Challenging Society’s Status Quo

OVERVIEW

This course requires one major essay in which you will demonstrate the skills of close reading, literary analysis, and thesis development that you have practiced in the Discussion Boards. This essay is worth 20 points and must be 1300 – 1500 words in length. Your essay must specifically address the prompt below. Any essay that is off topic, fails to follow the proper submission procedures, or demonstrates evidence of plagiarism or another form of academic dishonesty, will receive a zero. Please read the prompt and submission requirements carefully. You should also look at the resources in the Week 11 module folder, including the Writing Tutorial videos and the Essay Composition Forum discussion board.

ESSAY TOPIC

status quo, n.: “The existing state of affairs.”

~ Oxford English Dictionary

Many works of literature we’re reading this semester feature figures who struggle against the status quo in one way or another—figures who speak truth to power, who seek to call attention to historically entrenched inequalities, who seek to fight oppression, and who consciously defy societal expectations of them. Essentially, many characters in our texts resist and challenge “the existing state of affairs” during their time, consciously or unconsciously striving for change. These figures vary widely in terms of what—and who—they struggle against and what they seek in their struggle, but in all cases they strive for changes that have implications that extend beyond just their own lives.

In this essay, your task is to construct an argument—supported by textual evidence, close reading, and historical context—about figures from two different course texts (see below list) that struggle against the status quo and strive for change. Your essay should address both the causes and contexts of these two characters’ struggles: how and why they strive for changes, for example, and against what/whom they struggle. In the process, your argument should make claims about the broader significance of their struggles in terms of the societies in which they live. When considering this broader significance, remember that literature itself is often a powerful form in which authors give voice to their critiques of society.

POSSIBLE TEXTS 

Choose two texts from the list below

Note: You can only choose one text from each bullet point. This means you cannot write about both Arabian Nights and “Barn Burning,” for example; your two texts need to be from two different bullet points.

• Arabian Nights OR William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”
• WWI poetry by Wilfred Owen assigned in week 4 (you must focus on one poem, though you may mention other poems)
• William Shakespeare’s Othello
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The American Embassy”
• Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa
• Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place
• Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi

GETTING STARTED 

You should choose two texts that speak to one another in a meaningful way. You could, for example, choose two texts in which figures struggle against similar aspects of the status quo of their respective societies, analyze two figures whose emotional response to their struggle is similar, or choose figures who face similar consequences because of their struggle. You might, on the other hand, choose texts in which there are some similarities between the characters, but also meaningful differences.

Your most important goal should be to choose two texts that will allow you to bring the unique dimensions of each text into sharper focus. Finding meaningful connections between the two texts you choose will allow you to construct an essay that aims at true synthesis and will allow you to make an argument that is more sophisticated than a simple compare and contrast essay.

General questions to think about as you choose your two texts and begin to plan your essay:

• What causes some people to struggle against the way things are—and what enables them to imagine a different path forward?
• What inspires some to speak out even when others stay silent?
• What are the consequences of striving against traditions, stereotypes, and societal expectations, and what possibilities are opened up by such struggles?
• How can individual struggles give us insight into society-level struggles—for civil rights, for example, or for gender equality?
• What are the consequences for the individual of fighting against ideas and systems that are much bigger than they are?
• How, when, and why can individual struggles lead to broader change in society?

REQUIRED ESSAY COMPONENTS

1) Thesis Statement: Make sure that you have a clear thesis statement that makes an argument about the specific significance of how figures in two different texts struggle against the status quo. Your thesis statement can be more than one sentence; indeed, sometimes two sentences are needed to articulate and flesh out your argument. Your thesis statement should be in the first paragraph of the essay and should be easy to identify by readers.

2) Textual Evidence: Make sure to support your argument with evidence from both of your chosen texts. Evidence will include quotes and examples from the text to demonstrate your argument, but also to provide you with passages to close read and analyze. When quoting a passage, be sure that you properly introduce it, cite it, and analyze it. Quotations should not be used for summary or description purposes; they should be used as textual evidence or as an occasion for close reading.

3) Analysis & Close Reading: Make sure to close read and analyze your textual evidence. Think critically about how the passages you cite demonstrate your argument. Pay attention to individual words and details in your quotes, and explain how they illustrate your claims. Cite the passages you quote from.

4) Engagement with Social and Cultural Context: Make sure that your argument and close readings demonstrate an awareness of historical and social context, specifically as it relates to setting or environment. While we don’t expect you to be experts on any historical culture, we do require that you demonstrate a familiarity with the material covered in the lecture videos, and we require that you engage with the specificity of settings, which vary from culture to culture and are always historically specific.

