ENGLISH 2100 SYNTHESIS PAPER 1
Heroes of Pan’s Labyrinth, Avatar, & Black Panther
The topic of this essay is open, meaning that you can choose your own point of focus. To save you from possible writer’s block, I include some suggested topics below.
Choose ONE of the questions below as a way to organize your explanation of how two or three of our works could be seen to speak to and through each other. This is an exercise in analysis and explanation.
Be sure to follow my Essay Guide, Grading Rubric, and OWL’s APA, Chicago, or MLA format!
DUE DATE: Thursday, June 2, 2016
Length: 5-7 double-spaced typed pages, 12 pt. Times New Roman font
1. THE HERO’S JOURNEY
As we have seen, the plotlines of all of the works we are studying follow what Joseph Campbell has called the hero’s journey. What does this mean? How do the works you have chosen fit into this narrative structure? How are they similar to one another? How do they differ from one another? How do they fit into Campbell’s outline of stages? How does Campbell’s study of this pattern help us see more deeply into the possibilities of the works? How, for example, do they illustrate Campbell’s notion that “the energies of eternity break into time”?
2. FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION
One of the points that I am trying to make in our class is that the categories of Fantasy and Science Fiction tend to serve as safety valves for what might be considered imaginative excess.
In other words, only when atypical experiences—such as having visions, traveling to alternate worlds, or communicating via unusual means (for instance, telepathy) or with nonhuman entities—can be presented in the context of imaginative fiction can society give them value. Otherwise, such experiences are more often than not classified as moments of delusion, insanity, or (from certain religious perspectives) evil. When such experiences are given plausible origins, such as drug hallucinations or PTSD symptoms, these categories of plausibility usually only serve to marginalize the experiences all the more.
But what if the events and personal capabilities represented in our works were to be seen as real rather than illusory? What might this alternate sense of reality offer us? How might this alter our experience of the stories we read and view? How might this change our view of ourselves and our own personal capacities and access to a wider range of realities?
(The film What the Bleep Do We Know? is one example of serious scholars, philosophers, and scientists taking such possibilities seriously.)
WORKS: The Hero with a Thousand Faces; Pan’s Labyrinth; Avatar; Black Panther (graphic novels) (graphic novels); Black Panther (film).