>Writing an essay for this It's sucking away any

>>8602302
>2016
>he's not a NEET accelerationist trying to ruin the world
SHIGGY

>having to spend a few hours closely reading and thinking about literature ruins your enjoyment
Pro-tip: You didn't actually enjoy it in the first place

>>8602307
Not him, but it depends on the kind of essay, the creativity you're allowed to employ and the proximity to the deadline.

I know I've had a blast writing about HST and Kierkegaard or Burroughs and Spinoza, but I was allowed to be really free from stylistic/contenutistic constrictions while I did it. Having to, I don't know, write 3k words on the frequency and genealogy of slang in the Naked Lunch is a bit less interesting. Writing 5k words on the possibility of Spinoza having read the Sophists via archive/codex inspection, all of it in a scholarly manner with precise notation, is a lot less interesting - to me, at least.

>>8602313
This. I wrote essays I've enjoyed but the prompt for this one just sucks.

In literary works, cruelty often functions as a crucial motivation or a major social or political factor. Select a novel,
play, or epic poem in which acts of cruelty are important to the theme. Then write a well-developed essay analyzing
how cruelty functions in the work as a whole and what the cruelty reveals about the perpetrator and/or victim.

>>8602329
That's pretty easy given the content of this book

>>8602329
I don't know, there may be something interesting you can do with this thing (haven't read it yet, but I get the feeling something like Girard's Violence and the Sacred may be of use) but things like

>write a well-developed essay analyzing
how cruelty functions in the work as a whole

with their obliterating vagueness just make me think the teacher won't like it. Sorry OP, you've been dealt the bland porridge of essay making.

You don't enjoy literature. You're just stupid.

>>8602329

Undermine the prompt from within. Deconstruct the concept of cruelty.

>>8602336
And by the way, do teachers really write something so nondescriptive as "a well developed essay"? What the fuck does it even mean, how did you get to teach anything. Hope you're in high school mate, if this is something you're doing for a degree please cut your teacher's brakes and let him kill him or herself for the sake of your education.

Acts of cruelty color this piece, by God. Focus on what they represent, how they are retaliated, how it drives the book. The crimes against nature, firing mindlessly into the bush, the tribes worshipping Kurtz.... you have so much to work with. The cruelty is so dynamic.

>>8602329
This smells like an AP Lit prompt

Writing essays on literary works generally makes me more interested and enjoy it more. Maybe you're just fucking dumb.