Paper #1 assignment: Welcome From the Future!

NOTE: The questions and reading for Tuesday's class are in the post BELOW this one. 

English 1213

Paper #1: Welcome From the Future!

GUIDING QUOTE: “She taught senior citizens how to successfully navigate their layers. She’s helped a retired doctor upload images of his grandchildren so strangers could congratulate him, and assisted a ninety-three-year-old widow in sharing her mourning with the world. Her main challenge, she said, was getting older folks to understand the value of their layers. “Every class they ask me why we can’t just talk instead.” (Weinstein, “Openness”)

PROMPT: Since we’re now in the “future,” even though it looks like the present to us, it’s a good time to ask the question: do you think people are generally happier, more adapted, more prepared, or simply more satisfied with their lives than they were 25 years ago (circa 2000)? Have advances in technology, communication, travel, entertainment, and education put us on the road to a better, brighter tomorrow? Would ECU students of 2000 be envious of the Class of 2029’s reality?

Answer this question by looking at 1-2 things you have today that ECU students didn’t have in the year 2000 (or not in the same way as we do today). Have these things increased our happiness, our understanding (of society, of each other), and/or our education? Can we do without them today? Should we? Imagine you’re talking to someone from the year 2000 who doesn’t have or use these things, and try to explain why they’re important to you, and what they do for you on a daily basis. Can you justify these changes, or do you feel you need to apologize for them? Would you get rid of them…or would you be excited to share them with the Class of 2004? You might also think about whether college is easier or harder today thanks to our ‘future’ advances?

REQUIREMENTS:

• Answer the prompt with examples from 1-2 modern ‘marvels’
• Don’t talk generally—make this a personal essay. Talk about how you use and experience these innovations.
• Write to a student from the year 2000. Imagine what they didn’t have and might not know about our ‘future.’ Try to explain the normal things that are not normal to them.
• Quote from at least ONE of the essays/stories in class to help support your ideas/discussion. We’ll talk about how to incorporate quotations into your paper.
• DUE Tuesday, September 16^th by 5pm 

For Tuesday: Bailey, "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" (story)

LINK TO STORY: https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/i-was-a-teenage-werewolf/

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In the previous story, the town prefers to see Johnny “as a hero who’d saved humanity from the ascension of triumphant alien overlords” (55). How does this story also prefer to believe a convenient narrative of heroism/safety? Who is the hero? Who is the villain? What truths or taboos is the town hiding from?

Q2: Who is the narrator in the story? Even though he/she doesn’t introduce themselves, how can we tell who they are? Why do you think he tells the story from this perspective rather than giving the narrator a name and a character? How does it change the story?

Q3: The narrator claims that the anonymity of the werewolf gave them a certain power in their community. As he/she explains, “if we were both sovereign and slave to our terror, our teachers and parents were slaves alone. As long as no one knew who the teenage werewolf was, it could be any one of us” (296). Why does this give them power over their teachers and parents? How does this bond the teenagers together as a group?

Q4: The ending of the this story is surprising and a bit shocking: why do you think Bailey ends the story with all the adults being eaten/murdered? Is the point of the story to say “teenagers are evil and can’t be trusted”? Or does he have another intention? Why make every teenager a werewolf and every adult a victim?