Paper 1

PAPER 1:  Due On Session 10
 

DIALOGUE: Write a dialogue between two speakers trying to understand what the movie Exotica has to teach them about love. The speakers should be discussing details of the movie, and how they interpret or respond to these details. (Such details may focus on the plot, but they may also include, for example, musical or visual aspects of the movie that contribute to the speaker’s response to it.) Construct one speaker’s point of view by drawing on either Symposium 172A-185C or Phaedrus 227A-241D, and the other speaker by drawing on Death in Venice or Andre Dubus, “Falling in Love.”

ALTERNATIVE ASSIGNMENT: In the Symposium, Phaedrus and Pausanias both give speeches that defend the goodness of erotic love, though both acknowledge that eros sometimes goes wrong. Choose one of these two speeches and write an appreciation from its point of view of either Exotica or Andre Dubus, “Falling in Love.” An appreciation does not focus on disagreements with or weaknesses in the text being appreciated. Instead, it emphasizes what the writer has learned from the text or movie and why there is reason to be grateful to the author or director.