The sources that must be used are Catcher in the Rye, Rebel Without a Cause, and Steven Mintz “Hucks Raft” chapter 14 for the historical context paragaraph.
requirements:
– analyze the texts in relation to their historical context
– analyze comparatively whichever texts you choose to write about (the paper should be more than a compare and contrast paper, the goal is to use your comparisons to make a larger point about the specific point)
- Your thesis statement should make one or more points of argument about the primary sources (literary texts and/or film).
- In the body of the paper, develop these points of argument by utilizing evidence from the literary texts and film, and by drawing on the knowledge about the history of childhood you have gleaned from reading Mintz (and possibly the de Schweinitz chapter on civil rights and DeLuzio’s chapter on adolescence, depending on which prompt you choose) and from Dr. DeLuzio’s lectures.
- Incorporate a “historical context paragraph” (or two) immediately following the introduction.
- In this paragraph, explain the big developments (political, social, economic, cultural, and/or intellectual) unfolding in American history and in the history of childhood that are relevant to the thesis you are advancing about the literary texts and film.
- This paragraph does not discuss or analyze the literary texts and films. While you could certainly incorporate additional historical information as you proceed through the rest of the paper, this initial paragraph could be very helpful for laying the historical groundwork.
– need in text citations from the works
Prompt: How are adolescents (teenagers) and how is adolescence as a stage of life represented in these texts? What do these representations tell us about social expectations, anxieties, concerns, hopes, etc. for adolescents in the period in which the texts were produced? (Here, you might think about G. Stanley Hall’s dual formulation, which is still very much with us today – adolescence as a period of “storm and stress” and adolescents as the “bud of promise” for society/humanity. Is adolescence represented in these texts as a dangerous period of life? Dangerous for whom, in what ways, and why? Do the adolescent characters in these texts offer teenaged audiences hope that young people such as themselves will lead the way in the creation of a different and better world?)