Song of Solomon Project Directions

DUE APRIL 14, 2014

Requirements:

1. The project must be in a red or black three prong folder with pockets

2. You must include dividers for each section of the assignment

3. All essays and epilogues must be in MLA format using Times New Roman

4. All pictorials and the map must be in color

5. Include a title page that has the following information: Name, Date, Teacher's Name, Class Block, Assignment Title 

6. All elements of the project must be included in order to receive a grade.

Project Components:

a. Create a movie poster that includes your choices to play the following characters: Milkman, Macon Jr., Pilate, Ruth, Hagar, Corinthians, and Guitar

b. Create a map of the town. Include all of the following: Mercy Hospital, Dr. Foster's House, Pilate's House, Guitar's rooming house, Mary's, Sonny’s Shop, Tommy's Barbershop, Feather's Pool Hall, the mall and beauty salon where Hagar went, and the church where she was eulogized.

c. Create an epilogue or a Chapter 16. This must be at least two and a half pages typed using 12 pt font, Times New Roman, and double spaced. Try to keep the voice and style of Morrison. Let the audience know what happens to the following people: Sweet, Guitar and Milkman, Reba, Macon Jr., Ruth, Corinthians, Porter, and Magdalene called Lena. You can include any other characters from the novel if you would like, but make certain to address the aforementioned. Have fun, be creative, but stick to the feel of the novel.

d. Answer the following prompts using the text:

1. Writers often highlight the values of a culture or a society by using characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of their gender, race, class, or creed.

Choose a novel or play of literary merit and write an essay in which you show how such a character functions in the work. You may wish to discuss how the character affects action, theme, or the development of the other characters. Avoid plot summary.

2. The British novelist Fay Weldon offers this observation about happy endings:

"The writers, I do believe, who get the best and most lasting response from readers are the writers who offer a happy ending through moral development. By a happy ending, I do not mean mere fortunate events--a marriage or a lasting minute rescue from death--but some kind of spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation, even with the self, even at death.

Choose a novel or play that has the kind of ending Weldon describes. In a well-written essay, identify the "spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation" evident in the ending and explain its significance in the work as a whole. You must select a work of literary merit.

3. The eighteenth-century British novelist Laurence Sterne wrote, "No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man's mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time."

From a novel or play choose a character (not necessarily the protagonist) whose mind is pulled in conflicting directions by two compelling desires, ambitions, obligations, or influences. Then, in a well-organized essay, identify each of the two conflicting forces and explain how this conflict within one character illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.