“Shipwrecks, Getting Lost, and Big Questions“
Along with substantial work on poetry, this section of English 110 will focus on one play and two novels about shipwrecks and the people who survive them. Beyond the excitement of disaster, we will consider the significance of the ways in which these stories of the loss of what the characters understand to be “civilization” leads them to think about some of the big questions with which human beings have long struggled: What makes us human and not animal? What is human nature? What about race, gender and other kinds of difference? Who has power and why? What about God, and is that the same thing as religion? Do we just reflect reality with the stories we tell ourselves, or are we actually creating reality?
Discussing poetry, drama, and fiction, this course will introduce students to the analytical skills and critical thinking essential to university-level literary reading, thinking and writing. In lectures and discussions, students will pursue hands-on practice of methods of literary analysis.
Reading ahead? Choose HG Wells’ creepy mad scientist novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau or the boy and his tiger tale of Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi, or Shakespeare’s classic shipwreck play, The Tempest (check out the “Drama Online” database on the Library website for film versions you can watch for free).