For this assignment, you will need to put the monsters we’ve read about into conversation with Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s theory of monsters, 7 theses. More specifically, you’ll use Cohen’s theory as a lens through which to better understand these monsters—why they were invented, what they’re doing, and what their existence can tell us about the societies in which they held such fascination, and the world we live in now. The aim of the assignment will be to better understand and analytically frame the social role of monsters, so that you can have a better sense of what we mean when we talk about them.
Step 1: 7 theses is very broad, covering a lot of different topics; it’s too much to effectively deal with in its totality in one essay. Instead, you just need to choose one of Cohen’s these to work with. You can choose whichever thesis you’re most interested in writing about.
Step 2: Think about the monsters you’re most interested in analyzing. You can by all means choose to write about all three, but you need to write about at least two. It’s entirely up to you to choose which monsters you want to analyze and why For instance, you’ll find that the creature in Frankenstein is connected to Satan in Paradise Lost because he reads the poem and finds himself influenced by it. On the other hand, maybe silence of Grendel would be an interesting contrast with Satan’s wordiness. Or maybe you like the wordiness of both Satan and the Creature. Or, as I mentioned, maybe you even want to tackle all three.
Step 3: Once you’ve chosen the thesis that you find most compelling and the monsters you want to work with, the next step is to write a thesis, or main argument for your paper. You should use this thesis as a frame through which to analyze the monsters in at least two of the three texts we’ll read over the course of this unit. That sounds like a lot of work to do, so I’ve written out a sample thesis. This thesis is to serve as a model for you to think about but should not be used as your own thesis. Your own thesis should be demonstrably different, and your own creation. Here’s the sample thesis below:
In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan becomes monstrous in the eyes of God precisely because of his refusal to participate in His perfectly ordered kingdom. Similarly, the creature in Frankenstein only becomes truly detestable to Victor Frankenstein when he won’t go away, when he asks for Victor to make space for his creation in an otherwise pleasantly ordered life. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues in _7 Theses_ that this refusal is a central feature of the monster. He writes, “monsters refuse to participate in the classificatory ‘order of things’”. Exploring Satan and the Creature through Cohen’s thinking, we find that the monster’s most fundamental feature is that of refusal.
This is not a perfect thesis. To be frank, while it’s limited and somewhat unique, I think there’s still something missing. The reader will want to know why it’s important to think of the monster through the lens of refusal. It’s a question that the essay will have to go on to answer, or one that might be added later to the thesis. That’s something that’s going to come as the essay starts to fill with supporting paragraphs and ideas. A thesis a little bit like a dance in this way—once you write it, you’re always thinking about how everything else you write will support it. Sometimes, you need to change the thesis and sometimes you need to redirect your writing to better support it, but it’s always at the center of the essay informing the subsequent choices you make. What’s important in this thesis is that it has a focus—it’s focused on one of Cohen’s theses and it’s connected Cohen’s thinking to the monsters in a particular way, on the topic of refusal.
Step 4: Conducting research. This assignment asks you to work with two different kinds of texts, primary and secondary texts. For the primary texts, you’ll be using and analyzing at least two of the three texts we’ll read in class this semester, Beowulf, Paradise Lost and Frankenstein. Secondary texts are the kinds of texts you use to better understand or make sense of the primary texts. I’ve given you one of these already, Cohen’s 7 theses. But you’ll need more than that. You’ll also need some secondary sources to help you support your argument about Cohen and the monster’s you’re analyzing. Once you have an idea of what you want to say in your thesis, you can begin to do academic research. This consists of visiting a good academic library to see if you can find books or essays that might help you develop your thinking. Research is important because it helps to put you in conversation with other writers who are thinking about the same topics as you are, it gives you a sense of what other writers are thinking and saying about those topics, and it can help you to corroborate your arguments and ideas. As you write your paper, you’ll cite or quote from at least three of the sources you find in your research. We’ll spend time in class discussing research—everything from what counts as research to where to find it and how to evaluate it once you do find it. So you don’t need to know everything about research right now—only that it will be necessary to see what some other writers have to say about the monster you’re interested in, as this will give you more knowledge and hopefully greater insight.
Step 5: Putting it all together. Now that you’ve got a thesis and you’ve done some research, it’s off to the races. You use the rest of the paper in order to support your thesis or claim. Each body paragraph should seek to support that thesis in a unique way—to make a specific point in support of the thesis. You can do this by using reasoning, by citing the primary texts, and by citing secondary materials as well. This work takes a long time and it is where the bulk of the writing is, but it’s also usually the easiest part of the process because you’ve got the key parts of the essay figured out by this point. If, as you write, you decide that you need to change the thesis a bit in order to account for where your thinking is taking you, that’s fine. Just note that developing your essay is always a process of reckoning what you’ve written with what your thesis is trying to argue. Maybe for instance, in my sample thesis, I decide that the Creature’s form of resistance to social order is somehow different than Satan’s—so different that the two of them can’t be aligned together in any way. If that’s the case, I’ll have to go back to my thesis and adjust it for this change in my thinking. That’s a part of writing and it’s ok to do.
Requirements: 1800 words; MLA Style (including formatting, citation and works cited page); Citation/quotation from the primary text; citation from at least three secondary sources related to the primary text, or to the topic you are discussing.