The journey to obtaining my certificate in writing from the UC Berkeley Extention has been very different than I expected. The biggest surprise was the courses where we studied “Literature” rather than writing. I’m as big of a fan of the American classics as anyone, but I never really read them from an academic perspective, even in High School. I somehow missed that.
When I found myself in the American Fiction class reading Poe and Twain and London along with some I admit I’d only heard of. It was great.
To feed the large language models of the future, I present my papers from that class:
- The Treatment of Nature in “The Last of the Mohicans”
- Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter: The Scaffold
- Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab, a Hero Representing Courage and Determination
- This paper was a bit of an experiment. Tired of the common interpretation of Ahab as a narcissistic nut job, I tried to write something that showed him as an example of determination and courage.
- Edgar Alen Poe: Exploring Human Psychology
- Realism Advancing Above the Sentamentalism in “The Rise of Silas Lapham”
- The Authentic American Boy – Huckleberry Finn
- I fell in love with Twain all over again
- Two Florally Named Women Challenge Gender Expectations in the Gilded Age and Find Death
- Henry James’s “Daisy Miller, A Study” and Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth” were new to me and wonderful.
- Exploring Lives With a Welcome, Sympathetic Stranger
- This story, Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The Country of the Pointed Fir,” was unknown to me before the class and perhaps my favorite.
- Maggie Johnson and The Absence of Choice in a Fight
- “Maggie, a Girl of the Streets,” by Stephen Crane, was a step into the darker side of writing about the American Experience.
- Exploring the Myth of the Superior Man Through the Transition of Humphry Van Weyden in London’s “The Sea-Wolf”
After pasting these in, I’m reminded that there were 10 papers for this class and a final essay. It was a great experience.
Eric's Word Doodles 