You will read two books for your summer reading assignment this year, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood and another title of your choice from the list I have provided. 

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake presents a dystopian future that paradoxically involves a miniature utopia within the larger chaos of a world ravaged by a genetically engineered plague.  This is a very contemporary novel (published in 2003) that seems eerie in the way that it takes familiar aspects of our culture (computer technology, genetic engineering, the pharmaceuticals industry) and projects them into a not-so-distant future. 

I have informed the staff at The Raven bookstore downtown that my students will be reading Oryx and Crake.  You are welcome to purchase the book wherever you like, but The Raven should have extra copies on hand. 

In addition to reading Oryx and Crake, you will choose one book from the list below.  Some of these titles have some tie-ins with the utopia/dystopia/paradise theme (these are marked with an *), while others are not directly related to this theme. 

*The Road, Cormac McCarthy

*The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

*Anthem, Ayn Rand

*Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

*Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

*Walden, Henry David Thoreau

*Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey

*Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard

*Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick

The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

Beloved, Toni Morrison

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien

UTOPIA, DYSTOPIA, AND PARADISE

Visions of the future in literature tend to take one of two forms: the utopian vision or the dystopian vision.  Utopia is the idea of a future-perfect world, one in which all the problems of society have been solved and people live in harmony with one another.  Dystopia is the opposite, a world in which present ills become more pronounced and the worst in human nature becomes predominant. 

Mainstream American culture was founded on a utopian vision; European settlers came here with the idea of creating a society founded in their own image, according to their own ideals—a “city upon a hill,” as Puritan minister John Winthrop (quoting the book of Matthew) put it.  For many, however, the reality of American society has failed to live up to that ideal, and even today some of us live in the fear that the troubles of today—nuclear proliferation, terrorism, ecological catastrophe, financial meltdown—will dominate our future.  Thus both the utopian vision and the dystopian vision are fundamental parts of the American worldview. 

Utopia and dystopia are both projections of the future.  Another related notion is that of paradise, but paradise is generally something that comes from the past.  Paradise is a place that existed in the past but is beyond reach to us now or it is a place that exists in the present awaiting to be discovered.  Many settlers coming to America believed they were arriving in paradise, and this notion of America as a kind of paradise has lingered in our culture and in our literary tradition. 

Your reading assignment this summer is designed to get you to think about the relevance of paradise, utopia, and dystopia to American culture and American literary traditions.  This will be one of the major themes we will examine in our American literature class this year. 

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS:  

1. RESPONSES: From each book, copy two quotations that you find particularly meaningful.  Write a well-developed one-paragraph response to each quotation.  Explain how the quotation develops an essential insight into the personality of a character, how it develops one of the book’s major themes, or how it represents a particular quality of style or tone.  (20 points) 

2. VOCABULARY: Create a list of ten words whose meaning or usage you are not familiar with.  Make sure that these are words the meaning of which you will find useful in your future.  Define each word, provide the part of speech, and quote the sentence in which you found the word (include title of book and page number).  For words that have multiple definitions, be sure that you provide the definition that makes sense in context.  (10 points) 

3. CREATIVE WRITING: Write a typed page from the perspective of a character from one of these books.  Be creative, but also prove to me that you know the character in question and understand his or her motivation, values, and style of speaking.  (10 points) 

ESSAY: After we spend a few days discussing the summer reading, you will be expected to write an analytical essay; the topic will be discussed in class beforehand.