4U1–Independent Study: A Culminating Thematic Comparison:
Topics & Related Readings
Mr. Robinson (Semester 1/08)
1. Below are the topics with related readings for all components of the Independent Study Assignment in this course (worth _____% of your final mark). Choose one topic and at least two of the related readings. Unless otherwise specified by your teacher, your key fiction sources must be the ones listed below with their respective topic.
2. No more than two students may choose the same topic. If two students have chosen the same topic, they must be reading different texts under the same category (there are four related readings to choose from).
3. Remember, you are also required to read additional critical material, author’s background etc. on the texts you choose and you must cite at least ______ critical sources in your final essay.
TOPICS AND RELATED READINGS FOR THE ISU
1. STRESS AND THE MODERN WOMAN
Margaret Laurence, The Diviners
Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone
Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
2. GENERATIONS OF FAMILIAL DYSFUNCTION
Wally Lamb, I Know This Much is True
Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
Douglas Coupland, All Families are Psychotic
3. OLD AGE AND THE ELDERLY
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants
Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man
4. POVERTY AND OPPRESSION
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes
Gabrielle Roy, The Tin Flute
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
5. INDISCRETIONS
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Tom Perrota, Little Children
Margaret Laurence, The Fire-Dwellers
Richard B. Wright, Adultery
6. FUTILITY OF WAR
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road
Erich Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Timothy Findley, The Wars
7. THE ARTIST’S TEMPERAMENT
John Irving, The World According to Garp
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye
8. INTERSECTING TRAGIC TALES
Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus
Dennis Bock, The Ash Garden
Carol Shields, Swann
Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter
9. THE ABUSIVE PARTNER
Alice Walker, The Colour Purple
Russell Banks, Affliction
Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
Pete Dexter, Paris Trout
10. ‘FUTURE’ DYSTOPIAN SOCIETIES
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
George Orwell, 1984
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
11. COMING OF AGE–MALE
Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
David Gilmour, Lost Between Houses
J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone
12. COMING OF AGE-FEMALE
Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women
Carol Shields, The Box Garden
Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge Of Time
13. RACIAL CONFLICT
Nella Larsen, Passing
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars
14. THE ‘GOTHIC ELEMENTS’ NOVEL
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Anne Rice, Interview with a Vampire
Bram Stoker, Dracula
15. NARRATIVE AS POLITICAL ALLEGORY
Voltaire, Candide
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Franz Kafka, The Trial
16. IMPERIALISM
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother
Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey
V.S. Naipaul, "The Mimic Men"
17. YOUTH, ANGST AND THE GENERATIONAL DIVIDE
Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief
Rick Moody, The Ice Storm
Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
Stephen Chbosky, the perks of being a wallflower
18. MATERIALISM EXPOSED
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities
George Eliot, Silas Marner
Honore de Balzac, Pere Goriot
19. FATE/DESTINY
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Carol Shields, The Republic of Love
Margaret Laurence, A Jest of God
20. THE UNDERCLASS HERO
John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
John Irving, The Cider House Rules
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
21. ATTEMPTING TO SURVIVE THE ONSLAUGHT
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
Anne Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
Andrew Pyper, The Lost Girls
22. LOVE IN ALL OF ITS COMPLEXITIES
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
23. THE JOURNEY MOTIF
John Irving, Until I Find You
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
24. THE PSYCHO
Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
Patrick Suskind, Perfume
William Faulkner, Sanctuary
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
25. SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Andre Dupuis, House of Sand and Fog
James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
26. THE DISTURBING CRIME
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Caleb Carr, Angel of Darkness
Joyce Carol Oates, Black Girl, White Girl
27. SOUTH AFRICAN INTERRACIAL TENSION
J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
Nadine Gordimer, Occasion for Loving
Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing
Alan Paton, Cry the Beloved
28. DARK FAMILIAL RELATIONSHIPS
Mary Lawson, Crow Lake
Russell Banks, Affliction
Richard B. Wright, Clara Callan
Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
29. THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE IS INEVITABLE
Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
Carol Shields, Unless
Alex Garland, The Beach
30. MAGIC REALISM
Gabriel Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Jose Saramago, Blindness
Isabel Allende, The House of Spirits
Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate
31. THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE
Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
Annie Proulx, Accordian Crimes
Anita Rau Badami, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?
