Search Our Essay Database

Essay Instructions: This is for a class entitled "Road in American Culture." It is a film class that revolves around road movies. For my research paper, I chose to focus specifically on the outlaw couple, detailing post-modernism and violence on the road. I have to do the paper on at least two films. The choices I proposed to my professor are as follows: "Wild at Heart," "Kalifornia," Natural Born Killers," "Badlands" and "True Romance." They are not limited to these films, but if you have any other film in mind, let me know as it has to be a film I haven't seen in class.

The paper must include at least five sources, and none of them can be taken from a website that is not credible. It can be a scholarly article, however. Our textbooks for the course are "The Road Movie Book" (Steven Cohan & Ina Rae Hark) and "Driving Visions" (David Laderman). I can only use chapters I haven't read for the course as sources, so please let me know if you want to use these two books as sources. You must see these movies again if you haven't seen them for a while as it will only benefit my paper in doing so.

The format for the paper is as follows: Paragraph 1 -- Titles of films, directors, release dates, and focus of paper; Par. 2 & 3 -- Plot summary (each film in separate paragraph), one or two sentences describing plot, no compare and contrast; Par. 3+ -- Analysis; Conclusion -- restate my focus and summarize findings.

Essay Instructions: Report on: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Assignment: Strictly, to discuss what you think the major themes of "On the Road" are and in which way do they tie into the characters. Use quotes and paraphrazes from secondary sources who have also read the book and critiqued it to back up your points. Quotes from the actual book on the road may be used, but, my teacher will be looking for how well the quotes from the secondary sources were used. Please use quotes frequently as needed, but try to limit the # of different sources used if possible making 4 the limit.

Essay Instructions: This is to be a 1,000 word essay dealing with the book On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Over half the essay should be about...Is the phrase, "go moan for man" on page 303, the pearl that Sal has been waiting for? Throughout On the Road, Sal refers to a shrouded white traveler prophet that is seemingly on his trail. In an 1,000 word essay using quotes to give evidence to your claims :1. Argue for the identity of the shrouded traveler 2. State what he represents 3. Who he is
4. Interpret the directive he gives Sal
Example quotes...pg.35 "I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged and like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was "Wow!""
pg.55 "We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess-across the night,eastward over the Plains, where somewhere an old man with the Word, and would arrive any minute and make us silent."
pg.124 "And I couldn't even tell if it was a real decision or just a thought I had forgotten. It haunted and flabbergasted me, made me sad. It had to do somewhat with the Shrouded Traveler. Carlo Marx and I once sat down together, knee to knee, in two chairs facing, and I told him a dream I had about a strange Arabian figure that was pursuing me across the desert; that I tried to avoid; that finally overtook me just before I reached the Protective City. "Who is this?" said Carlo. We pondered it. I proposed it was myself, wearing a shroud. That wasn't it. Something, someone, some spirit was pursuing all of us across teh desert of life and was bound to catch us before we reached heaven."
pg. 259 "Suddenly I had a vision of Dean, a burning shuddering frightful Angel, palpitating toward me across the road, approaching like a cloud, with enormous speed, pursuing me like the Shrouded Travelerone the Plain, bearing down on me."
pg.267 "Far up in the purple shades of the rock the was someone walking, walking, but we could not see; maybe that old man with the white hair I had sensed years ago up in the peaks. Zacatecan Jack. But he was coming closer to me, if only ever just behind."
pg. 303 "In the fall I myself stated back home from Mexico City and one night just over Laredo border in Dilley, Texas, I was standing on the hot road underneath an arc-lamp with the summer moths smashing into it when I heard the sound of footsteps from the darkness beyond, and lo, a tall old man with flowing white hair came clomping by with a pack on his back, and when he saw me as he passed, he said, "Go moan for man," and clomped on back to his dark. Did this mean that I should at last go on my pilgrimage in foot of the dark roads around America?"
... The essay should also have a couple of lines telling if the book is for the reader, the Beat generation, or for Jack

Essay Instructions: Based on the book"On The Road" by Jack Kerouac "the newest version" , examine any theme or motif that you have identified (e.g. life and death, mad, the West)

Character study: relationship between Jack and Neal/Sal and Dean. Mutual influences-does it change, what is learned?