medical perspective on evil: the idea that criminals are just “victims” subject to forces beyond their control. How does the novel lead us to feel about this idea? To what extent are the Mutant Leader, Two-Face and The Joker just victims of their circumstances?

3. The novel makes much of news reels and headlines, freely incorporating them throughout the story. To what purpose? How is the novel leading us to feel about the media?