Jane Urquhart, Away
32. THE SLAVE EXPERIENCE
Lawrence Hill, The Book of Negroes
Lori Lansens, Rush Home Road
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
33. CONSCIENCE AND CRIMINALITY
Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
David Benioff, City of Thieves
Graham Swift, Waterland
34. BEAUTY AND BRUTALITY
Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
35. LONG-SUPPRESSED LOVE
Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Gabriel Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
36. SECRETS
Anita Shreve, The Pilot’s Wife
Jodi Picoult, Plain Truth
Nella Larsen, Passing
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
37. POST-CATASTROPHE
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz
38. A DOMINICAN & HAITIAN EXPLORATION
Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies
Madison Smart Bell, All Soul’s Rising
Loida Maritza Perez, Geographies of Home
Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents
39. RELATIONSHIPS UNDER THE GRIP OF SOCIAL FORCES
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Ismail Kadare, Broken April
40. CROSS-CULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS
E.M Forster, Passage to India
Zadie Smith, White Teeth
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore
41. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
Howard Bahr, The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War
Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels
Wilma Dykeman, The Tall Woman
42. THE SEARCH FOR MEANING BEYOND THE MATERIAL
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Joseph Conrad, Nostromo
43. COPING IN AN INDIFFERENT WORLD
Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge
John Irving, A Widow for One Year
Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus
44. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, LITERACY AND SOCIAL REFORM
Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
Philip Roth, The Human Stain
Richard Powers, Plowing the Dark
45. RELATIONSHIPS AND FUSED IDENTITIES
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
A.S. Byatt, Possession
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
46. EXPLORING LOSS AND DISORIENTATION
J.M Coetzee, The Master of Petersburg
Albert Camus, The Stranger
Graham Swift, Last Orders
Milan Kundera, Immortality
47. THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF LOSS AND INJUSTICE
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Nadine Gordimer, My Son’s Story
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
48. THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF REDEMPTION AND HOPE
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
Andrew Miller, Oxygen
John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
49. SHAME AND BETRAYALS
Anita Diamante, The Red Tent
Ian McEwen, Atonement
Anita Rau Badami, The Hero’s Walk
William Kennedy, Ironweed
50. OVERCOMING CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees
Keri Hulme, The Bone People
Ursula Haggi, Stones in the River
Andrew Pyper, Lost Girls
51. THE MISUSE OF POWER
Phillippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl
Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
Vladimir Nabakov, Lolita
52. THE QUINTESSENTIAL CANADIAN EXPERIENCE
Margaret Atwood, Surfacing
Alistair Macleod, No Great Mischief
Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman’s Boy
Gabrielle Roy, The Tin Flute
53. MADNESS OR IN FACT SANITY?
Timothy Findley, The Last of the Crazy People
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
54. FACT OR FICTION?
Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
Caleb Carr, The Alienist
55. ALIENATION
Franz Kafka, America
Richard Wright, Native Son
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
56. THE SEARCH FOR TRANSCENDENCE AND FAMILIAL INFLUENCE
Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
William Somerset Maughm, The Razor’s Edge
John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Henry James, The Ambassadors
57. BASEBALL AS A SOCIAL FORCE
W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe
Bernard Malamud, The Natural
David Halberstram, Summer of ‘49
David James Duncan, The Brothers K
58. ABORIGINAL VOICES
Thomas King, Truth & Bright Water
Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine
Kevin Major, Blood Red Ochre
Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead
59. MOCKING THE AMERICAN MID-WEST?
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
Don DeLillo, White Noise
Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America
60. EXPERIMENTS IN THE POSTMODERN NOVEL
Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Douglas Coupland, J-Pod
Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard Tribe
J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello