4th Paper Prompts
Green Lit.
4th Paper: Ma
ow Island
● This paper should be 4 pages long, Times New Roman font size 12, double spaced.
● If and when necessary, you should cite in MLA format and you should include a Works
Cited page.
● The paper is worth 25% of your final mark.
● Please choose from one of the following prompts.
○ Research an ecological disaster (like the Three Mile Island Accident, on which
Ma
ow Island is based) and write a fictional short story about its impact on
human or nonhuman lives. This can be in any genre (thriller, romance, fantasy,
etc.), as long as it is creative and incorporates what you’ve learned in you
esearch about the disaster. The best papers will tell an engrossing tale, one that
draws the reader in while also elucidating the effects of the ecological
catastrophe.
○ Craft a journalistic argument for or against Sister Janet’s mission. Using what you
learn of the colony from the novel, make a case for or against its pursuit. In a
paper that is for the colony, you would use your supporting paragraphs to explain
why you think what they are doing is a good thing for the environment; what the
pros of their mission are. In a paper that is against the colony, you would use
your supporting paragraphs to explain why you think what they are doing is
wrong or harmful; what the cons of their mission are.
○ Choose a character from the novel and explore their identity: their actions, thei
motivations, their growth, their obstacles, etc. What is it that they are trying to
achieve; how do they attempt to do so; how are they foiled or how do they
succeed? In what states of mind do they begin and end the book? This is a
close-reading character study, so should rely heavily on scenes and quotations
from the novel to explicate your descriptions of the character.
○ Discuss how the context of this novel has affected the writing and the reading.
When was it written and how does this affect its content? What historical event
inspired its writing and in what ways? What is the identity of the author? What
message or moral do you think she intended to communicate? How does you
personal subject position, and our cu
ent social context, contribute to you
interpretation of the novel? Answering this prompt will require outside research.