Brite Divinity School of Texas Christian University Exploration of Adolescent Essay

Sorry for not being in touch for so long, and I’ve only recently begun to reply to some of the Ragged Dick/ Social-Class submissions; thus far all interesting and good reads.

We’re right on schedule as far as our readings go. In fact, maybe even a little ahead of schedule. Both of our next two novels, The Awakening and Maggie, a Girl of the Streets, are not long. Especially Maggie, which is practically a long short story, really. That’s good because if you haven’t started reading the Awakening you don’t have to now in order to concentrate on your mid-term ‘big’ paper.

However, I had something of a POSSIBLE change of plan for us concerning our two “big” writing assignments, so please read this carefully:

You know how in the syllabus I pointed out that your midterm paper must include discussing at least two of the books we’ve read thus far, and that it would involve the same theme, AND how it would act as something of a First Draft for the final paper, which would be longer and would have to include four works…. What if we split that in half? Maybe it would be more manageable if you wrote two ‘separate’ papers, especially since our next two books deal with women’s issues, although Maggie definitely deals with Maggie’s social class background, directly, and so too does The Awakening, but more indirectly. Thus, your end of the term paper could involve that topic (or anything else you see fit to write about.)

My change of direction also involved how ripe the three works we’ve read thus far all involve adolescence, and specifically ‘Boyz 2 Men.’ (Maggie’s subtitle “Girl” clearly involves girl to woman, and while we first see the main character in The Awakening as a woman there’s much in it about her background.) Maybe it would be an interest subject to write about, and, like everything I’ve asked of you so far please feel free to compare/ contrast it to your own personal experiences (since all of you I’m sure were adolescents not too long ago) and observations, along with any other cultural production that is meant to inform us about ‘growing up’ (the title of a Springsteen song), such as children’s stories/ young adult books, books overall, films (a ton of Disney movies come to mind), TV shows (how are adolescents depicted in your favorite ones?), and songs.

As I alluded to above, all of our three texts, Boy Miners Story, Huck Finn and Ragged Dick involve males. Nevertheless, your paper can address adolescence in a broad way. OR it could specifically target what the texts tell you about boyhood. For the men out there reading this, as I mentioned above, you could ask yourselves how these stories stack up against some of your own favorite coming of age stories (Star Wars anyone?) and what is is you’re suppose to ‘learn’ from them; for the women out there reading this you could ask yourselves how these stories stack up against some of your own favorite coming of age stories (Could be Star Wars for you too, especially the recent female-centered driven ones, although I admit I was thinking more in terms of a book I almost assigned “Little Women,” that sort of stuff.)

In addition to, or separate from that, you could “interview” / chat with a parent/ grandparent older sibling about the topic and include his/ her thoughts….

And pretty much anything else you want to toss into the Adolescent Stew.

How’s that sound?

It seems like it might be a fun and interesting paper to write.

You can focus on one of the stories, but please try to refer to one other, and by all means all three, if you can. You could, of course, do a classic compare/ contrast (Huck v. Ragged Dick/ Ragged Dick v. the boy miners).

How’s about 4 pages as the general target length; feel free to write more.

And, again, you can start reading The Awakening if you like, but there is no reading assignment for this week, so let’s say I give you all week to write it, and it’ll be officially due in a week. By all means submit it sooner if you like.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Be well.