Take home response options for Campbell Global Voices

Please choose one prompt , not 2 or all 4, to briefly, but clearly respond to within 1 ½ to 2 pages.
Please include cited support. There’s no need for either a formal intro or conclusion.
Due: Tuesday, May 18 or earlier

Waiting for the Barbarians

Option A
Literal images of seeing seem to be echoed by implied issues of perceiving. How do the tangible objects
in the novel which are involved with seeing affect the way we understand seeing , more generally, as an
intangible mental process? Please connect one physical example with a related mental one, and then
suggest how and why they are related. Within the novel as well as in our own lives, is there always some
sort of lens/filter/barrier preceding and changing what we might otherwise perceive clearly? Is
unfiltered perception ever possible?

Option B
One of our earliest discussions of the novel suggested two different but equally impossible and infantile
desires, both of which appear throughout: the first, to erase history and the second, to return to the
past. Both wish for a change to “then” that will affect “now” and perhaps also “tomorrow”. How is a
control of the past related to a change in the present? Find, within the novel, an example of an interest
in the past, and then relate it to some concern for the present and possibly the future. Do we, as readers
in the “real” world, exhibit similar desires? If so, why?

Heart of Darkness

Option C
In earlier readings for our class, we’ve discussed the power of storytelling and naming. How a story is
told- its characters described, its events portrayed –actively shapes our initial impressions of that
fictional world as well as our understanding of the timeless and/or historical issues re-enacted within it.
Please give two specific examples of how story-telling /naming limit and guide our thinking when
reading the novel. Does the story ever challenge its own definitions? How so?

Synthesis

Option D
Both WftB & HoD contain similar issues, themes, and problems, especially those involved with naming
and understanding an “other” and how that externalized understanding aids in an understanding of our
own internal barbarian darkness. Is such an understanding of the self endorsed by both novels, only one,
or neither? Thoroughly compare one shared element, describing and explaining both common and
contrasting aspects.