Need help with my English question – I’m studying for my class.
write an essay that is four pages on one of the following topics. Use MLA format. The minimum page length is three and a half pages. Your essay should include an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.
Choose one of the prompts that are described as follows:
1. Apply psychoanalytic criticism to the characterization of Gilgamesh or Achilles. Compare and contrast one character’s motivations from various viewpoints. Are they controlled predominately by reason or the irrational mind? Review ethical and logical standpoints of the characters. Freud explains that the neurotic crisis is “the struggle between the interest of self-preservation (ego) and the demands of man’s aggressive nature (id).” Apply psychoanalytic criticism to analyze the motivations and roles of these characters. Analyze how Achilles exemplifies the Homeric code of ethics through his courage, despite his irrational nature at times. Focus on specific lines from the dialogue that will justify your claims.
2. Define the heroic identity of Beowulf as an epic hero. Focus specifically on two or three ethical motivations behind the predictability of rationality in his actions. How do his traits make his role stand out among other epic heroes within the historical context of the work? In other words, you are looking at this from the context of the ancient world. Focus specifically on how historical, religious, philosophical, political, or cultural elements in the work influence his predictability as a heroic character. Would his role as an epic hero be the same if he was not a predictable character? Why or why not? Compare and contrast him to Achilles, who is always not a predictable character, due to the unpredictability of his emotions. This occurs though he, too, is an epic hero like Beowulf.
3. Justify a point of view on Antigone in which you either support the female as a tragic heroine or refute her identity as such in the context of the matter of state versus religion. You can focus on how Antigone stands for the philosophical components of the ancient Greek culture, such as stoicism, Plato’s philosophies on the divine law, or Aristotle’s view of the soul as one with the body. How does her appeal to the ethics of the philosophers of the divine law of the gods justify her case as a tragic heroine as she stands for these schools of thought? How does her tragic role represent the past views of the ancients that were changed with new worldviews represented by the role of Creon?
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