Objective: Demonstrate the ability to use different ideological perspectives and analyses on the same figure and evaluate this figure through these perspectives.
What does this mean? Show that you can see the world through completely different lenses by evaluating one character several different ways.
The Parable of the Sower is a novel that explores concepts of social Darwinism, dystopia, corruption, greed, corporatism, faith, and survival. It is a novel that presents a chilling look at what happens when the society that we have come to rely upon turns against us. The story lets us look at what happens when society and faith fail, but also how they can be reborn again. This is a novel that actively resists being easily categorized, and each major character can be analyzed in a variety of ways.
Evaluate one character from The Parable of the Sower using at least 4 different lenses or ISMs and then argue which lens offers the most accurate reading of that character. This means that you will look at a character and explore how he/she can be interpreted using different ideologies, and then argue which lens or viewpoint is most valid. You will need to reference the novel, and you may only use a dictionary as an outside source. No other research is permitted in this essay. You have a multitude of characters to analyze, and you need to focus on being able to show how using different lenses results in a widely different interpretation of the same character.
The most important part of this assignment is that you stay with the same character and analyze the behavior, thoughts, and actions of that character through different perspectives. From one angle, Keith is a brave, smart boy who tries to survive in the best way while from another viewpoint, he is a selfish, foolish boy. This is not an essay about how the character uses these lenses but rather how someone (you) looking at the character would evaluate them based on specific lenses. You are the one wearing these lenses, not describing how these characters might use these lenses or have attributes associated with said lenses.
Ideological lenses, meaning that they are patterns of thinking that we have embraced, sometimes without knowing it. An ideology or ISM is a lens for your brain; how you think is dictated by the lens or lenses that you use as you think.
Do not simply tell what happens in the novel or what different ISMs mean, but rather focus on how just one symbol can be interpreted so many ways, and then which interpretation seems most apt.
