Due: Sunday May 5 by midnight to Turnitin.com
deadlines: read
By Wed. April 24 p.80-104 Blog your best question and working thesis
By Thu/Fri. April 26 p.105-119 Blog your outline, thesis, examples, and best ideas
By Mon. Apirl 29 p.120-129 (done!) Blog your intro paragraph
By Wed. May 1 Blog your first body paragraph
By Thu/Fri May 2/3 Blog your second paragraph or conclusion
By Sunday May 5: Upload essay to Turnitin.com (also upload to NetClassroom’s dropbox)
By Monday May 6: bring a printed copy to class.
In class:
Students should read Albert Camus’ The Stranger on their iPads for 10-25 minutes.
By Wed. April 24 read pages 80-104
By Fri. April 26 read pages 105-119
By Mon. April 29 finish The Stranger (though page 129)
Students should stop reading at some point during class and should start thinking about their essay topic on The Stranger and write a blog post from class (due by the next morning).
In the blog post, students should
1. narrow down what focus they want to write their essay on
2. Write their own writing prompt
3. Come up with a working title
4. Come up with a working thesis
The narrower the focus for the essay, the more successful it will be.
BRAINSTORM ideas! Find a Creative Idea for this essay. Make this essay relevant to your life as you detach from Buckley. Find key ideas from the novel that you relate to.
· Detachment, Detaching, Saying Goodbye to the Old, Hello to the New: Meursault says goodbye to freedom, Marie, his old life and hello to his new life. Can you draw parallels?
· Identity: How did Meursault’s identity change? How might your identity (the way you define who you are) change from this year to next?
Requirements for the Essay:
· Must have a point, or at least a point of view, something interesting to say.
· Should be thoughtful, introspective, creative
· Must show insight into Camus’ text, not just ‘find quotes,’ but analyze language and Meursault’s actions, philosophy, thoughts and words. Pay attention to writing style, HOW the novel is written, not just WHAT it says.
· At least 3-5 pages, double-spaced, carefully edited, mostly error-free, no fragments, typos, etc.
· Proper MLA parenthetical documentation, header, first-page info (upper-left corner), and proper works cited page with at least two references (one can be a personal interview). Works Cited should include Camus and at least one other work. Include one other work that we have studied this year (may be a poem) or a personal interview.
· Uploaded with the works cited page to Turnitin.com by midnight on date due
· Do NOT go on the internet to search for ideas about Camus (this risks unintentional plagiarism)
· A clear, debatable point or claim (not ‘each person must decide to what level they want to conform’). Your own clear thinking and analysis.
Essay prompt: Make your own prompt!
Consider The Stranger and what you get from it about any of the following:
Personality, detachment, choice, internalized thinking (the trivial thoughts and sensations that constantly run through our heads), and being an outsider from society. Write an essay in which you explore any of these ideas, or the theme of alienation and being an outsider. Relate your analysis of being an outsider (or whatever you decide to focus on) to your own generation.
--Find just one event, character, or passage from Camus and use it to make a connection to your own world and through it explore in great detail one aspect or idea: Marie’s love, the prison, the funeral, the beach scene, the trial, the dog, Arabs and the French, Meursault’s reporting and writing style, etc.
--If you need a prompt: HOW CAN YOU RELATE MEURSAULT’S DETACHMENT TO DETACHING FROM HIGH SCHOOL TO GO TO COLLEGE?
Other possible topics:
· FIGURING OUT MEURSAULT:
Is Meursault a man isolated from his world, or merely able to remove his bias from his analysis?
(Find textual evidence). Is he merely authentic and honest, unwilling to pretend in front of others to appear more acceptable?
- How is the Stranger’s emotional isolation similar to those in Gregor in Kafka or Marlow in Conrad? Which story is most similar to his and why?
- What is the meaning of the title? Why is he a “Stranger”? (could you write an essay on this?) Is Meursault “Strange” because of his contentment with his monotonous existence, or because he chooses a dead-like contentment with which to live his life? Does he enjoy his lack of feelings toward things, or is he simply unaware or unwilling to exert the energy toward living any other way?
- How can we discuss the character of Meursault (or any literary figure) without struggling to assign him (them) a purpose? Can we discuss life without purpose?
- Is Meursault content with the emptiness of his life? How is this possible? Is contentedness or happiness even the ultimate goal? (Is there an ultimate goal?)
