Fate, Chance, Self-Determination, and the Universe
This unit will build upon the Summer Readings, with discussions of fate and free will and the lives of the marginalized, taking these broad themes and applying them to a more recent novel, the 2003 winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Jeffrey Eugenides’s landmark work, Middlesex—the title being a double entendre relating to the narrator’s existential crisis and the street in Grosse Point, Mi., on which the narrator came of age. Centering around a doubly displaced family of Greeks, outsiders in each instance, and a narrator who defines what it means to be forever on the outside of normalcy, Middlesex tackles the questions of our position in the universe, whether that position is determined for us, by us, or left to random occurrences that deny any sense of justice in the universe. These are the same questions asked by the plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides. While students read Middlesex, we will study the patterns and themes of Greek drama and epic poetry, read commentary and criticism on these (as well as on Middlesex), and investigate the different schools of literary response and study, applying these varying critical lenses to what is read. In addition to themes of Fate, Chance, or Free Will, the book also tackles issues of gender v. sex, nature v. nurture, inclusion v. exile, ethnicity v. whiteness v. race. What does it mean to be male or female? Are certain behaviors and actions what define a man or woman? What is stronger in the formation of our development, our nature (the genetic facts of birth and the chemistry that forms our personality) or our nurture (the influence and expectations of family, friends, and society)? All of this will also be blended not only into your writings and notes on these novels but also into concurrent work on your college essays—in which you attempt to explore your own individual truths.
Outside Reading for Unit 1 (please select from this list only):
The Oresteia, by Aeschylus [a trilogy of plays] [178 pp., 230 w/notes, 370 w/introduction]
Prometheus Bound, Seven Against Thebes, and others, by Aeschylus (35 pp./each + ?? talk to me]
Ajax and/or Electra, by Sophocles [40 pp./each + ?? talk to me]
Medea, Hippolytus, and/or Electra, by Euripides [50 pp./each + ?? talk to me]
Lysistrata, The Birds, and/or The Frogs, by Aristophanes [30 pp./each + ?? talk to me]
The Odyssey, by Homer (Trans. by Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Fagles, or talk to me) [420 pp. + ??]
The Iliad, by Homer (Trans. by Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Fagles, Mitchell, or talk to me) [420 pp. + ??]
Orlando (1928), by Virginia Woolf [275 pp.]
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), by Milan Kundera [320 pp.]
The Laramie Project (2000), by Moisés Kaufman [100 pp.]
Americanah (2014), by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [500 pp.]