City Life

Question 1

McCarthy’s The Road dramatizes the opposition between good and evil, with evil sometimes emerging triumphant. Considering this idea, respond to the following questions: (cite the text to support your response)

• What do you think The Road ultimately says about good and evil?
• Which of these two force seems to have greater power in the novel? Why do you believe this?

Guidelines for Response Journals:

• Will be typed in a Word document
• Will be 500 words minimum in length (add word count at end of journal)
• Will cite the relevant text using proper documentation (include Works Cited)
• Will have a title along with the journal number
• Will use MLA format; one-inch margins, 12-point font, double spaced

Question 2

In a fully formed essay, first briefly summarize (about one page is fine) the argument Juan Flores’s makes in his “The Structuring of Puerto Rican Identity” essay that we read in the first week of class about the “four moments” immigrants/migrants to the city go through and the model he suggests as an alternative to the melting pot. You don’t need to do any analysis (your own commentary on the ideas) in this part; just accurately summarize the key points. Next, apply Flores’s model to two different poems from Pietri’s Puerto Rican Obituary book. Your goal in this part of the paper is to show how Pietri’s characters either do or do not match Flores’s model for how immigrants adapt to city life. Use specific examples from the poems to support your arguments. Finally, describe how Pietri presents city life for the characters in the poems you chose from him in your conclusion.