WARNING:
Do not risk plagiarism. Do not click through the internet looking for inspiration. Those same ideas will show up in your essay without acknowledgement, and that is plagiarism. In high school, consequences can involve suspension for reasons of academic dishonesty, which must be reported to the colleges you have applied to. In college, the academic integrity panel may ask a student to un-enroll for one year before continuing classes. If you are in a jam because of time or because you can’t come up with ideas, it is always better to turn in your own work, even if it is lower quality, than to borrow others’ words or ideas. Avoid the temptation to borrow and then present the ideas as your own. At the very least, you should acknowledge all you have consulted, cite all of it in parenthetical citation and in the works cited page, even if the references are to Wikipedia or Sparks Notes; you can’t be expelled for being honest.
SAMPLE Essays from past years:
Judging Preconceived Judgments: The College Decision
The Stranger not only depicts a story that correlates to my life, but also inspires me to forge my own career path and separate my personal educational aspirations from those of my parents. (Brandon)
Albert Camus stated “you will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” Life is a physical sensation, and thus every living being responds to physical stimuli, as demonstrated by Meursault, and yes, even emotions are the mere result of complex electric impulses. Hence life is abiding by a program, one that calculates the path towards optimal happiness. Precisely for this reason, free will, as commonly defined, is non-existent, for nature “programmed” being to minimize any suffering, and because of this we live in a deterministic universe. Essentially, decisions are the result of the inevitable antecedent state-of-affairs. . . What Meursault fails to understand until the end is that one is not truly happy until he actively creates his own reason to exist. (Beni)
Rationalizing the Inexplicable Stranger: the Extrapolation of Meursault
To dispel this misconception, the reader simply has to understand that how Meursault makes decisions is impersonal, with as little emotion and personal bias as possible. Meursault is not antisocial; he is just a misunderstood, lax person who prefers to be logical as opposed to emotionally overrun. (Danny)
Existentialism: Meursault’s Complex Personality Leads to His Purpose in Life
The interesting twist is that Camus demonstrates in this novel is that what seems to be a very different personality is actually very normal and honest. Meursault is his own biggest critic and does not apologize for not letting other people get to him. Meursault is an existentialist; he is someone that does not know his purpose in this world. Through his quiet, subtle, and indifferent personality, Camus uses Meursault as an exploration as to how people should find a purpose in life.
Meursault's personality has an unexplainable complexity. Camus does a great job immersing the reader fully into Meursault's mind; however, Meursault's actual personality and thought process does not allow us to fully understand him or what he believes. (Grace)
Meursault often avoids discussing his feelings and solely narrates his life as it happens; as a result, through his detached observations of the world around him, Meursault expresses how he goes through the motions of life while rarely expressing his internal thought process.(Frankie)
The “Strange” Stranger: Honestly Indifferent
In Albert Camus’ novel “The Stranger,” Meursault portrays the oblivious outsider who sees the world differently than the majority of the population. With a mind uncluttered by false words or unnecessary information, he relies more on his own senses to more clearly absorb his surroundings. Meursault has very unpredictable and peculiar feelings towards his mother’s death and his new love. In tragedy as well as happiness, Meursault speaks his mind with relentless honesty, proving himself to be different than the rest of the characters in the novel. Although Meursault is perceived as “strange” due to the simplistic way in which he sees the outside world; Meursault, in actuality, has the most pure and untainted view of the universe because of the absence of lies and tricks in his observances and actions.
Meursault’s lack of emotion over the death of his mother and, eventually, his own death, may seem unimaginable; however, the reader can also perceive his actions as noble, as he does not act in a certain way solely dependent on how others might perceive him. (Lauren)
Is the point of the novel to make a character so extremely unrelateable that he is impossible to understand? It might be, because a vast plethora of mixed behavior makes Meursault hard to read, but is Meursault really such an outcast? Yes. He really is. He seems so uninterested in satisfying anyone including himself that he does not care even when he goes to jail. No average reader can grasp the concept that Meursault did not even fight to keep himself out of jail, and it makes him so distant and unrelateable to the reader. But perhaps Meursault is so human that he is lost in the world and cannot find any traction to plant his feet and stand up for something, anything. Meursault is lost and he is afraid to be found and become part of society because he sees no reason in looking at life in any other way than an emotionless practical way. (Michael)
