Explain the effect Coetzee’s use of the third-person present tense has on our reading Boyhood as an autobiography, using at least two specific examples to demonstrate your points.
2. Explain the importance of the farm in Boyhood. Then go on to describe the sense of place (with respect to identity) in this text, comparing it to other texts we’ve read this quarter.
3. How does lyric autobiography differ from narrative? In your response, discuss at least three poems or poem sequences (not including Wordsworth), comparing them to one another and to some of the other texts we’ve read this quarter.
4. Describe the central issues at stake in EITHER the Staten essay OR the Kraus essay as they pertain to autobiography. What conclusions are drawn? Analyze the argument of the essay you select and then respond with your own perspective.
5. Choose two concepts (introduced in this course) that you’ve found particularly helpful or interesting. Define each, and then use them to discuss any two texts (books, poems, essays, excerpts, etc.) that we’ve read for this course.
6. Discuss Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode in the context of “childhood,” Coetzee, and John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography.
7. Describe how the film version of American Splendor is a “postmodern” representation of the self. Compare self-representation in the film to that in The Quitter.
8. Discuss one of the texts we have read this quarter written by a woman (Rich, Menchu, Bishop, Jackson, Berssenbrugge) in the context of the Carolyn Heilbrun chapters and/or the Julia Watson essay (Week 10 essays). What do you make of the notion of “women’s life writing”?
9. How does The Quitter function as “self-analysis”? Are there “turning points” in his narrative, where his character is defined, or redefined? Compare this text to other autobiographies we have read this quarter.
10. How do Boyhood and The Quitter develop the perceived relationship between self and community, and between community and the larger “society” of which it is a part?
* JM Coetzee Boyhood
* I Rigoberta Menchu
* Carolyn Kraus Proof of Life Memoir, Truth and Documentary evidence.
