Book Project over Out of This Furnace book
Each essay must be a minimum of 600-650 words in length. Keep in mind that each of the essay questions is subjective in nature and gives you significant latitude in developing your answer. I want you to use your creativity in crafting your responses but remember they must still rely on the novel for specific examples and issues when you make your points. If you generalize without using specific information from the novel and its relevance to the issues you are trying to develop the essay will lose points. Make sure when you reference the novel or the book reviews, or any other source that you properly cite those sources in your essays (See my plagiarism policy on the next page). Put all your answers in the same document, not separate documents for each answer.
Answer Both Questions
The story of the immigrant workers in Out of This Furnace is an example of the triumph on industrial democracy (defined as a combination of economic democracy and political democracy) during America’s industrial golden age. At the beginning of the novel they are powerless to change the brutal working conditions in the mills and the suppression of their democratic voting rights in American politics. At the end of the novel they triumphantly secured economic justice and political justice through exercising their industrial democracy. Explain how that happened.
Dobie Dobrejacak makes the following quote on pages 410-411.
If I’m anything at all I’m an American, only I’m not the kind you read
about in history books or that they make speeches about on the Fourth
of July; anyway, not yet. And a lot of people don’t know what to
make of it and don’t like it. Which is tough on me but is liable to
be still tougher on them because I don’t have to be told that Braddock
ain’t Plymouth Rock and this ain’t the year 1620.”
Explain what he means in your own words. Dobie is making a powerful statement about the prejudice that eastern European immigrants faced in industrial America of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Why does he make the reference to Plymouth and what does he mean? Obviously you must know something about the historical reference to Plymouth in 1620 and the kind of people who arrived there to answer this. What does he specifically mean when he muses that, “a lot of people don’t know what to make of it and don’t like it. Which is tough on me but is liable to be still tougher on them…” In the eighty years since this novel first appeared could a second generation immigrant in Houston relate to Dobie’s family’s experience and also muse that “I don’t have to told that Houston ain’t Plymouth Rock and this ain’t the year 1620.”
When you compose your essays, and I want them mostly in your words, obviously you will be relying on the novel, Out of This Furnace. When you paraphrase or quote from the novel which you may do, or online sources, you must cite that source in the text of your essay where you borrowed the ideas, paraphrase, or quote. Use endnotes to cite your sources. I will be looking for this and when you borrow others ideas you must properly cite your sources in the text of the essay with endnotes. Here is how I want you to cite the textbook and your online source(s) in the text of your paper:
Endnotes to cite the novel
Endnotes cite your online source(s)
