English help

[lady man lady]

Hello escapists, I was wondering if you could help me out. I just started my classes, and I have an English class that is supposed to be self directed. I would be fine setting goals for myself and giving myself a project, but I cannot think of a topic. it has to be English, and I don't want to do anything that is too non-fiction, I would rather be doing fantasy or sci-fi. Can any of you think of an interesting subject, like an author to study or a certain area to explore? I can't really be more specific than that because I really don't know what to do, but it would be nice to get a suggestion that sounds cool so I could be exited about this assignment.

 

[Ziadaine_v1legacy]

What sort of games, stories do you personally enjoy?

I guess you could look into "The Night Angel Trilogy" by Brent Weeks, If I found it before my major English assignments etc I'd use it due to good story plot, none of that over-nonsensical crap of today's modern lifestyles and most importantly, its a good book with good character development.

 

[BlueberryMUNCH]

Dude, study classical era books; stuff like the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer, or the Aeneid by Virgil.
Aside from that, you can also study tragic or satyric plays by people like Sophocles and Aristophanes respectively.

As well as reading some really interesting and entertaining texts, the stuff you can write about is just so broad too; start considering the history of it all.


...Yeah, I'm a future Classical Civilisation student so sorry about my enthusiasm. So...do it sir!

 

[Paul]

Can any of you think of an interesting subject, like an author to study or a certain area to explore?

If you're interested in the history of the Soviet Union, you might want to look into George Orwell's works. Animal Farm is an easy book to work with. Whether that's a good thing or not I'm not sure, but you could perhaps use both Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four alongside Animal Farm. After all, both are about societies of the future and Orwell's views of them.

It would also allow quite considerable freedom to look into Orwell's own political stances, as well as the Soviet Union. It provides a wide area of information you can work with, and for me at least, I'd really like the opportunity to do something like that. I've never read Nineteen Eighty-Four for myself, but you could even use other forms of media and contrast them with the original works.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has a few similarities to V for Vendetta (the film; not sure about the graphic novel), seeing as both involve a single-party government after a presumed war or other incident (Nineteen Eighty-Four's Airstrip One alongside V for Vendetta's England). In the opening to the film, the talk show host speaks of Godlessness and the United States having been brought to its knees. It suggests a world where all the nations are against each other, and Nineteen Eighty-Four has a world where all the nations have questionable allies. Airstrip One changes allies regularly and the protagonist is meant to change history to work with this and make the Party look better. That, in turn, could be bounced off Stalin's cult of personality. Stalin had images modified to make himself more significant in the story of the Russian Revolution. Perhaps the most well known of these images is:

This image was from 1922, after Lenin suffered his second stroke. Stalin was edited into the image in order to portray himself as one of the key figures of the revolution, and a close friend of the leader responsible for bringing Russia into its new era.

Failing this, classical literature might work. I love history so if I was in this situation I'd be looking for a topic that would give me freedom to use history as one of my key foundations. You'd also be able to use the book Albert Speer wrote on the subject of his time with Adolf Hitler, should you have more interest in Nazi Germany than in the Soviet Union. There are undoubtedly more books you could cross-reference and contrast. Off the top of my head...:

The World as Will and Idea, by Arthur Schopenhauer. Originally published as Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, it's a book of philosophy Hitler himself was meant to have a lot of interest in. He was reported to have quoted Schopenhauer regularly, and August Kuzibek, one of his acquaintances in Vienna spoke of Hitler's knowledge of both Schopenhauer's work and Richard Wagner's opera.

The Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank. It's an easy book to work with as well as the Nazi occupation of Holland is fairly well documented. I only finished a book entitled I am Fifteen and I Do Not Want to Die, by Christine Arnothy. It is a little similar initially to Anne Frank's diary as both follow two families in hiding. Arnothy's book is based in Budapest and also travels into her later life as she moved around as someone without a nationality.

Hopefully this is helpful enough.

 

[lady man lady]

Thank you for the help, but I looked at my credit count sheet and I need either some social studies or some american lit. any ideas on those?

 

[Paul]

Thank you for the help, but I looked at my credit count sheet and I need either some social studies or some american lit. any ideas on those?

