Select one of the following topics. Write a 500 word essay citing from text using MLA citation style.
- The use of color is prominent in Thomas and Beulah. Choose one color -- yellow, blue, white, black, or silver, most obviously -- and trace its progression in a series of poems. How does the significance and use of the color shift and evolve? Or, alternately, how does it help to ground our understanding of Thomas, or Beulah, or their shared relationship?
- Work and chores [labor] figure prominently throughout the poems in both sections; explore the role of labor in one or more poems from each section and how that defines Thomas and Beulah's lives, both apart from each other but also together.
- Explore the themes of aging, illness, and/or death in one or more of any of the following poems: "The Stroke," "The Satisfaction Coal Company," "Thomas at the Wheel," "Recovery," "Nightmare," "Wingfoot Lake," "Company," "The Oriental Ballerina."
- Look at the first poem in each of the two sections -- "The Event" in "I. Mandolin" and "Taking in Wash" in "II. Canary in Bloom" -- and explore the ways in which they inform our understanding of some or all the poems that follow.
- Look at the last poem in each section -- "Thomas at the Wheel" in "I. Mandolin" and "The Oriental Ballerina" in "II. Taking in Wash" -- and consider the ways in which that poem operates as a crucial capstone for the poems that precede it in that section. [capstone= the final stroke, crowning achievement, culmination, acme, high point]
- Explore the importance of music in Thomas's life in one or more of the poems in the first section of the book, "I. Mandolin."
- In what ways do Thomas and Beulah's notions of their gendered identities limit them? [Or perhaps, free them?]
- Consider Dove's treatment of racism in the collection as a whole. How does racism impact upon Thomas and Beulah's lives, and how does this shift over time?
- Look at two poems that are in different sections but that come into direct contact with one another ["Courtship" and "Courtship, Diligence" is one example]. How do the two poems build upon and/or contradict each other? When read together, side by side, how do they change our understanding of each figure [Thomas and Beulah]?
- Despire their more obvious differences, what connections do we see in the ways that Thomas and Beulah view their roles as parents, and why are these difference significant, in your opinion?
- Consider the poems in the second section that look at Beulah's life in the 6 years between Thomas's death and her own. How would you characterize Beulah in this period?
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