Italian American Literature and Film
SPRING 2017
Prof. Fabio Girelli-Carasi

   LECTURE 10  

   MAY 8  


 

FILENAME:  lastname.DATE (check previous assignments for the date format)

Email subject: assignment DATE (check previous assignments for the date format)

DEADLINE IS MAY 8

 

REMINDER: The blog IS your attendance. No blog, no points for attendance.

 

THE GODFATHER  (M. Puzo)

 

 

task 1    I didn't assign NOTE TAKING for this book.

What is your opinion? Is it better without having to take notes, or do you miss the old task? And WHY?
Task 2:  

THE GODFATHER  BOOK 2, 3, 4. (Keep track of all the people who are killed.)

Find a good BOOK REVIEW (NYTimes, NewYorker, LA Times, Wash Post, NY Review of Books, Atlantic Monthly, New Republic etc.)

Report briefly the point of view of the reviewer and add your comments, whether it helped in your understanding of the book.

Here you can unleash your meta-critical rhetoric.
Task 3:  

A solid page of a well constructed argument. Choose one or two or more of these possible topics and write a coherent essay.

1) Think for a few minutes before you start writing.
2) Draw a mental path from the starting point to where you want to end up. How are you going to get there?
3) Write using simple structures, nothing syntactically complicated.
4) REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW for a) grammar and spelling, b) clarity. If you are having a hard time understanding CLEARLY what you wrote, imagine everybody else.

  • Don Corleone states that every man (women need not apply in his world) has "only one destiny."
    Is he himself a victim of circumstances, someone who cannot escape his destiny?
     
  • Or, does he have a choice: a moral one and an immoral one?
     
  • Does the book present him as a POSITIVE example?
     
  • Do you think the book gives him MORAL and ETHICAL justifications for his conduct?
     
  • And what is YOUR opinion about him?  A HERO or the embodiment of EVIL?
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