While you can decide what topic you want to write about for your midterm paper, here are a few questions and themes you can consider addressing (though if you do decide to write on something outside of these prompts, I encourage you to vet it with me over email, during office hours, or during an appointment you make with me outside of office hours).

Civilizations and nature:As we discussed in class, Gilgamesh devotes a considerable section of both its beginning and its end to a celebration of city life and civilization: Gilgamesh, by the end of the poem, abandons his quest for eternal life and himself proclaims the greatness of the city of Uruk. Enkidu, too, is taken from a natural state and civilized by his encounter with Shamhat and his introduction to man-made products. However, we can also make an argument that the epic poem shows some grave concern with the effects of city life and civilization, particularly in what happens to Enkidu and his reactions to the civilizing process (see his curse of Shamhat--7.58-86--and his death). What do you think the text is arguing about civilization and its effect on humans and the natural world?

  • This is also a prompt you might consider using for other texts that we read.

Right action: The texts we have read for this class present some contrasting views on what the right thing to do is in complex situations. How does the textdefine what is right to do in complicated situations–how do the characters determine what is the right thing to do? What seems to be the message in the text about how to determine good action, or what is a contradiction in that message and why does it matter that we notice it?

Role of women/gender roles:As we’ve seen in the texts we’ve read so far, while many texts focus on male characters (Enkidu and Gilgamesh, Arjuna), female characters are crucial to the story. For example, Gilgamesh might be the hero and namesake of The Epic of Gilgamesh, but women like Shamhat, the Tavern Keeper, and Gilgamesh’s mother play important roles in guiding the plot. Pick a text and argue for the role that women play in it. What is powerful/important about them? What agency do they have, and/or how are they disempowered (consider, for example, that Medea can be left by Jason without any consequences from the state/the law, but that she is also very powerful and makes sure there are consequences; or, consider that Sakuntala, for all her shyness and lovesickness, makes an eloquent defense of herself when the king can’t remember her)?

  • For this one, be careful not to impose too many ideas we might have about women onto texts from a long time ago: try to read them in context (and also avoid overly general statements like “back in the day”—you can use the texts themselves for how they show what was expected of women, as when Ismene tells us that women are supposed to keep their heads down in Antigone).

Duty:If duty is what is “due,” then what defines what is due, according to the text– is it society, responsibility to another individual, honor? How should duty be demonstrated or fulfilled, and what are some complications that get in the way of fulfilling duty? What does the characters response to their duty/duties, their failure to fulfill their duty, or the complications that arise in trying to fulfill duty, reveal about the nature of duty and what duty should be?

  • Note that, while the text may seem toenthusiastically encourage one idea about duty (for example, Krishna's defense of Arjuna's duty as warrior), there are other voices to attend to that complicate that reading. Your job is to consider what voice to listen to most in your interpretation and to highlight in your paper (for example, you might show flaws in Krishna's logic and highlight Arjuna's concerns).
  • Be sure to use the proper vocabulary/definition when talking about duty in the text you discuss. In the Bhagavad-Gitaand Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection, your duty is yourdharma.

Minor character analysis:While we have been focusing on some of the major characters in these works,there are also some characters with lesser roles who speak fewer lines or are not one of the "larger than life" figures in the text. While we may be inclined to forget them in favor of more colorful or more present characters, their inclusion in the works is still important and purposeful: they may help us understand something about one of the characters, or give us a more nuanced understanding of some of the issues/themes in the text (consider Siduri's advice to Gilgamesh, or the tutor and nurse in Medea—why are those two characters included in the play?).How does a minor character reveal an essential point of the work, or how can we understand that character in a larger perspective?

Quests and journeys: According to Thomas Foster, “The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason. In fact, more often than not, the quester fails at the stated task. So why do they go and why do we care? They go because of the stated task, mistakenly believing that it is their real mission. We know, however, that their quest is educational. They don’t know enough about the only subject that really matters: themselves. The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge. That’s why questers are so often young, inexperienced, immature, sheltered. Forty-five-year-old men either have self-knowledge or they’re never going to get it, while your average sixteen-to-seventeen-year-old kid is likely to have a long way to go in the self-knowledge department” (15). Keeping this definition of quest in mind, consider these questions: In many of the texts, characters are "seeking" something that has been promised them by fate, or that they desire for their own personal benefit; sometimes what they seek is an answer to a troubling question.According to your text, what is worth seeking out, and why? How does what the character seeks define him/her, and how does the text use the quest to make a larger point or deliver a message? What does the quest help the characters discover, and what is the point of having them go on this quest?

Heroism/leadership: What defines heroism and being a hero, and why--alternately, what defines being a good leader and why? Does your text portray, ultimately, its leaders and heroes as virtuous and good at what they do, and how does the text make that portrayal? If we see these leaders/heroes as being flawed according to the text (NOT just our own, contemporary ideas of what makes a good leader!), why is the text pointing out these flaws--what's the larger message about good rulership and heroism?

Love in other texts:How does the text present love, and what is it? Does love occur between people, or does the character define love in another way (i.e., love of duty): what should we love, and why? According to the text, what do we owe to what/who we love, and why–what are the obligations of love?