ENGL110 LaPlante Broke the Trope Essay….Hooray! We’re almost there. You’ve got this.trope/trōp/The word trope has also come to be used for describing commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works.We’ve spent the semester reading about the lives of various characters, all women, who suffer from mental illness/challenges, who live near a body of water. While Ophelia and Edna choose to take their life in a body of water, Jane—the central character from Alice La Plante’s 2018 novel, Half Moon Bay—contemplated suicide on a cliff on Devil’s Slide, but, unlike Ophelia and Edna, Jane choose to live. From LaPlante’s novel:“She tells herself to take the final step. She can almost do it. She will step into nothingness, and that will be the end. Jane closes her eyes. One step. That’s all she needs. But she finds she can’t do it after all. Sartre would have understood” (LaPlante 237).When I read that Alice LaPlante, choose—rather than follow the tired-millennia-old-trope of having a woman, in the face of difficulty, end their life—to have Jane live, I applauded. LaPlante, to her credit, broke the trope. Writing Question: Unlike Ophelia and Edna, why didn’t Jane Jump?The Usual Requirements: At least three outside sources. Research, remember, is your friend. An introduction paragraph that grabs the reader’s attention, provides necessary background, and focuses your readers’ attention to the thesis. Remember, my dear hearts, your thesis is the simple answer to the writing question. Right? Body paragraphs that have a single “point”, information, and explanation. Remember, summary is not explanation. Explain what you think. A conclusion that wraps up your essay, so your reader is satisfied. A cover page that will include the format requirements and a creative title. You can, if you wish, include artwork on your cover page; it would suggest effort. A work cited page and parenthetical citation.
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