STRUCTURING YOUR ESSAY

Paragraph 1 (introductory paragraph)

• Your introductory paragraph must specifically introduce the texts, characters, and key ideas your paper will discuss. It must lead up to a clear thesis statement (offering an argument with a distinct point of view, not just a plot summary or description). It should avoid broad generalities and instead narrow the argument of your essay using clear and specific language.

Paragraphs 2, 3, etc. (body paragraphs—as many as needed)

• Each body paragraph must begin with a clear topic sentence forecasting the content or argument of the paragraph. Think of each paragraph as making a small argument that supports your broader argument and thesis. In each paragraph, you must provide textual evidence that supports your argument, and you must offer a compelling close-reading of that evidence that clearly relates your analysis back to your thesis statement.

Final Paragraph (conclusion)

• Your concluding paragraph must link the various parts of your argument (different texts, cultures, and characters) into one cohesive whole. Reassert and restate your argument in new words, and indicate the broader conclusions you can draw from that argument.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER FOR SPECIFIC TEXTS

Note: These are simply meant to kickstart your thinking. Feel free to ask other questions and write about other issues not listed here, so long as they address the prompt.

Arabian Nights

• How does Shahrazad’s storytelling challenge social inequalities and injustices represented by the status quo? What/who exactly is she struggling against and fighting for?
• What features of the status quo does the mad king represent? In what ways does the king’s madness give expression to social inequalities and injustices?
• How does Shahrazard’s individual struggle provide insight into societal-level struggles against gender inequality? In what other ways does her struggle speak to broader issues about power, authority, equality, and citizenship?
• How does Shahrazard’s defiance against her father, the king, and other societal expectations draw attention to broader inequalities around gender?

William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”

• How does Sarty’s struggle against his father constitute a challenge to the status quo? What traditions, conventions, and expectations is he fighting against when he defies and ultimately rejects his father?
• What possibilities are opened by Sarty’s defiance and courage? What are the consequences of his actions? How can the struggles of a single boy provide us with insight into broader societal injustices?
• How does Faulkner use Sarty’s individual struggle to provide commentary on broader societal injustices in the South involving gender, race, and class?
• How does Abner’s violence and rage constitute a challenge to the status quo in the 1890s? What are the social and economic injustices that he fights against?
• How does Faulkner use the flawed character of Abner to highlight social and economic injustices during either the time of the story (the 1890s) or the time of the story’s publication (the Great Depression)?

WWI poetry by Wilfred Owen

• How does Owen’s goal of speaking the “truth” about war constitute a challenge to the status quo? (See Owen’s “Preface,” which is discussed in the Owen biography lecture.) What/who exactly is Owen challenging by seeking to tell the “truth,” and how does a commitment to “truth” shape his poetry?
• In what specific ways do specific poems by Wilfred Owen challenge the military leadership, political leaders, and/or the propaganda circulating through the United Kingdom during the Great War?
• In what specific ways do specific poems by Owen scrutinize societal expectations, such as the expectations of men and soldiers during WWI?
• What specific language and imagery in Owen’s poetry exemplify his challenge to the status quo—by, for example, adding emotional depth or a sense of urgency to his challenge?
• How do formal aspects of specific poems by Owen—for example, meter, rhyme, line breaks, stanza length, and/or poetic devices—factor into the challenge those poems pose?

William Shakespeare’s Othello

• How does Othello, by being a “moor” and general in the Venetian army, challenge the status quo of Venice? How do others respond to Othello’s leadership and position in the Venetian army? What are the consequences to Othello of striving against the status quo?
• How do Othello and Desdemona, as an interracial couple, challenge the status quo of Venice? How do other characters respond to their marriage? How does Desdemona’s active role in their romance complicate or resist gendered stereotypes?
• As women, how do characters like Emilia and Desdemona struggle against stereotypes and traditional expectations of women? Where, why, and how do they choose to speak out against oppressions or wrongs? What are the consequences of such speaking out?
• Ultimately, does the conclusion of the play suggest that resistance to the status quo is futile and dangerous? How might the play suggest that resistance is productive and necessary even when there are dire consequences for it?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The American Embassy”

• How does the protagonist’s husband challenge the status quo through his journalism?
• What are the consequences of the husband’s journalism—to himself, to his family, to his readers, and to his country? Are the potentially positive and productive effects of such journalism worth its costs?
• How do the characters struggle under the oppressive dictatorship of General Abacha?
• How does the unnamed protagonist struggle for her own autonomy and agency? How and why does she imagine silence (or at least reticence) as potentially more powerful than speaking and sharing?