Social studies would allow you to work with the Communist Manifesto and other documents of political significance, if I'm not mistaken. Again, it boils down to whether history is something you enjoy or not. If it is you could compare the ideals outlined by Marx against the actions of China, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam. Neither of them really followed through too closely with the words of Marx, if I'm not wrong.

I'm not well-read by any sense, but American Literature is something I barely have any knowledge of. You could read Edgar Allen Poe's work, or you could use The Catcher in the Rye. In my own school we used John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. It deals with racism in the United States, and if you are more interested in that history then the book could be ideal. Steinbeck wrote a few other books though, such as The Grapes of Wrath (generally considered his best work), and The Moon is Down.

Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), Francis Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), Joseph Heller (Catch-22), and Ernest Hemingway might also be what you're looking for.

 

[Evidencebased]

Thank you for the help, but I looked at my credit count sheet and I need either some social studies or some american lit. any ideas on those?

Do a project about the different types of vampires in American fiction, and how they relate to changing social trends, etc?

Compare the literary treatment of [witches/women/crazy people/children/gay people/etc.] in early American literature versus modern American literature?

Contrast books about the Civil War by a Northern author versus a Southern author?

Find the earliest American sci-fi author and do a project about how his/her life experiences and the time they lived in influenced their vision of the future?

...Are any of these sort of heading in an interesting direction?

 

[Evidencebased]

You could also pick a book or author who has/is repeatedly censored and do a project on what themes, etc. they have been censored for?

 

[Toriver]

For American lit and sci-fi, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov are two well-known authors whose most famous works rank up there with the modern classics. You could do a project on the ethics of the three laws of robotics or a report on the social commentary and subtext in Fahrenheit-451. Give these two authors a shot and see what you think.

 

[Evidencebased]

For American lit and sci-fi, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov are two well-known authors whose most famous works rank up there with the modern classics. You could do a project on the ethics of the three laws of robotics or a report on the social commentary and subtext in Fahrenheit-451. Give these two authors a shot and see what you think.

Or on the four laws of robotics, even. That last one is fairly controversial in practice, isn't it?

 

[Toriver]

For American lit and sci-fi, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov are two well-known authors whose most famous works rank up there with the modern classics. You could do a project on the ethics of the three laws of robotics or a report on the social commentary and subtext in Fahrenheit-451. Give these two authors a shot and see what you think.

Or on the four laws of robotics, even. That last one is fairly controversial in practice, isn't it?

Well, that would depend on whether or not the works of other authors would be included in the report, or whether you would be referring to the "0th Law". In the original work, Asimov only had three laws, and added the 0th Law later. Other authors basing themselves on the three laws added a few "Fourth Laws".

 

[Evidencebased]

For American lit and sci-fi, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov are two well-known authors whose most famous works rank up there with the modern classics. You could do a project on the ethics of the three laws of robotics or a report on the social commentary and subtext in Fahrenheit-451. Give these two authors a shot and see what you think.

Or on the four laws of robotics, even. That last one is fairly controversial in practice, isn't it?

Well, that would depend on whether or not the works of other authors would be included in the report, or whether you would be referring to the "0th Law". In the original work, Asimov only had three laws, and added the 0th Law later. Other authors basing themselves on the three laws added a few "Fourth Laws".

Doh. Coulda sworn Asimov called it the 4th law at some point... but yes, that's what I meant, the sort of trump law. (Clearly I need to reread those books; it's been like a decade. :O)

 

[SeeIn2D]

Hello escapists, I was wondering if you could help me out. I just started my classes, and I have an English class that is supposed to be self directed. I would be fine setting goals for myself and giving myself a project, but I cannot think of a topic. it has to be English, and I don't want to do anything that is too non-fiction, I would rather be doing fantasy or sci-fi. Can any of you think of an interesting subject, like an author to study or a certain area to explore? I can't really be more specific than that because I really don't know what to do, but it would be nice to get a suggestion that sounds cool so I could be exited about this assignment.

I can think of a few series you could look into. My favorite books of all time are Ender's Game and all of the books preceding it, by Orson Scott Card. I haven't read these but my sister is always ranting about The Hunger Games, although apparently those books are rather disturbing.