Read Christa Wolf's Medea.

Compose a paper, 2 pages in length, that addresses an aspect of the novel.

The primary purpose of the assignment is to encourage you to read the text closely and to engage the ideas contained in it. The secondary purpose is to help you practice your analytic and writing skills in a highly disciplined manner. Be concise. Organize your thoughts coherently.

1. Identifiable thesis sentence.
2. Topic sentences at beginning of each paragraph.
3. A title - something meaningful, not "Medea."

Papers that fail to conform to these and other standards of good expository English prose will receive a summary grade of F. Spelling, grammar, and everything else you learned in English 111 counts.

• Medea is a modern stream-of-consciousness novel. It offers snapshots of the thought process of several characters at different points in the plot.
• The novel is not particularly difficult. A cast of characters is offered at the front. The monologues proceed in chronological order. Stream-of-consciousness is not radical or even postmodern. It is modern, perfected by James Joyce in the 1920s, and characteristic of twentieth-century psychological fiction. This version of Medea (1996) is structured very much like William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929).
• Read the text. If you don't read the book, there isn't much we can do to help you.

Write on whatever topic you think you can argue best.

• Formulate an argument. That means: "Have something to say." This should not be difficult if you have read the book.
• Support with lots of evidence from the text.

Papers will be evaluated on their

• reasoning
• clarity
• organization
• use of specific evidence from the text

Do NOT merely summarize the text.