Anowa

• How does Anowa’s character—her personality, her ambition, her decisions, her ideas—challenge stereotypes and traditions about daughters, women, and wives? What are the consequences of her resistance?
• How do Anowa’s parents struggle with the status quo in deciding how to raise Anowa?
• How and why does Anowa speak out against slavery, and what are the effects of her speaking out?
• How does colonialism—the relationship between the British Empire and the Gold Coast—become part of the status quo, and how and why does Anowa resist it?

Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place

• To what extent can we consider each section of A Small Place, as well as the text considered as a whole, a challenge to dominant narratives—for example, some narratives of Western history, Transatlantic slavery, and colonialism?
• To what extent do the figures of the enslaver, British colonist, and tourist represent the status quo of their respective historical periods? What methods do they use to maintain the status quo, and how does Kincaid challenge them?
• What are the emotional consequences for Kincaid of speaking out? What, according to Kincaid, are the consequences of not speaking out or resisting when one encounters racism?

Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi

• What factors (including historical events and personal experiences) help to account for Anne Moody’s decision to become involved in the civil rights movement—both the movement in general, and also individual aspects of it (e.g. the Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in)? To what extent does her childhood explain her path to activism?
• What are the consequences of Moody’s participation in the civil rights movement—emotional, familial, etc.?
• In what ways does Moody allow us to better understand the motivations and actions of those who defended the status quo—that is, those who fought to maintain white supremacy and work against the civil rights movement?

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS

• Academic Honesty Statement: Essay must include the academic honesty statement at the top of the first page. Any evidence of plagiarism will result in the immediate failure of the essay and, potentially, of the class.
  • Here is the Academic Honesty Statement: “I have read, understand, and am in compliance with the Academic Honesty policy.  In particular, I have not committed any kind of plagiarism. There are no un-attributed direct or indirect quotations or paraphrases from printed materials, websites, other students’ papers, or any other sources in my essay.”
• Length: Essay must be a minimum of 1300 words in length and no longer than 1500 words. This word count does not include the heading, the title, the works cited page, and the academic honesty statement.
• Paper Format: Essay must have an interesting and original title; must include a works cited page; must be formatted according to standard MLA style; and must be typed, double-spaced, and written in 12-point Times or Times New Roman font.
• File Name: Must conform to the following file name format: essaylastnamefirstname.

For example, if your name is John Doe, your file name would be: essaydoejohn

ANSWER

Barn Burning and Coming of Age in Mississippi

Introduction

Coming of Age in Mississippi is about Anne’s life, an African American child who grew up in the rural South in a life full of poverty.  Things were different in her life than the whites living on the farm with her family. For example, Anne’s house, a black household, had no indoor plumbing or electricity, yet the Carter family was privileged as they had both. As a young black girl growing up, Anne is socially aware of the discrimination and racism that she experiences and what black people go through in her surroundings. However, it is the murder of Emmett Till, a black boy, that evokes her to join the Civil Rights Movement. As an intelligent, strong-willed, independent young woman, she wishes to bring an end to oppression. In the short story “Barn Burning,” Sartoris, a young boy, is faced with a dilemma of whether to stay loyal to his family or the law. For his father, there is nothing more essential, like family loyalty. He is surrounded by conflict and violence as a child as his father continually disagrees with his employers. As a result, Sartoris is overwhelmed by despair, grief, and fear. He struggles to find his place among his family’s demands and his moral ideas. Because these two characters face challenges as young children, both Sartoris and Anne are searching for something more than what society offers them. They are willing to do whatever it takes to make changes in their lives and society.

In Moody’s writing, she talks about several types of racially associated violence inflicted on black citizens. The better part of the violence included shootings, physical assaults, bombings, and burning. The killing of Clift, Anne’s relative among other black men who lived in Mississippi, was a way to scare and inflict fear on black southerners so that they could maintain Jim Crow. Law enforcement used state-sanctioned violence methods at protests and movement rallies. The black Southerners’ bodies were “left lying on the road the road floating in a river (Jace 37),” Anne remembers this, and she believes it was worse than how animals were treated. Anne went through verbal violence as well, because white Southerners often used racial slurs all the time. White people believed verbal exchange displays had a powerful meaning as it was meant to keep every black person in the region in their place. Mrs. Burke insisted and made it clear to young Anne that she had to address her employer the way any servant would. Like any other black person in Mississippi, Anne experiences violence that hurts those close to and around her because of their color. As a result, this influences and encourages her activist work. In addition to this, it helps open her eyes to the racism problem present in America.

