For your third short paper, I want you to have a conversation with at least three of the works in this section
on ONE of the following general ideas:
Q1: What is right and wrong, and how do we know it? What ‘proof’ do we have? Where do different works and cultures agree
and disagree on this fundamental question?
Are they all saying more or less the same thing…or can truth vary quite
widely?
Q2: Why are we here? What is the point of life? Is it a game, a punishment, a test, or an
illusion? What should human beings
strive for? What should life/experience
teach us? While alive, what is our ‘duty’?
Q3: What is the Divine? What do we
call it? How do we recognize it? What is our relationship with it? Is it truly another being/force, or are we
actually part of it—the same as it? How
does it speak to us?
Some General Tips for this paper:
- Don’t just
summarize what each work or poem says.
The point is to analyze specific ideas or words, and to explain how
they relate to the ‘big issues’ of faith and belief.
- Don’t use
one faith to beat up another. For
example, it’s easy to say “these people are so silly to believe this,” or “they
totally miss the truth when they say…”
Try to analyze and discuss how each work/culture answers these
eternal questions, regardless of what you might personally think is right
or wrong.
- Make it a
CONVERSATION: imagine if the works were at a table, discussing one of the questions
above. What would they say? How might they argue—or even agree—with each
other? What would you add to the
conversation?
- QUOTE: be
sure to quote specific passages and examples from the book, and cite
properly, according to MLA format. For
example…In the Bhagavad Gita, it
writes that “Knowledge is constantly obscured/by this enemy of the wise,/by
this insatiable fire/whose form, Arjuna, is desire” (739).
- 3-4 pages,
double spaced
- Answer one
of the questions above in a thoughtful conversation
- Quote and
use MLA citation
- Due in 2 weeks: Friday, November 22 by 5pm
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