From the short story Barn burning, Sartoris is in search of a peaceful life free of his father and family’s oppressive ways. He is searching for peace and freedom, something he has never experienced as he has always been surrounded by conflict and violence all through his life. Throughout the short story, Sartoris refers to grief, despair, and fear as he reveals how much he has struggled to find himself in between his family demands and his ideas of morality. According to Sartoris, peace, dignity, and joy are the promises he can get from a different kind of life, a life that so far seems impossible to achieve in his family. When they leave their previous county after dismissing their charges, his urge to get a new life grows when they arrive at de Spain’s house. The domestic bliss that comes from de Spain estates for the first time gives the boy a temporary comfort. According to him, the “spell of the house” changes everything, and Sartoris hopes that the spell will help change his father’s sinful and criminal ways (William 17). For the first time in his life, Sartoris sees a peaceful future for him and himself, a future full of peace.

Both Anne and Sartoris have had a tough childhood. Anne, a young black girl, has experienced firsthand racism and lived in a country where white people felt superior to blacks. She experienced violence against their people, and as a child, there is nothing much she could do about it. For these reasons, among other racial experiences, she chose to join the activist who fought for equality for black people in America. Sartoris, just like Anne, had not experienced peace in his life. As a child, he was surrounded by conflict and violence. As the story begins, the young boy is in court to testify for the sake of his father, who is facing accusations of burning Mr. Harris’ barn. He is torn between his family loyalty and explaining the truth of the justice system during this point. Even though Sartoris did not testify, he knew his father expected him to lie before the judge for him. As they left the courtroom, Snopes hit Sartoris hard on the head and accused him of intending to tell the judge of his guilt.  It is clear to the audience that his environment was not a friendly one for a child. Despite it all, all he wanted was peace and joy to be in his life. He did not fit in his family, and he was continually trying to find his place. Both Anne and Sartoris wanted more than what they could get from society, and they believed the only way to get it was to fight for it themselves.

From both the stories, the two main characters are more vital than most people their age. They have a determination for freedom, and they do not sit and wait for it to come knocking on their door; they look for it. Anne disagreed with the mother as she did not understand why she joined a violence and civil rights movement. Even though her mother was strong for the family when her husband left, she did not plan to fight for black people’s freedom. Anne believed that Black Southerners could also be resistant to change. The civil rights movement’s first and leading goal was to change the way most black Southerners view themselves. They viewed themselves as second-class citizens, and that needed to change. Black Southerners needed to see themselves as Americans worthy of respect and dignity and similar rights as those of white Americans. Anne’s mother, for example, had been brainwashed, according to Anne. It is so because she had lived under the Jim Crow laws ever since she was a child, and she expected and insisted that her children follow them. In addition to these, many black authority figures turned their backs on the activists to have white people’s approval. Anne believed things needed to change, and as a strong-willed individual, she wants the oppression that is going on in America to come to an end. To ensure this happens, she joins the movement when she goes to college.

Sartoris intends to free himself from the oppressive life he has at home. At a young age, he is forced to explore the wrong and right issues that are way beyond his reasoning. For example, he is expected to lie for the sake of his father in court, and when the father suspects otherwise, he delivers a blow to his head and tells him, “you are getting to be a man (William 6),” yet he is merely ten years old. In Sartoris’ world, just like Anne’s, violence is a fundamental element. Living with his father, he has experienced the violent world ever since he was a child. Despite his father’s corrupt ways, he has a sense of justice. His father is irrational and acts without thinking anything. At some point in the novel, Sartoris is forced to act instinctively to prevent the father from burning their new neighbor’s barn.

Conclusion

The two main characters in the two stories are young individuals going through so much for their age. At a young age, Sartoris is faced with a dilemma of staying loyal to the father or the justice system. On the other hand, Anne faces racism as she lives in a world where white supremacy leads to everything. The two are in search of freedom that they can only get if they fight hard. Anne is forced to leave home as her mother disagrees with her being a civil rights movement. She wants the oppressive life Black Southerners face to come to an end. Sartoris has faced violence and conflict all his life, and he is trying to find peace within himself; and he has to choose between supporting his family and staying loyal or pursuing his peace. Anne’s mum had lived by Jim Crow’s laws to the extent that she insisted her children had to follow them, which Anne disapproved of. Sartoris betrays their family honor to search for his peace. He is different from his brother John who blindly follows his father’s ways. The two characters are more similar than most people think.

Works Cited

Anderson, Jace. “Re-Writing Race: Subverting Language in Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi and Alice Walker’s Meridian.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 8.1 (1993): 33-50. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342494732_Coming_of_Age_with_Anne_Moody

Faulkner, William. “Barn Burning'(1938).” William Faulkner, Collected Stories (1995): 3-25. https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/9461?lang=fr

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